N 6 OPTICON Telescope Network WP 1 Telescope

N 6 OPTICON Telescope Network • WP 1 Telescope Directors Forum • WP 2 Transnational Access Office • WP 3 Enhancing Research

WP 1 Director’s Forum • The TDF is an expansion of the successful FP 5 medium telescope working group • It includes telescope directors from all 2 m+ European telescopes with state of the art instrumentation. • It meets at least annually at different observatory locations.

WP 1 Director’s Forum • Provides a forum for European strategic planning. • Provides oversight of the OPTICON Transnational Access programme. • Creates new opportunities for local collaborations

WP 1 Achievements • Survey of European telescopes and instrumentation plans • Monitoring and adjustment of access programme. • Review of WP 2 (Access office) • Peer Review process set up for entry of Aristarchos and Liverpool telescope.

WP 1 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.

WP 1 Achievements • Northstar proposal system being expanded for Optical telescopes in conjunction with Radionet, increasing synergy across Europe and across the wavelength divide.

FP 7 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

WP 2. 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

Deliverables & Milestones Planned • M 1. Definition of the Access Office Work Scope • M 2 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 JENAM 2004 and JENAM 2005 Analysis of procedures for awarding time • Achieved 2004 Yes Yearly Yes 2005 Each four-month period 2006 2004, 2005

Plans for the future Ø Promotion of the Access Programme. ØNew promotional material ØMain international events ØSpecial promotion to Central and Eastern Europe ØMassive sending of a general advertisement of the Programme Ø Scientific output. ØNew section in the Access Website ØNew actions to boost observers’ feedback ØCompilation of publications, conferences proceedings, etc in a report Ø Minor improvements on management procedures. Ø Survey to evaluate the OPTICON Access Programme website. Ø New studies to analyse the impact of the access programme.