SUMMARY OF THE MEETING OF THE OPTICON 3D SPECTROSCOPY WORKING GROUP 7-8 December 2000. ESO, Garching Attending Jeremy Allington-Smith j.r.allington-smith@durham.ac.uk Thomas Becker tbecker@aip.de Veronique Cayatte veronique.cayatte@obspm.fr Yannick Copin copin@strw.leidenuniv.nl Nicolas Devillard ndevilla@eso.org Pierre Ferruit ferruit@obs.univ-lyon1.fr Bianca Garilli bianca@ifctr.mi.cnr.it Markus Kissler-Patig mkissler@eso.org Evencio Mediavilla emg@ll.iac.es Guy Monnet gmonnet@eso.org Casiana Munoz Tunon cmt@ll.iac.es Ralf Palsa rpalsa@eso.org Alvio Renzini arenzini@eso.org Martin Roth mmroth@aip.de Juergen Schmoll jurgen.schmoll@durham.ac.uk Juergen Schreiber schreib@mpe.mpg.de Lowell Tacconi-Garman lowell@mpe-garching.mpg.de Matthias Tecza tecza@mpe-garching.mpg.de Niranjan Thatte thatte@mpe-garching.mpg.de Paul van der Werf pvdwerf@strw.leidenuniv.nl Jeremy Walsh jwalsh@eso.org (Chair) A very constructive first meeting of the OPTICON 3D Spectroscopy Working Group was held. There was excellent communication and sharing of expertise. The background to the meeting was that the euro3D proposal which had been submitted to the EU 5th framework programme as a Research and Technical Development project (RTD)in May 1999 was not successful. The comment was received that it would be better suited to a Network and that it should be coordinated with OPTICON. There were three sessions on instrumentation for 3D spectroscopy, software for 3D spectroscopy and re-submission of euro3D proposal. 3D INSTRUMENTATION The first session consisted of brief presentations of all the 3D spectrometry instruments available or under construction. Pierre Ferruit presented the CFHT instruments Tiger (now decommissioned) and Oasis and Yannick Copin described Sauron, a team instrument used on the WHT. Evencio Mediavilla described the WHT common user instrument INTEGRAL. Martin Roth described the Potsdam Multi-Aperture Spectrometer (PMAS) which is under construction for use with VLT and LBT. Bianca Garilli described the VLT instruments VIMOS and NIRMOS and their IFU's. Matthias Tecza presented SINFONI being constructed for the VLT, which comprises the MACAO AO feed and the SPIFFI spectrometer, whose design is based on 3D. Jeremy Walsh introduced the VLT FLAMES facility consisting of the OzPoz fibre positioner and the GIRAFFE spectrometer which employs both single object fibres, small IFU's and a larger IFU. Markus Kissler-Patig presented an overview of the VLT NAOS/Conica instrument which has K band Fabry-Perot and is due for commissioning in 2001. Juergen Schmoll presented a number of integral field projects which are being undertaken at Durham including the Gemini GMOS IFU and GIRMOS. 3D SOFTWARE The second session was composed of more detailed presentations on software for 3D spectroscopy. The INTEGRAL package is written in FORTRAN and runs in IRAF. It has quick look analysis as well as full extraction and cube reconstruction. The XOasis and XSauron packages, which are very similar were described. Simple summing of spectra is not sufficient since there is substantial cross-talk between adjacent spectra and a global extraction technique is used. Physical models of the Oasis and Sauron instruments are used with tunable parameters to match the actual data. The XOasis library is in C with Tcl/Tk. The 3D data is held in a platform independent binary format. Thomas Becker described the XPMAS reduction package written in IDL. The package allows full control or fully automatic reduction of PMAS data. The aim is extraction of high photometric quality. Bianca Garilli outlined the reduction software for the VIMOS IFU which is written as C programs and using some MIDAS tasks. The package is structured as a pipeline but the individual routines can be put together into recipes. Jeremy Allington-Smith reported on extraction software under development at Durham for lenslet arrays. The reduction package is written for IRAF in SPP and C. A fast white light image reconstruction is available to check telescope pointing and data cube mosaicing (in spectral and spatial dimensions) is available. Veronique Cayatte reported on the software being written for GIRAFFE. Specific tools for the IFU's will come in the Ancilliary Data Analysis System (ADAS) with tools for cube reconstruction from the stacked 1D format. Basic analysis on the data such as line moments and equivalent widths will be available. Nicolas Devillard presented the eclipse software package. This is an ANSI C library supported by ESO for basic image processing. It is used in the ESO Date Flow System for some instruments. Juergen Schreiber described the reduction software planned for SPIFFI which is adapted from the 3D reduction software. The routines are written in ANSI C and run in the GIPSY package. euro3D RE-SUBMISSION The third session was an in-depth assesssment of a replacement proposal to euro3D. It was agreed to submit as a Network. Martin Roth, who played a major role in the euro3D proposal will be the coordinator of the new proposal. The aim is to provide tools for 3D spectra and to exploit the lead Europe already possesses in this forefront area of astronomical instrumentation. The telescopes and their instrumentation provide the "infrastructure" for this proposal. All agreed that 3D spectroscopy is applicable to all branches of astronomy, and that in most cases it is the method of preference for feeding a spectrometer. Almost all new instruments in the near future (with the exception of the mid-IR) will have some form of integral field device. Within 10 years it was suggested that over half of all spectrometry will be taken with IFU's. All forms of 3D spectra - from IFU's, FTS's and Fabry-Perots - will be included in the proposal. Projects depending upon and exploiting 3D spectroscopy to obtain excellent science will be presented in the Network proposal. A wide coverage of astronomy should be demonstrated with specific topics, in which groups in the proposal have expertise, should be emphasized. For each science project the specific tools to be developed would be identified. Members were chosen to construct science cases for the draft of the proposal. Part of the proof that funding is required is that current tools are not adequate or not sufficient for the 3D spectroscopy handling. The current packages will be surveyed as part of the Working Group's remit. Various essential items required for efficient 3D data handling were identified for the proposal. It was decided to submit a draft of the proposal to OPTICON prior to their Board meeting in Sicily on 6 April 2001 in time to incorporate their comments into the proposal, which has a deadline of May 4. A Web page for the Working Group is under construction and presentations in the ESO Messenger and at the conference on Scientific Drivers for ESO Future VLT/VLTI Instrumentation are planned. The next meeting of the OPTICON 3D Spectroscopy WG will be in Potsdam on 19-20 February.