Coordination and Integration of ENO facilities

This Networking Activity will allow telescope operators at the European Northern Observatory (ENO - Teide and Roque de los Muchachos Observatories – OT and ORM, Canary Islands) to set up a suitable and staggered framework of co-operation among them.

This will be accomplished by forming a number of working groups.

  • Co-ordination of scientific communities at ENO:
  • Dissemination of good practices: The participants will meet to promote a better co-ordination of similar infrastructures and to approach common challenges. These meetings will be organised in the context of the whole OPTICON project to avoid duplication and unnecessary trips and expenses. Some special working groups will be also set up to analyse and discuss very specific and common issues affecting subsets of astronomical community, as a result of being located at the same site. These working groups will be set up only if well-defined and specific objectives to approach are identified by the participants at the ENO meetings.

  • A co-ordinated laser traffic control system for the ORM: The participants
  • will carry out the co-ordination and implementation of a co-ordinated laser traffic control system for the ORM. There are various complications to be considered when firing lasers from telescopes. One complication is that the laser light from one telescope may affect the observations at another telescope. Solving this problem, by co-ordinating this “laser traffic”, is the subject of this system, requiring a tight collaboration and coordination between all telescopes at the ORM. The solution is extremely simple and lies in the development of a joint software system to orchestrate this laser operation so as to not affect observations at the other telescopes in any negative way.

  • Site Characterisation of the Canarian Observatories: The participants will jointly carry out a complete site characterization for the Canarian Observatories (OT and ORM).

  • Co-ordination of night-time seeing measurements with DIMMs: An Automatic
  • Differential Image Motion MONITOR (DIMM) will be developed by the participants and installed at the ORM remote area “la Degollada del Hoyo Verde”. The expected outcome is a systematic measurement of the night-seeing and meteorology as well as to provide the baseline to define a flexible schedule programme as an operational scheme for the telescopes at the observatory. Intensive Campaigns using a GSM (Generalized Seeing Monitor, an instrument based on a technique developed by Francoise Martin´s team at Nice University) will be also carried out.

  • Co-ordination of day-time seeing measurements at Teide Observatory (OT):
  • The participants will use a solar DIMM and a Scintillometer array to provide statistical data of seeing measurements for Teide Observatory (OT). Working sessions, distribution of data/results will be also carried out.

  • Joint actions for meteorology, dust, extinction and Sky Background: The
  • participants will co-ordinate all the existing data provided by the several automatic weather stations at ORM, studying the differences among particular locations. A new automatic weather station will also be installed at the pre-selected site for an Extremely Large Telescope (ELT).

  • An all-sky camera (CONCAM) will explore the possibility to measure the sky
  • background on dark nights. Another instrument (LIDAR) will give the water vapour content. The study of the size and amount of dust particles will also be undertaken by the participants.

  • Joint actions for Measurement of turbulence and wind vertical profiles
  • (SCIDAR, GSM & DIMM): A co-ordinated measurement of parameters still unknown, such as the vertical profile of wind and turbulence still lacking will be approached by the participants.

  • Distribution and discussion of results and participation at the scientific
  • forums: The participants will co-ordinate individual efforts currently running in order to get a more complete and consistent view of the sky quality. They will make available the information already existent among them, assuring the continuity of the data gathering and data dissemination. They will design a data-base and maintain web pages (“network meteo”: which will contain the links to all operational programmes) and a common web page (cielocanarias_web). In addition they will participate in the discussion forums for Site-Selection (50m telescope, 100m telescope, Advanced Technology Solar Telescope) to assure that the results gathered within the network are properly disseminated.

  • Joint Information System and Transfer of Knowledge:
  • Development of a Joint Information System for the European Solar Community: The participants will design and develop a dynamic, complete and user-friendly decentralised computing information tool (JIS) for the European Solar Physics community.

  • Co-ordinated actions on transfer of knowledge and public outreach: The participants will carry out several specific actions to widely publicize the scientific results arising from the telescope facilities installed at ENO, including for non specialised public.

For a full description of the NA2 networking activity, please select the following link:

http://www.otri.iac.es/na2/

The Chair of this activity is: J Burgos (IAC) jburgos@ll.iac.es

Here is a PDF file of J Burgos' presentation to the OPTICON I3 Board meeting in Ghent 1 - 2 April 2004:

N2: Coordination and Integration of ENO facilities