N6 OPTICON Telescope Network
• WP1 Telescope Directors Forum
• WP2 Transnational Access Office
• WP3 Enhancing Research
WP1 Director’s Forum
• The TDF is an expansion of
the successful FP5 medium
telescope working group
• It includes telescope
directors from all 2m+
European telescopes with
state of the art
instrumentation.
• It meets at least annually at
different observatory
locations.
WP1 Director’s Forum
• Provides a forum for European strategic
planning.
• Provides oversight of the OPTICON Transnational Access programme.
• Creates new opportunities for local
collaborations
WP1 Achievements
• Survey of European
telescopes and
instrumentation plans
• Monitoring and adjustment
of access programme.
• Review of WP2 (Access
office)
• Peer Review process set up
for entry of Aristarchos and
Liverpool telescope.
WP1 Achievements
• Visits to Rohzen, Wroclaw, Vienna, Prague,
JENAM’s etc to promote access
programme
• Opportunities for time swaps and closer
collaboration in the future being identified.
WP1 Achievements
• Northstar proposal system
being expanded for
Optical telescopes in
conjunction with
Radionet, increasing
synergy across Europe and
across the wavelength
divide.
FP7 Plans
• Telescope directors are working on a new, more
radical, access programme with more flexibility
than existing contract and more emphasis on
rationalisation of facilities.
• Common proposal tool development to continue
as a first step towards closer integration.
• Possible vehicle for other telescope wide
initiatives such as common TACs, e-star remote
scheduling tool
E-Star Objectives
• Simple access to distributed and heterogeneous
observing facilities
• Making efficient use of OPTICON observing
facilities
• Enabling rapid reaction to events
• Enabling rapid dissemination of time critical
results
• EU
–
–
–
–
–
Partners
MONET, Germany
EUDOXOS, Greece
ING, La Palma
JAC, Hawaii
Liverpool JMU, UK
• Companies
–
–
–
–
Tuparev Technologies, Bulgaria
Thales
Google
LCO-GT
• U.S.A.
– LANL
– NOAO
– Caltech
Deliverables
• Software
–
–
–
–
Interfaces for telescopes systems
OPTICON portal for requesting observations
Transient event software (publish & subscription)
Agent software (already funded)
• Operations
– Transient event feeds
– User support
– Archiving for event messages
Costs & Matched Funding
• Costs
– 3 yr PDRA effort
– appropriate levels of hardware and travel support
• Matched Funding
– 1 yr PDRA effort from 1/1/09 from STFC
Current operations
• JACH
– GRB follow-up programme on UKIRT
– Common user facility available to community
• Robonet-1.0
– Hunting for exo-planets
– ESSENSE follow-up (LSST pre-cursor project)
• RAPTOR & LT
– OT follow-up programme
• HTN Consortium
– Standardisation work
• VO integration work
– VOEvent network
– Simple Time Access Protocol (STAP) services
• Public Outreach
– Google Sky
WP2. Access Office (IAC)
General tasks
• Management the OPTICON Access Programme
• To produce budgetary estimates for User Fees, user travel and subsistence
grants, operating costs and promotional material.
• Management of funds for the payment of travel and subsistence grants for
the Trans-national Access programme.
• Maintain the website for the Access Programme
• Other activities to guarantee the most valuable implementation of the Access
Programme:
– Impact and evolution of the programme, proposal submission systems,
information and publicity of the Access Programme, etc.
Specific tasks: Telescope Operators and Executive
Committee
• Provide to the Executive Committee financial reports and
reconciliations for the funds advanced for the Access Programme.
• Prepare reports for the Executive Committee and the Telescope
Directors’ Forum.
• Assess the qualifying telescope time awarded and the consequent
User Fees due to the telescopes
• Provide the administrative and technical support for the
implementation of the Access Programme to the telescope
operators.
• Monitor the implementation of the Access Programme by the
individual telescope operators,
• Collect and provide to the Telescope Directors’ Forum detailed
statistics about type and characteristics of observing runs supported
under the Access Programme
Specific tasks: Users
• Provide information to those eligible teams awarded
observing time about this EC funding opportunity
• Receive, assess and adjudicate requests for travel and
subsistence
• Maintain an auditable paper trail for the travel and
subsistence payments made and the calculation of the
user fees.
• Collection of scientific output, feedbacks and user
questionnaires
Activities
•General publicity: participation in
conferences, info days, meetings
• Announcements of opportunity
• OPTICON Access Website
• Handouts
82 users questionnaires fulfilled (2004- 2006)
Evaluation of service
provided
GOOD
AVERAGE
GOOD
85%
POOR
AVERAGE
15%
60
POOR
0% 59
55
GOOD
AVERAGE
POOR
not answered
54
50
40
30
25
20
16
20
10
0
2
0
3
4
0
Information provided
Support
Reimbursement
8
Deliverables & Milestones
Planned
•
M1. Definition of the Access Office Work Scope
•
M2 Annual reports to the Directors Forum
•
Internal 18-months Review Report
•
Progress reports to the Directors Forum
•
Promote Access programme at IAU meeting in Prague
•
Promote Access programme at JENAM2004 and
JENAM2005
Analysis of procedures for awarding time
•
Achieved
2004
Yes
Yearly
Yes
2005
Each four-month period
2006
2004, 2005
2005
Plans for the future
 Promotion of the Access Programme.
New promotional material
Main international events
Special promotion to Central and Eastern Europe
Massive sending of a general advertisement of the Programme
 Scientific output.
New section in the Access Website
New actions to boost observers’ feedback
Compilation of publications, conferences proceedings, etc in a report
 Minor improvements on management procedures.
 Survey to evaluate the OPTICON Access Programme website.
 New studies to analyse the impact of the access programme.