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The Messenger: No. 128 - June 2007
The Messenger: No. 128 - June 2007
Progress on ALMA
CRIRES Science Verification
Gender balance among ESO staff
The Messenger
No. 128 – June 2007
The Organisation
Catherine Cesarsky The XXVIth IAU General Assembly, held This Agreement was formally confirmed
(ESO Director General) in Prague in 2006, clearly provided a by the ESO Council at its meeting on
boost for the Czech efforts to join ESO, 6 December and a few days thereafter by
not the least in securing the necessary the Czech government, enabling a sign-
I am delighted to welcome the Czech public and political support. Thus our ing ceremony in Prague on 22 December
Republic as our 13th member state. From Czech colleagues used the opportunity (see photograph below). This was impor-
its size, the Czech Republic may not be- to publish a fine and very interesting pop- tant because the Agreement foresaw
long to the ‘big’ member states, but the ular book about Czech astronomy and accession by 1 January 2007. With the
accession nonetheless marks an impor- ESO, which, together with the General signatures in place, the agreement could
tant point in ESO’s history and, I believe, Assembly, created considerable media be submitted to the Czech Parliament
in the history of Czech astronomy as well. interest. for ratification within an agreed ‘grace pe-
The Czech Republic is the first of the riod’. This formal procedure was con-
Central and East European countries to On 20 September 2006, at a meeting at cluded on 30 April 2007, when I was noti-
join ESO. The membership underlines ESO Headquarters, the negotiating teams fied of the deposition of the instrument of
ESO’s continuing evolution as the prime from ESO and the Czech Republic arrived ratification at the French Ministry of
European organisation for astronomy, at an agreement in principle, which was Foreign Affairs.
whilst at the same time it enables Czech subsequently presented to the Commit-
astronomers to become fully integrated tee of Council. We look forward to an active Czech parti-
in the European astronomical community. cipation in ESO’s programmes in time to
come.
As always in such cases, joining an inter-
national organisation requires a proc-
ess with a political underpinning and a
set of formal steps. Not surprisingly,
this process can take years. In the case
of the Czech Republic the first informal Ms. Miroslava Kopicová, Minister of
Photo: Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
Historical development
local Bohemian journal, consequently his servatory at Ondřejov near Prague. In Current Facilities
principle was later rediscovered by H. A. 1928, Josef Jan Frič donated his observ-
Fizeau. In the second half of the 19th cen- atory to the state. The Astronomical Institute of the Acad-
tury, Ernst Mach contributed enormous- emy of Sciences of the Czech Republic
ly to the education of a whole generation After the establishment of the Czechos- has a prominent position as the largest
of both German and Czech physicists lovak Academy of Sciences in 1953, the professional place in the Czech Republic.
and astronomers. He also helped in the former State Observatory in Clementi- The names of the Institute’s four scien-
general recognition of Christian Doppler’s num, together with the Ondřejov Observ- tific departments suggest a lot about its
achievement. atory, became the basis of the Astro- scientific profile: Solar Physics; Interplan-
nomical Institute of the Czechoslovak etary Matter; Stellar Physics; and Galax-
In 1886, the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences. One historical root ies and Planetary Systems.
Charles University in Prague was estab- of this institution thus reaches to 1722,
lished by August Seydler, who served as when Clementinum observatory was The Solar Physics department focuses
its first director. He elaborated sophisti- established by the Jesuits, and another on active solar phenomena such as
cated methods for determination of orbits to the Frič’s foundation of the Ondřejov sunspots, solar flares and coronal mass
of minor planets and wrote textbooks Observatory in 1898, which was inspired ejections. The data coming from the
on theoretical physics and many popular by the interest of his poetic godfather instruments of the Ondřejov observatory,
articles on astrophysics. In the last de- Jan Neruda. including optical and radio wavebands,
cade of the 19th century, Seydler’s suc- are combined with X-ray and UV obser-
cessor, Gustav Gruss, observed variable vations from satellites and space probes
stars and carried out visual observations
of stellar spectra.
20
20
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–10
1590 1610 1630 1650 1670
40 50 60 70 20 30 40 50 –10 0 10 20 – 30 – 20 –10 0 – 60 – 50 – 40 – 30
Z (kpc) Z (kpc) Z (kpc) Z (kpc) Z (kpc)
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40 50 60 70 20 30 40 50 –10 0 10 20 – 30 – 20 –10 0 – 60 – 50 – 40 – 30
Z (kpc) Z (kpc) Z (kpc) Z (kpc) Z (kpc)
–6 –4 –2 0
log ρICM
Figure 7: Gas stripping in galaxy clusters: formation grees with respect to the disc normal and observations mainly deal with orbits
of a bow shock in front of a galaxy as seen in sim-
sees the system from the left side. Su- and light curves of asteroids, including
ulations using N-body SPH with a gravity tree code.
From Jáhym, P., 2006, Ph.D. Thesis, Charles Uni- perposition of several tens of such spots new discoveries of such bodies. Studies
versity Prague, and Université Pierre et Marie Curie, then contributes to the source variability in cosmology, with special emphasis
Paris. as the spots arise, trace some part of the on the properties of gamma-ray bursts,
orbit, and gradually fade away (c.f. Eckart are performed. Studies in history of as-
The department of Galaxies and Plane- et al. 2006). tronomy focus particularly on the Bohe-
tary Systems resides in the Prague part mian region.
of the Astronomical Institute, but it has its In the Institute of Physics of the Academy
own zenith telescope in Ondřejov. It deals of Sciences of the Czech Republic, a The Institute of Theoretical Physics of the
with the study of the rotation of the Earth, research group participates in the project Charles University is also a part of the
and with the theoretical problems of So- of the Pierre Auger Observatory which Faculty of Mathematics and Physics. Stu-
lar System dynamics and exoplanets. The is building an array of telescopes in Ar- dents are educated in mathematics and
trans-Neptunian bodies are studied in- gentina to detect showers of high-energy computing, and in theoretical physics,
cluding the resonance in the Kuiper Belt. cosmic rays. The contribution of the including classical and quantum mechan-
Triggered star formation in the turbulent Czech Republic includes mainly the fabri- ics, elementary particle physics, thermo-
interstellar medium is studied both in cation of hexagonal mirrors for two the dynamics, relativistic physics and cosmol-
observations and simulations. The influ- Schmidt cameras observing Cherenkov ogy. Research areas include gravitational
ence of gas recycling on galaxy evolution radiation in the Earth‘s atmosphere. collapse with small non-spherical per-
across a Hubble time, including gravi- turbations, black-hole electrodynamics,
tational and hydrodynamic processes, is The Astronomical Institute of the Charles theory of gravitational radiation, exact
considered (see Figure 7 for example). University, which is an integral part of the solutions of Einstein’s field equations and
Study of relativistic astrophysics includes Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, has cosmological perturbation theory.
accretion processes and resonances mainly educational duties in teaching
in discs surrounding black holes. An ex- undergraduate and graduate courses of The Institute of Theoretical Physics and
ample is shown in Figure 8 where the astronomy and astrophysics. The re- Astrophysics at the Faculty of Sciences,
predicted variations of the X-ray spectrum search areas include the spectroscopic Masaryk University in Brno, provides ba-
of an accretion disc at eight successive properties of hot stars, particularly in sic courses in astronomy and astrophys-
phases are plotted during the entire orbit binaries and multiple systems, and explo- ics at the undergraduate and graduate
of a single spot located at a distance of ration of the nature of Be stars. Stud- level. Research includes the physics of
seven gravitational radii from the black ies of physical properties, dynamics and hot stars, non-LTE models of stellar at-
hole and rotating clockwise. A distant ob- evolution of small bodies of the Solar mospheres, variable stars, carbon stars,
server is placed at an inclination of 30 de- System include the Yarkovsky effect and K-type giants and properties of atmos-
FE (arbit. units)
FE (arbit. units)
10 10 10
5 5 5
0 0 0
10 10 10
log E (keV) log E (keV) log E (keV)
15 15
FE (arbit. units)
FE (arbit. units)
10 10
5 5
0 0
10 10
log E (keV) log E (keV)
15 15 15
FE (arbit. units)
FE (arbit. units)
FE (arbit. units)
10 10 10
5 5 5
0 0 0
10 10 10
log E (keV) log E (keV) log E (keV)
pheric extinction. The Institute manages entific method by special astronomical This brief review presents the past and
the Masaryk University Observatory at research. The Klet’ Observatory, which current status of astronomy in the Czech
Kraví hora equipped with a 0.6-m reflec- is equipped with a 1-m telescope with a Republic, which is the starting point for
tor with a CCD camera. CCD detector, has its research pro- the entrance of the Czech Republic into
gramme dedicated to the astrometry of ESO.
The Relativistic Astrophysics Group of the asteroids with unusual orbits and com-
Institute of Physics of the Silesian Univer- ets, providing precise determination of
sity in Opava is active in the fields of neu- their orbits. The main part of the work is References
tron stars, black holes and cosmology. devoted to the near-Earth orbits. The Eckart A. et al. 2006, The Messenger 125, 2
The anisotropies of the CBR are explored data are provided to the Central Bureau Hadrava P. 2006, “The European Southern
as well as L-CDM cosmological models. for Astronomy Telegrams of the IAU. Observatory and Czech Astronomy”, Academia,
Other observatories include the Nicolaus Praha
Palouš J., Vondrák J. and Šolc M. 2002, “Astronomy
The Czech Republic can be proud of its Copernicus Observatory and Planetarium and Astrophysics in the Czech Republic”, in
unique net of planetaria and public ob- in Brno, Štefánik Observatory and Plane- “Organizations and Strategies in Astronomy III”,
servatories. Their primary goal is to pro- tarium in Prague, Rokycany Observatory, ed. A. Heck, Kluwer, 163
vide natural science knowledge to a Úpice Observatory, Valašské Meziříčí Ob-
broad public and to demonstrate the sci- servatory, and others.
Wolfram Freudling, Palle Møller, to characterise the photometric perform- tion revealed that the structure in the
Ferdinando Patat, Sabine Moehler, ance of the FORS instruments and inves- flatfields consists of a temporally constant
Martino Romaniello, Emmanuël Jehin, tigate if and how the routine calibration of pattern, superimposed on large-scale
Kieran O’Brien, Carlo Izzo, the instruments can be modified to offer fluctuations which rapidly change in time.
Eric Depagne, Emanuela Pompei, improved photometric zero points (ZPs). The contrast of the constant pattern
Dominique Naef, Gero Rupprecht, An additional goal of this programme is to is higher in bluer bands. Interestingly, we
Arto Järvinen (all ESO) develop procedures to allow users to get found a correlation of some of the pat-
more accurate photometric calibration. terns with the adaptor rotator angle. The
FORS instruments are mounted on
The two FOcal Reducer and low-dis- The results are available as two internal adapter rotators which compensate for
persion Spectrographs (FORS) are ESO reports, Møller et al. (2005) and the sky-field rotation inherent to the VLT
the primary imaging instruments for the Freudling et al. (2006). In this article, we alt-azimuth mounting. Part of the struc-
VLT. Because they are not direct present a brief overview of the issues re- ture in the flat field rotates rigidly with
imaging instruments, the accuracy of lated to photometry with the FORS in- the angle of the rotator. This is illustrated
photometry which can routinely be struments, and the current status of FAP. in Figure 1. This pattern in the flatfield
obtained is limited by significant sky Our work has so far concentrated on must be external to FORS1 and might be
concentration and other effects. This the FORS1 camera, but the most of the due to reflections and/or asymmetric
article reports on the progress of findings will equally apply for FORS2. vignetting within the telescope or the
a long-term project to improve the adapter itself.
photometric calibration of the FORS
instruments. Relative photometry with FORS1 A high signal-to-noise version of the ro-
tating structure is shown in Figure 2. This
Accurate photometry starts with reliable image was created by counter-rotating
The calibration plan for the FORS instru- and stable flatfielding. We used the B flatfields by an amount equal to the ro-
ments calls for observations of photo- huge collection of twilight flats in the VLT tator angle and then computing the me-
meric standards in each clear night. The archive to investigate the quality of the dian of the rotated flatfields. If there was
primary purpose of these observations flatfields commonly used for the reduc- no correlation between the structure
is to monitor instrument performance. tion of FORS images. In order to investi-
The same data are also used to calibrate gate the stability of the flatfields, we
science observations for programmes computed the mean of bias-subtracted Figure 1: A sequence of B FORS1 sky-flats divided
by the median of all flatfields. The intensity scale
where 5 to 10 % photometric accuracy is flatfields, and divided each individual range is 3 %. The rotator adapter angles (−105, −73,
sufficient. Two years ago we started the frame by this mean. This removed the − 35, 0, + 30, and +70) are indicated by a blue arrow
FORS Absolute Photometry (FAP) project stable part of the flatfields. Visual inspec- in the upper right corner.
in the flatfields and the rotator angle, then tions from our dithered observations. The
the structure of the individual flatfields details of the formalism are described
should average out and the median would in Freudling et al. (2007). This image can
be smooth and flat. Instead the opposite then be used to correct the flatfield, or
can be seen in Figure 2. A finger-like pat- be applied as a second-order flatfielding
tern, which is already visible in the indi- step to the science data. The flatfield cor-
vidual flats shown in Figure 1, stands out rection frame for the R filter is shown
with increased signal-to-noise. This dem- in Figure 3. The peak-to-peak flatfielding
onstrates that this is a rotating feature. error at the position of the observed stars
The peak-to-peak amplitude of the pat- is about 30 mmag. It should be empha-
tern in the median frame is about 1 %. In- sised that the amplitude of the correction
spection of individual images in the stack frame depends on the flatfield used to
shows that the amplitude varies substan- process the imaging data, and that the
tially among the individual flatfields. correction frame therefore only applies to
that particular flatfield.
Twilight flats, as routinely obtained each
night, differ from each other by as much We tried several methods to remove
as 5 %. If such flatfields are applied to Figure 2: A stack of all B sky flats after applying a the fluctuating and rotating features,
rotation around the geometrical centre with an described above, from the master flats
science data, the relative photometric ac-
amplitude equal to the adapter rotator angle. The
curacy is limited to about 5 %. Even when intensity scale range is 1%. before computing the correction frame.
controlled for rotator angle, flatfields dif- The most successful approach was to
fer from each other by an amount which sitions across the CCD. This approach remove the large-scale pattern by divid-
questions the feasibility of per-cent-level is often nicknamed the “1000 points of ing each flat-field by a smoothed version
photometric accuracy with FORS1. A key light” approach. In addition, we took im- of itself. This procedure lowers the am-
question is whether these fluctuations ages of the same fields rotating the whole plitude of the necessary correction to the
reflect true differences in the end-to-end frame. flat-fields derived from observations of
throughput of FORS1. In that case, rel- standard stars, and therefore improves
ative and therefore absolute accuracy at Ideal data sets for calibrating images with the overall flat-fielding.
the per cent level simply cannot be ob- suspected ZP variations across the de-
tained with FORS1. A more likely explana- tectors are fields which contain suitable So far we have derived flatfield correc-
tion is that the flatfields are flawed and do photometric standards over the whole tions for three data sets taken more than
not represent the throughput of FORS1. dithered region. We therefore selected re- two years apart. The overall shape and
In that case, the task is to find the true gions within Stetson fields (Stetson, 2000, amplitude of the correction frames were
flatfield which should be applied to data 2006) as our targets, which contain a stable over that period. We therefore
so that the photometric ZPs are constant large number of photometric standards conclude that the best flatfielding with
over the whole detector. suitable for 8-m-class telescopes. These FORS1 can be obtained by: (1) remov-
fields proved to be useful for our pur- ing large-scale features from the master
We experimented with different proce- pose, and we will investigate whether all flats; (2) applying a correction frame de-
dures to remove the large-scale pattern current FORS calibration fields can be rived from observations of standard
from the raw observed flatfields. For the replaced with appropriately selected point- fields.
investigations described in the follow- ings within the Stetson calibration fields.
ing sections, we used new observations
to test the quality of the flatfields con- The simplest and most direct way to in- Absolute photometry with FORS1
structed in this manner, and compared vestigate relative ZP changes with
them to the regular “master flats” pro- dithered data is to compare the relative Nightly ZPs for FORS instruments have
duced by combining the routine twilight instrumental magnitudes of individu- so far been computed assuming a con-
flats for that night. al standard stars which are observed stant extinction for each night. The ex-
at positions all across the detectors. tinction, however, varies substantially
The large variation in the flatfields was A much more sensitive method is to use from night to night, even when the nights
the motivation to take a closer look at the measured magnitudes of any star are photometric. Therefore, ZPs derived
possible variations of the ZP magnitudes which has been observed at two or more using a mean extinction depend on the
across the detector when using the mas- different dither positions. Each individ- airmass of the measured standard field
ter flat. The goal was to derive a correc- ual star might only provide relative ZP and are not useful for accurate photom-
tion for the master flats and to find a shifts for a few positions on the detector. etry. The true instrumental photometric
quantitative estimate of the accuracy of By combining the information from many ZP above the atmosphere, as derived
the finally adopted flatfield. For that pur- stars, the ZP variations over the whole from extrapolation of the extinction curves,
pose, we observed standard fields with a detector can be reconstructed. We used probably varies much more slowly than
25-point dither pattern which placed singular value decomposition (SVD) to the night-to-night variations of the extinc-
one relatively bright star on a grid of po- construct such an image of the ZP varia- tion. Therefore, better photometric ac-
20
One of the tools to independently assess surement error from the current obser-
the quality of the night is the “VLT As- 0 vations as well as estimated uncer-
tainties for the magnitudes of standard
tronomical Site Monitor” (ASM) which can
stars. Lower panel: The variance of
be accessed at http://archive.eso.org/ – 20
the residuals as a function of magni-
asm/ambient-server. We found that, tude error. The superimposed line is
– 40
at least in the one photometric night used an error model, which includes statisti-
cal errors as well as extinction fluctua-
for FAP, the measured scatter of about
tions.
6.8 mmag is very similar to the flux rms 30
used to derive a photometric extinc- the strategy outlined above, leads to an during those two months will therefore
tion solution. The magnitude and colour accuracy for the magnitude ZP of about serve to determine the best possible, and
range, and the consistency of derived 10 mmag. final, photometric characterisation of the
ZPs is similar for all fields. To estimate the now retired system which has been used
errors on the ZPs from sets of only two The scatter in the ZPs also suggests that since the start of VLT operation.
standard field observations, we recom- errors are almost Gaussian when three
puted the ZPs from subsets of the FAP different standard fields are used. The er- This “Final Effort” on the retired FORS1
data. We used every combination of two ror budget discussed above implies that photometric system will also serve as a
standard fields which were taken with the dominant error on the mean magni- model for the design of our future FORS
a difference in airmass of at least 0.7. tude of all stars in any of the standard calibration plan. Our pilot programme
The distribution of the resulting ZPs is fields are fluctuations in the extinction, if has shown that per-cent-level photometry
shown in Figure 5. The distribution has the number of standard stars in each with FORS is indeed feasible. The key
an almost Gaussian peak but also a long field is large enough and the exposures requirement for this is the ability to com-
non-Gaussian tail. In about 10 % of all sample the airmass between 1 and 2 uni- pute the flatfield corrections. In order
cases, the errors on the resulting ZPs is formly. For a typical magnitude uncer- to make this possible for a large number
larger than 3 %. This shows that the tainty of 10 mmag, about 30 or more of programmes, those corrections must
observation of only two standard fields is standard stars per field are needed. This be determined directly from the calibra-
insufficient to photometrically calibrate a is one of the reasons to use the Stetson tion plan data, which in turn places more
night to per-cent-level accuracy. standard fields as opposed to fields with demands on our calibration plan. In par-
fewer stars with known magnitudes. ticular there needs to be a large number
We then repeated the experiment using of moderately faint standards in each field.
three standard fields. At most one of We are currently investigating whether
the fields in each set was at an airmass The past and future FORS1 photometric appropriate regions for this purpose can
less than 1.3, and the differences be- systems be found within the Stetson standard
tween minimum and maximum airmass fields. Using these fields will therefore
was larger than 0.7. The resulting distri- In April 2007 FORS1 was upgraded with require that we measure U-Band magni-
bution of ZPs is plotted in Figure 5. Also a new CCD mosaic and a new set of tudes for the standards in those fields.
shown is a Gaussian with the same broad-band filters (see article on page 9). (Stetson, 2006).
mean, standard deviation and normalisa- During February and March 2007 we
tion as the ZP distribution. It can be seen therefore carried out an intensified ver- FAP has shown that it is possible to
that the distribution resembles closely sion of our usual photometric calibration achieve per-cent-level photometry with
a Gaussian with a standard deviation of plan, where we employed all the tools FORS1 with moderate effort. Over
11 mmag. In contrast to the previous and methods developed during the FAP. the next year, we plan to prepare new
experiment with only two standard fields, This data set includes dithers and rota- photometric standard fields suitable
all ZP errors are less than 3 %. This result tions which makes it possible to derive to obtain more accurate photometric
strongly suggests that the use of three flatfield corrections directly from the cali- solutions and simultaneously derive
photometric standard fields, chosen with bration data. The calibrations obtained flatfield corrections. If this programme
proves to be successful, we plan to
incorporate new flatfielding algorithms
Figure 5: Distributions of zero points into the FORS pipeline.
determined from two and three stand-
30 ard observations (red and blue histo-
grams respectively). The dashed line is
a Gaussian with a s of 11 mmag. References
Ralf Siebenmorgen 1 The VLT cryogenic high-resolution infra- be used to increase both spatial resolu-
Alain Smette 1 red echelle spectrograph CRIRES offers tion and signal-to-noise ratio.
Hans Ulrich Käufl 1 high spatial, spectral and temporal
Andreas Seifahrt 1 resolution spectroscopy from 1 to 5 μm. The scientific potential of the CRIRES
Stefan Uttenthaler 2 Highlights from among the 29 pilot instrument is demonstrated by the many
Arjan Bik1 studies of the CRIRES science verifica- results obtained during three science
Mark Casali 1 tion (SV) runs are summarised. verification observing campaigns which
Swetlana Hubrig 1 have been performed in August, October
Yves Jung 1 2006 and in February 2007. Twenty-nine
Florian Kerber 1 The VLT cryogenic high-resolution infra- pilot studies were granted observing time
Jorge Melnick 1 red echelle spectrograph CRIRES (Käufl totaling 20 000 s integration time. The
Alan Moorwood 1 et al. 2004) is located at the Nasmyth principal investigators (PI) and project ti-
Jean-François Pirard 1 focus A of UT1 (Antu). It provides a resolv- tles of the successfully executed SV
Hugues Sana1 ing power of up to 100 000 in the spec- programmes are given in Table 1. Individ-
Elena Valenti 1 tral range from 1 to 5 μm. CRIRES can ual projects range from studies of the
Lowell Tacconi-Garman1 boost all scientific applications aiming at Earth’s atmosphere, disc structure around
Michael Hilker 1 fainter objects, higher spatial resolution young stars, brown dwarfs (BD), extra-
Francesca Primas1 (for extended sources), spectral and solar planets to pulsation and wind prop-
Pedro J. Amado 3 temporal resolution. Spectral coverage is erties of massive stars, asymptotic giant
Andrés Carmona1 maximised through a mosaic of four branch stars (AGB), structure of the
Ewine F. van Dishoeck 4 Aladdin III InSb arrays providing an effec- Galaxy and astroseismology. In this arti-
Cédric Foellmi 1 tive 4096 × 512 detector array in the focal cle some of the highlights are presented
Miwa Goto 5 plane. A MACAO (Multi-Applications in a sequence beginning with young
Roland Gredel 5 Curvature Adaptive Optics) system can stars, brown dwarf stars and planets,
Eike Günther 6
Bengt Gustaffson 7
Don Kurtz 8 Tabel 1: CRIRES science verification runs: principal investigator (PI)
and project title is given for each programme.
Christopher Lidman1
Hendrik Linz 5
Fabrice Martins 9 ID PI Title
Karl Menten 10 1 Amado NIR spectroscopy of pulsating stars?
Claire Moutou 11 2 Bik Circumstellar discs around massive young stellar objects
Poul E. Nissen 12 3 Carmona Probing the gas in the inner 50 AU of proto-planetary discs
Dieter Nürnberger 1 4 Foellmi Distances to late-type stars
Ansgar Reiners 1 5 Goto H+3 and CO observation toward Superantennae
6 Günther CRIRES for high precision RV of late-type stars
7 Gustaffson CNO abundances in Bulge giants
1
ESO 8 Käufl Search for OH in the disc around HD 163296
2
Institut für Astronomie, University 9 Kerber Determining the atmospheric precipitable water vapour content
Vienna, Austria 10 Kjaer High resolution infrared spectrum of SN 1987A
3
Gr-IAA, Instituto de Astrofísica de 11 Kurtz High time-resolution precision radial velocities of peculiar A stars
Andalucía, Granada, Spain 12 Lidman A high-resolution spectral atlas of the night sky
4
Universiteit Leiden, the Netherlands 13 Linz Disc winds and envelopes associated with BN-type objects
5
Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy, 14 Martins The most massive stars in the GC: binarity and metallicity
Heidelberg, Germany 15 Melnick and Gredel Molecular hydrogen in Doradus 30
6
Thüringer Landessternwarte (TLS), 16 Moutou Transmission spectroscopy of transiting extrasolar planets
Tautenburg, Germany 17 Nissen The abundance of sulfur in metal-poor stars
7
Uppsala University, Sweden 18 Nürnberger Weighing a high mass protostellar candidate
8
University of Central Lancashire, 19 Reiners FeH spectroscopy in ultra-cool dwarfs – CRIRES or UVES?
Preston, United Kingdom 20 Sana Can IR solve the wind clumping question?
9
Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial 21 Seifahrt Effective temperatures and gravities of low-mass stars and BD
Physics, Garching, Germany 22 Siebenmorgen Astrochemistry in dust formation regions
10
Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy, 23 Siebenmorgen Roadmap of astrochemistry during massive star formation
Bonn, Germany 24 Siebenmorgen Bound on time dependency of the fine structure constant
11
L aboratoire d’Astrophysique Marseille 25 Smette Na i D and Ca ii in a z ~ 2 damped Lya system
(LAM), France 26 van Dishoeck CO emission from transitional protoplanetary discs
12
University of Aarhus, Denmark 27 Uttenthaler The C/O and C12/C13 ratios and three dredge-up in bulge AGB stars
13
Hamburger Sternwarte, Universität 28 Uttenthaler Titanium Oxide band heads in the J-band
Hamburg, Germany 29 Valenti Chemical composition of evolved populations in LMC and NGC 1866
followed by massive and Asymptotic Gi- 1.0 Figure 1: 12 CO profile of the massive young stellar
object IRAS 16164-5046. From top to bottom, lines
ant Branch stars to targets outside the
Normalised flux
0.8
R(7), R(4) and R(0) are plotted. The R(0) line is more
Galaxy. Finally CRIRES calibration issues 0.6 sensitive to cold material than the other two. Two
are mentioned. 0.4 components can be identified, one belonging to the
12
CO R(7) cold envelope and the other component caused by
0.2 4.6024 micron a wind or outflow (Bik et al.).
0.0
Discs around massive young stellar 1.0
0.8
0.6
0.8
12
C17OJ = 1–0 P1
Gemini
pared to that of CRIRES at the VLT (R = 100 000).
and N nuclei) has been dredged up to the
1.05 The higher velocity resolution of CRIRES is the ob-
vious advantage among the other instruments on stellar surface. The sum of the abun-
VLT/CRIRES 8-m-class telescopes. dances of C, N, and O is close to that ex-
1 pected from a non-processed old star,
discriminated by obtaining the ages of formed with an excess of oxygen and
0.95 a considerable number of Bulge red giant alpha elements relative to iron. The pre-
R(1,1) I stars using the ratios of heavy element liminary elemental abundances are pre-
0.9
GCS 3-2 3.7155 µm abundances, in combination with their sented in Ryde et al. (2007), while a full
– 200 –100 0 100
kinematics, as a chronometer. The main analysis will be presented in a forthcom-
reason for observing in the IR (see Ryde ing paper.
1.5 et al. 2005) is the much smaller interstel-
Subaru lar extinction so that the whole Bulge is
observable and not just a few windows Outside the Galaxy
transparent at optical wavelengths. Only
1.25 Gemini the near-IR offers all the indicators neces- Two extragalactic SV projects were exe-
Relative intensity
sary for accurate determination of the im- cuted. Siebenmorgen [ID 24] tried to
portant C-N-O molecular equilibrium constrain variations in the fine structure
VLT/CRIRES in the atmospheres of cool stars, through constant, a = e2 /hc by observing the
1 the simultaneous observation of many [O iii] doublet redshifted to z ~ 2. The QSO
clean CO, CN and OH lines. The goal with 1148-001 was selected as it shows a
the SV run was to test the method. The bright doublet unresolved at low resolu-
CO R(1) result was successful, even though, only tion. Unfortunately, the lines are too
0.75 GCS 3-2 2.3433 µm three Bulge stars could be observed. broad when observed at a resolution of
Figure 7 shows the CRIRES spectrum of
– 200 –100 0 100
one of them, Arp 4203. The wavelength
VLSR (km/s)
range 1531–1570 nm was recorded and Figure 7: Two sections of the CRIRES spectrum of
only a 1/4 of the spectrum is shown for Arp 4203 are presented (full line, black) together with
models with nitrogen increased by +0.4 dex (dashed,
M794 has not experienced a 3DUP is giv- clarity. From the derived abundances, blue) relative to the best fit, and when oxygen is in-
en by the non-detection of Technetium, the findings are that, e.g., the giant star stead decreased by 0.2 dex (dotted, red). For clarity
a radioactive indicator for this process. Arp 4203 is depleted in C, enriched in N, the best-fit model is not shown (Gustaffson et al.).
Interestingly, as determined from UVES
spectra, this star shows Lithium in its 1.0
atmosphere, which is rather surprising for
a previously classified low-mass AGB
Normalised flux
50 000 and no useful constraint could be Calibration of CRIRES data: CRIRES and spection of the R ~ 100 000 spectra re-
derived. the Earth’s atmosphere veals that CRIRES resolves doublets
which are seen as single lines at spectral
A second project focused on the ISM of Observing with CRIRES as well as cali- resolution of 10 000 (see Figure 9 in
proto-galaxies at z > 2 (Smette [ID 25]). brating and reducing CRIRES data re- Siebenmorgen and Smette 2007). How-
The Na i and Ca ii absorption lines are vealed multiple challenges that the sci- ever, even at a resolution of 100 000
common features in the ISM of our Gal- ence verification programmes helped to CRIRES does not resolve individual lines.
axy, but so far they have never been ob- identify. A large number of the problems Also, a number of sky lines appear that
served in the ISM of objects with red- that the CRIRES team met during the are not listed in available catalogues and
shifts larger than one. CRIRES offers the execution of the programmes have been vice versa.
possibility to extend the study of the ISM solved in time for science operations,
by means of these important lines for while work is still going on for others. CRIRES is also helping ESO in prepara-
damped Lyman-systems (DLA) at high z. tion for the next generation of giant
These lines provide important information For example, the high-resolution capabili- telescopes. Kerber [ID 9] tested a method
regarding the velocity structure of the ties of the instrument are a challenging to measure the atmospheric content of
gas. Na i can be compared with the low- aspect when it came to the development precipitable water vapour (PWV) using the
ionisation lines seen in UVES spectra to of a precise (s(v) ~ 70m/s), robust and equivalent widths of H2O absorption lines
better constrain the ionisation conditions. automatic wavelength calibration proce- in the near-IR which are imprinted onto
At low redshift, Ca ii is often seen in tur- dure. The pipeline, now in use to assess the spectra of early-type stars. An accu-
bulent material such as the one seen in the quality control of the data, uses as rate and efficient method to determine
the merging galaxies. Comparison be- first guess the wavelength solution pro- the PWV is highly valuable for any ther-
tween Na i and Ca ii is also a very good vided by a physical model of the instru- mal IR instrument at an E-ELT. For quanti-
indicator of the clumpiness of the gas. ment, which is accurate to about 1–2 pix- tative measurements, unblended water
The QSO HE0251-5550, chosen from els. It then cross-correlates data with lines are selected to have a minimum de-
the H/ESO DLA survey (Smette et al. in other catalogues such as telluric features pendence of their absorption coefficient
prep.), has a hydrogen column density computed by HITRAN or OH line lists. at a temperature of ~ 300 K. CRIRES
log(NHI ) = 20.7 DLA in its spectrum and a In addition, CRIRES supports high-accu- spectra of bright stars were observed on
redshift of z = 2.3, allowing the search racy wavelength calibration by means several nights during SV. On some of
for Na i and Ca ii doublets with CRIRES. of gas cells and a ThAr hollow cathode these nights routine measurements with
Although the object is bright enough in lamp (Kerber et al. 2007). VISIR (see Smette et al. 2007) can be
R-band to close the AO loop, though with used to establish the PWV from mid-IR
little improvement in image quality, the But an accurate and precise wavelength data allowing for comparison across
faintness of the QSO (H = 14.6) made calibration relies on a large number of wavelength and method. Very acceptable
guiding somewhat difficult, as insufficient lines on each detector. Ideally, these lines agreement between both methods and
flux is reflected back from the slit jaws to should be observed simultaneously with instruments is found.
the slit viewer detector. The spectra cov- the target. Such is the case for observa-
ering the Na i lines reached the expected tions through gas cells. In several spec-
S/N but did not reveal the lines, probably tral bands, the sky lines are very numer- References
because of the low metal abundance of ous. However, little is known of their Carmona A. 2007, Ph.D. Thesis, University of
this system. Unfortunately, the seeing apparent wavelength stability which could Heidelberg
degraded during the promising, yet chal- limit their use for high-accuracy wave- Käufl H. U. et al. 2004, SPIE 5492, 1218
lenging, observations of the Ca ii lines and length calibration. Such a study – the fea- Käufl H. U. et al. 2007, The Messenger 126, 32
Kerber F. et al. 2007, ASP Conference Series 364,
the spectra have an unusably low S/N. sibility of using OH lines to calibrate ed. C. Sterken, 461
Despite the non-detection, these obser- CRIRES data – is at the base of the pro- Martins F. et al. 2006, ApJ 644, L75
vations were a good test of the feasibility posal of Lidman [ID 12], as this molecule Nissen et al. 2007, A&A, accepted,
to observe such ’faint’ targets with shows a rich ro-vibration spectrum. astro-ph/0702689
Oka et al. 2005, ApJ 632, 882
CRIRES, in particular, when the high res- Before CRIRES, OH sky line spectra had Roueff et al. 2006, A&A 447, 963
olution allows one to avoid the effects of only been systematically obtained with Ryde N. et al. 2007, astro-ph/0701916
telluric lines. spectral resolutions of 10 000 or less. Ryde N. 2005, in: “High Resolution Infrared Spec-
CRIRES spectra of the OH lines were tak- troscopy in Astronomy”, ESO Astrophysics
Symposia, (eds.) H. U. Käufl, R. Siebenmorgen
en during evening twilight, which is the and A. F. M. Moorwood, Springer, 365
time when they are at their brightest. In a Siebenmorgen R. and Smette A. 2007, CRIRES
single 300-s exposure it is possible to User’s Manual, http://www.eso.org/instruments/
see up to a dozen lines on a single detec- crires/doc/
Smette A., Horst H. and Navarrete J. 2007,
tor and up to four times that number Proceedings of the 2007 ESO Instrument Cali-
over the entire mosaic. In order to assess bration Workshop, Springer-Verlag, in press,
their wavelength stability, data over sever- http://www.eso.org/gen-fac/meetings/cal07/
al nights were obtained, immediately presentations/smetteCal07.pdf
followed by a ThAr spectrum. A quick in-
Frédéric Gonté, Christophe Dupuy, The design and integration phases of onal mirrors have to be aligned with a
Christoph Frank, Constanza Araujo, APE, which started in 2005, have been precision better than 15 nm rms. It was
Roland Brast, Robert Frahm, completed and the test phase will start clearly not feasible to produce a scaled-
Robert Karban, Luigi Andolfato, in June 2007 during which time APE down version of the full primary mirror.
Regina Esteves, Matty Nylund, will be installed at the focus of one of the However, from a statistical point of view,
Babak Sedghi, Gerhard Fischer, Lothar VLT unit telescopes in 2008. a mirror with approximately 50 segments
Noethe, Frédéric Derie (all ESO) is already representative of a mirror with
Initially the APE team wanted to contract many more segments in terms of the
the design and manufacture of the ASM study of issues like alignment algorithms
The Active Phasing Experiment (APE) is to a private company. However, when or the effect of misalignments on image
part of the Extremely Large Telescope no company could be found which could quality. The main requirements for the
Design Study which is supported by the meet the rather stringent requirements, ASM can be summarised as:
European Framework Programme 6. it was decided to develop the ASM in- – 61 segments in four rings around the
This experiment, which is conducted in house, involving ESO groups in Integra- central segment
collaboration with several partners is tion, Optics, Electronics, Software and – Segment size 17 mm to minimise the
a demonstrator to test and qualify newly- the ELT Project Office. size of the re-imaged pupil and
developed phasing sensors for the align- the relay optics on the optical bench
ment of segmented mirrors and test – Three degrees of freedom for rigid body
the phasing software within a telescope Design and integration movements, that is piston, tip and tilt
control system to be developed for a for each segment
future European Extremely Large Tele- The current design of the primary mirror – Precision of displacement better than 2
scope. The segmentation of a primary of the European Extremely Large Tele- nm (similar to an ELT)
mirror is simulated by a scaled-down scope consists of 984 hexagonal seg- – Range of displacement more than
Active Segmented Mirror of 61 seg- ments (Gilmozzi and Spyromilio 2007). 15 μm (similar to an E-ELT)
ments which has been developed in- Each segment has a diameter of around – Size of the gaps between segments
house. 1.5 m and the size of the gaps between between 80 and 150 μm (scaled-down
the segments is approximately 4 mm. from the gap size in the ELT primary)
In order to achieve the performance re- – Surface form quality better than 15 nm
Background quired for high-resolution imaging with RMS (similar to the required surface
extreme Adaptive Optics (AO), the hexag- quality of a real segment with active
In order to gain experience with the phas- shape control)
ing of segmented mirrors, in particular – Operational temperature between 0˚ C
Photo: H. H. Heyer, ESO
Figure 3: Integration of
Figure 2: Construction
work on the OSF
Technical Buildings.
ESO signed the contract for the construc- Figure 3: The AOS
Technical Building.
tion of the OSF Technical Facilities in
August 2006. Construction work has ad-
vanced (see Figure 2) and during this The ALMA Antennas prototypes were extensively tested at the
time no major problems or delays have ALMA Test Facility in Socorro, New Mex-
occured. As specified in the construc- Major performance requirements of each ico (see the image on the front cover).
tion schedule, foundations have been antenna are 2? absolute pointing over the Various groups of international experts,
prepared and the superstructures of the whole sky, 0.6? offset pointing, a 25 mi- both internal and external to ALMA, re-
buildings were completed in March 2007. cron rms overall surface accuracy and viewed the performance of the prototype
Provisional Acceptance of all facilities the ability to fast switch over a 2-degree antennas and concluded that the per-
is foreseen for the first quarter of 2008. range in less than 1.5 seconds. These re- formance expected at the ALMA site con-
quirements are at least comparable to forms to the technical requirements for all
The AOS Technical Building (Figure 3) will those of existing submillimetre radio tele- three designs.
be delivered by the North American ALMA scopes; however all of these, except the
partner. Inside the building, construction APEX antenna which is very similar to an Following a Call for Tender for the anten-
work and furnishing is expected to be ALMA prototype antenna, are protected nas, the North American partners of the
completed by summer 2007. Human op- from the weather by shelters. ALMA project, through Associated Uni-
erations at the AOS will be limited to versities Incorporated (AUI), signed a con-
an absolute minimum, due to the high alti- The antennas are critical for the ALMA tract to supply up to 25 antennas, with
tude. The AOS Technical Building will project and their quality and performance options to increase the contract to 32 an-
house the Back-End electronics and the are a major contributor to the overall tennas, with Vertex RSI on 11 July 2005.
Correlator. Digitised signals received functionality of ALMA. In view of the tech- Similarly, on 6 December 2005, the ESO
from the radio telescopes will be proc- nical criticality of the antenna specifica- Director General signed a contract (see
essed here and further transmitted to the tion, three prototypes were supplied by ESO PR 31/05) with the AEM Consor-
data storage facilities located at the the AEC Consortium (procured by ESO), tium (Alcatel Alenia Space France, Alcatel
OSF. The AOS building will become us- Vertex RSI (procured by NRAO for North Alenia Space Italy, European Industrial
able for installing technical equipment in America) and Mitsubishi Electrical Com- Engineering S.r.L., MT Aerospace) for the
June 2007. pany (procured by NAOJ, Japan). All three supply of 25 ALMA antennas (as the Eu-
ALMA Band Frequency Range (GHz) Receiver Noise Temperature (K) To be produced by 1 Mixing scheme
over 80 % of the RF Band at any RF Frequency
1 31.3–45.0 17 26 to be decided Single Side Band
2 67–90 30 47 to be decided Single Side Band
3 84–116 37 60 HIA Dual Side Bands
4 125–163 51 82 NAOJ Dual Side Bands
5 163–211 65 105 OSO (6 only) Dual Side Bands
6 211–275 83 136 NRAO Dual Side Bands
7 275–373 147 219 IRAM Dual Side Bands
8 385–500 196 292 NAOJ Dual Side Bands
9 602–720 175 261 NOVA Double Side Band
10 787–950 230 344 NAOJ (to be confirmed) Double Side Band
opment of Band 10 receivers. The Band 9 DC Power Districution Modules (10) Photonic Reference (Source)
Photonic Reference (Return)
cartridge was built by NOVA in the Neth- DC Supply M&C Module
LO Offset LO Offset Reference Input
erlands and is shown in Figure 7. The re- Distribution Module
Photo-
Front-End Correlator
mixers
Tunable Filter
IF Processing
8 × 2–4 GHz sub-bands
Digital De-Formatter
Digitizer Digitizer
Local Oscillator
8 × 4 GHz – 3 bit ADC
8 × 250 MHz, 48 bit cut
Clock
Optical De-MUX
and Amplifier
Data Encoder
12 × 10 GHz
Optical Fibre
bridge University (UK) and Onsala Space The European deliverables in the ALMA The ALMA Correlator
Observatory (Sweden), was completed Back-End project are a number of com-
and both underwent intensive testing at ponents, which are produced by several The ALMA Correlator, to be installed in
the Sub-Millimeter Array (SMA) on Mauna European institutes, working closely with the AOS Technical Building, is the last
Kea (Hawaii). The performance of both ESO, and NRAO. These deliverables are: component in the receiving end of the
prototypes meets the requirements and digitizer chips and digitizer assembly; di- data transmission. It takes as input the
demonstrated the atmospheric correction gitizer clock assembly; optical data trans- digitized signals from the individual an-
method. The Call for Tender for the final mission system; fibre patch panel; optical tennas and outputs amplitude and phase
detailed design and full WVR production multiplexers (MUX) and de-multiplexers on all of the interferometer baselines in
was issued in February 2007 to indus- (De-MUX); Erbium-Doped Fibre Amplifiers each of a large number of spectral chan-
try in ESO member states and production (EDFA), and photonic local oscillator pho- nels. It is a very large data-processing
should commence in mid-2007. tomixers. system, composed of four quadrants,
each of which can process data coming
Development and pre-production of from up to 16 different antennas. The
The ALMA Back-End these components has been successfully complete correlator will have 2 912 print-
completed; the components will be inte- ed circuit boards, 5 200 interface cables,
The ALMA Back-End systems deliver sig- grated at NRAO in Socorro and installed and more than 20 million solder joints.
nals generated by Front-End units in- in the European and North American pro- The first quadrant was completed at
stalled in each antenna to the Correlator totype antennas for tests at the ALMA NRAO in the third quarter of 2006. Work
installed in the AOS Technical Building. Test Facility ATF. on the second quadrant is progressing
Signal processing and data transfer is on schedule.
schematically shown in Figure 8. In each An example of one of the various Back-
of two orthogonal linear polarisations End components produced in Europe is Integral parts of the Correlator are Tuna-
an intermediate frequency (IF) of 8 GHz the 4 GHz digitizer in its final layout (see ble Filter Bank (TFB) cards, which allow a
bandwidth can be processed and re- Baudry et al. 2006, Figure 3). The clock major increase in the flexibility by sub-
corded at any time. Analogue data, pro- rate is 4 GHz, allowing an input bandwidth dividing the frequency range into 32 inde-
duced by the Front-End electronics, are of 2 GHz. The digitization uses three lev- pendently configurable sub-channels.
processed and digitised before being for- els to preserve the signal-to-noise ratio. Four TFB cards are needed for the data
matted for the transmission through the During the prototype and development coming from a single antenna. The TFB
optical transmitter units and multiplexers. phase, the initial layout was optimised in cards have been developed and opti-
All these elements are installed in the order to reduce the number of parts and mised by the University of Bordeaux over
receiver cabins of each antenna. Optical the assembly costs. The final digitizers the last few years. Prototypes and pre-
signals are then sent through optical fi- show an improved performance and production units were extensively tested
bres to the AOS Technical Building. The a higher reliability. This work was carried and their performance was critically
total distance in the most extended an- out in close collaboration between ESO reviewed in the first half of 2006. In the
tenna configuration is about 15 km. At the and the University of Bordeaux. The first meantime, series production is pro-
AOS Technical Building the incoming op- units have been shipped to Socorro gressing and the first batch of 108 out of
tical signals are de-multiplexed and de- for final acceptance and integration with 560 TFB cards has been produced.
formatted before entering the Correlator. tests at the ATF.
System Engineering and Integration delivery in the middle of 2007 for which Table 2: Software Development in European
Institutes.
preparations are currently ongoing.
An important ALMA-wide activity is the
System Engineering and Integration Software Activity Institute 2
(SE&I) task, which covers coordination of Computing Science Software Requirements IRAM
activities across the project. One of the Pipelining UKATC, MPIfR
prime objectives of SE&I is to ensure that The development of a unified software Archiving Man. Un./JBO
modules and equipment produced for an system for the ALMA Observatory is an- Observing Preparation UKATC
ALMA subsystem, often in different loca- other important activity which requires Offline Data Processing MPIfR, CNRS
tions of the world, fit physically and func- intensive interactions with all of the ALMA Telescope Calibration IRAM, IEM-CSIC
tionally together. SE&I is also responsible engineering project teams. The nature ALMA Common Software OAT
for the ALMA system design, technical of software development calls for a com-
budgets and for ensuring the system inte- mon approach and policy from the very 2
IRAM Institut de Radio Astronomie Mil-
beginning – not only with respect to the limétrique (Grenoble, France)
grity, and hence has to ascertain that all
UKATC United Kingdom Astronomy Technology
interfaces between the various subsys- engineering teams, but also between the Centre (Edinburgh, United Kingdom)
tems are completely understood, well de- European and North American partners. MPIfR Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie
fined, rigorously reviewed and properly In contrast to some cases of hardware (Bonn, Germany)
oriented activities, where specialised in- Man. Un. University of Manchester (Manchester,
documented.
United Kingdom)
struments are provided, this project re- JBO Jodrell Bank Observatory (Macclesfield,
In order to achieve the tasks mentioned quires entire software packages to be de- United Kingdom)
above, the SE&I team takes a central role veloped under a single management and CNRS Observatoire de Paris & Centre National
organisation. de la Recherche Scientifique (Paris,
in the preparation and management of
France)
project performance and engineering re- IEM-CSIC Instituto de Estructura de la Materia
quirements and Interface Control Docu- ALMA Software Development is man- (Madrid, Spain)
ments ICD. SE&I is also very active in aged as a truly integrated, trilateral orga- OAT Osservatorio Astronomico di Trieste
organising, holding and chairing technical nisation. The European, North American
reviews of the project, which could be and Japanese Executives have identified
internal to ALMA or external, reviewing individual work packages under a com-
the status and progress of the design mon leadership.
and manufacturing of ALMA components
by industry or scientific institutes. Product Work in Europe is organised through
and Quality Assurance is another task ESO. The centre of European software
and will receive a high visibility specifically development and management is at
during the manufacturing phase. ESO’s headquarters in Garching. Many – E xecutive subsystem, which provides
software packages are developed by the operator user interfaces;
The SE&I group is also leading the activ- ESO in collaboration with European in- – Observatory Support Software, which
ities related to Prototype System Integra- stitutes who have experienced and quali- provides the support tools needed by
tion and the testing at the ALMA Test Fa- fied staff developing and testing the time allocation teams and the support
cility (ATF) in Socorro (see front cover). required software. Table 2 gives an over- for data packages;
During the years 2007 and 2008 the ATF view of software projects carried out by – Software engineering activity, which
will serve as a facility where ALMA hard- various European institutes in association maintains the standards to be used in
ware and software will be integrated into with ESO. hardware and software.
an operational system using the two pro-
totype antennas from Europe and North Major computing subsystems for which Figure 9 shows as an example the Opera-
America. In a joint effort with the ALMA ESO has direct responsibility include: tor Master Console. This is part of the
Science team, first fringes were recorded – ALMA Common Software (ACS), the Executive subsystem, for which ESO is
in March 2007 (see ESO PR 10/07). The infrastructure used by all other soft- responsible.
ATF is also used for training integration ware;
and operations personnel for Chile and – Archive, both Front-End and science
for qualifying equipment needed for ac- archive, collecting not only science Acknowledgements
ceptance tasks in Chile, such as the Opti- data, but also any other information We would like to thank Claus Dierksmeier, Stefano
cal Pointing Telescope and the Hologra- used by the ALMA observatory soft- Stanghellini, Gie Han Tan, Fabio Biancat Marchet
phy System. ware; and Gianni Raffi for helping to prepare this article.
– Integration and test activity, to get a
Another major activity for the coming coherent and tested software system References
years is the Assembly, Integration and out of the many subsystems;
Verification (AIV) at the OSF. Equip- – High Level Architecture activity, respon- Baudry A. et al. 2006, The Messenger 125, 37
ment acceptance has already started and sible for the design of the ALMA soft- Wilson T. 2006, The Messenger 123, 19
Haupt C. et al. 2006, Proc. SPIE 6271, 14
AIV at the OSF will begin with the antenna ware and consistency of its interfaces;
Jean-Philippe Beaulieu 1, 3 8
Boyden Observatory, University of of cold telluric planets. Its detection
Michael Albrow 1, 4 the Free State, Department of Physics, confirms the power of this method and,
Dave Bennett 1, 5 Bloemfontein, South Africa given our detection efficiency, suggests
Stéphane Brillant 1, 6 9
Astronomisches Rechen-Institut (ARI), that these recently-detected planets
John A. R. Caldwell 1, 7 Zentrum für Astronomie, Universität may be quite common around M stars,
Johannes J. Calitz 1, 8 Heidelberg, Germany as confirmed by subsequent detection
Arnaud Cassan 1, 9 10
L awrence Livermore National Labora- of a ~ 13 Earth-mass planet. Using a
Kem H. Cook 1,10 tory, Livermore, California, USA network of dedicated 1–2-m-class tele-
Christian Coutures 1, 3 11
University of Tasmania, School of scopes, we have entered a new phase
Stefan Dieters 1,11 Mathematics and Physics, Hobart, of planet discovery, and will be able to
Martin Dominik 1, 2,12,13 Tasmania, Australia provide constraints on the abundance
Dijana Dominis-Prester 1,14 12
Scottish Universities Physics Alliance, of frozen Super-Earths in the near future.
Jadzia Donatowicz 1,15 University of St Andrews, School of
Pascal Fouqué 1,16 Physics and Astronomy, St Andrews,
John Greenhill 1,11 United Kingdom The discovery of extrasolar planets is ar-
Kym Hill 1,11 13
Royal Society University Research guably the most exciting development
Matie Hoffman 1, 8 Fellow in astrophysics during the past decade,
Uffe G. Jørgensen 1,17 14
University of Rijeka, Physics Depart- rivalled only by the discovery of the cos-
Stephen Kane 1,18 ment, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, mic acceleration. The unexpected variety
Daniel Kubas 1, 6 Rijeka, Croatia of giant exoplanets, some very close
Jean-Baptiste Marquette 1, 3 15
Technische Universität Wien, Austria to their stars, many with high orbital ec-
Ralph Martin 1,19 16
Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, Labora- centricity, has sparked a new generation
Pieter Meintjes 1, 8 toire d’Astrophysique, Université Paul of observers and theorists to address
John Menzies 1, 20 Sabatier, Toulouse, France the question of how planets form in the
Karen Pollard 1, 4 17
Niels Bohr Institutet, Astronomisk context of protostellar accretion discs.
Kailash Sahu 1, 21 Observatorium, København, Denmark Planets are now known to migrate and
Christian Vinter 1,17 18
Department of Astronomy, University of maybe even be ejected, via planet-disc
Joachim Wambsganss 1, 9 Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA and planet-planet interactions. We are
Andrew Williams 1,19 19
Perth Observatory, Perth, Australia beginning to discover how our Solar Sys-
Kristian Woller 1,17 20
South African Astronomical Observa- tem fits into a broader community of
Marta Zub1, 9 tory planetary systems, many with very differ-
Keith Horne 1, 2,12 21
Space Telescope Science Institute, ent properties. Microlensing-based
Alasdair Allan 2, 22 Baltimore, Maryland, USA searches play a critical role by probing for
Mike Bode 2, 23 22
eSTAR Project, School of Physics, cool planets with masses down to that
Daniel M. Bramich 1, 2, 24 University of Exeter, Devon, United of Earth. Of key interest is how planets
Martin Burgdorf 2, 23 Kingdom are distributed according to mass and or-
Stephen Fraser 2, 23 23
Astrophysics Research Institute, bital distance (Figure 1) as this information
Chris Mottram 2, 23 Liverpool John Moores University, provides a crucial test for theories of
Nicholas Rattenbury 2, 25 Birkenhead, United Kingdom planet formation. Core accretion models
Colin Snodgrass 2, 6 24
The Isaac Newton Group of Tele- (Ida and Lin, 2005) are today the best
Iain Steele 2, 23 scopes, Santa Cruz de La Palma, description for the formation of planetary
Yiannis Tsapras 2, 23 Canary Islands systems: the accretion of planetesimals
25
The University of Manchester, Jodrell leads to the formation of cores, which
Bank Observatory, Macclesfield, then start to accrete gas from the primi-
1
PLANET Collaboration Cheshire, United Kingdom tive nebula. This scenario predicts that for
2
RoboNet Collaboration M dwarf stars there is a preferential for-
3
Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, mation of Earth- to Neptune-mass planets
CNRS, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, In order to obtain a census of planets in 1–10 AU orbits. These planets are ex-
Paris, France with masses in the range of Earth to pected to form within a few million years.
4
University of Canterbury, Department Jupiter, eight telescopes are being used More massive planet (Jupiter) formation
of Physics and Astronomy, by the combined microlensing cam- is hampered by a longer formation time
Christchurch, New Zealand paign of the PLANET and RoboNet col- (10 Myr) during which the gas evaporates
5
University of Notre Dame, Department laborations for high-cadence photo- and is no longer available to be accreted.
of Physics, Notre Dame, Indiana, USA metric round-the-clock follow-up of
6
ESO ongoing events, alerted by the OGLE There is a wide variety of planets and at
7
McDonald Observatory, Fort Davis, and MOA surveys. In 2005 we detected first sight it appears that our system
Texas, USA a planet of 5.5 Earth masses at 2.6 AU is very special. However, our view of the
from its parent 0.22 MA M star. This whole picture is still blurred by obser-
object is the first member of a new class vational biases inherent to the detection
techniques using transits and radial ve- Known exoplanets: 11 + 180 + 4 = 195 (January 2007)
locities. Both methods are more sensitive Orbit period in years (for Solar-mass star)
to massive planets close to their parent 3d 30 d 1yr 10 yr 100 yr
star. Doppler measurements and the Doppler: 180
104
space transit missions, such as COROT,
can already, or will shortly, be able to de-
UN
µF
tect Neptune-mass planets close to their 1000
et,
parent star. Direct detections fill the other J
oN
extreme of very large separations which
ob
Planet mass in Earths
100 S
/R
are unknown in our Solar System. It is
ET
Kec
k
AN
therefore necessary to use different tech- , VL U N
10 TI
PL
niques, each probing different areas of AT
ASP, H
,
SIM
OA
the planet-mass versus orbital distance TrES, W
OGLE,
,M
parameter space. 1 V E
PF
LE
M
OG
Kepler
Already with ground-based observations, 0.1 M
the microlensing technique is sensitive M
to cool planets with masses down to that 0.01 Transits: 11 (+ 3) Microlensing: 4
of the Earth orbiting 0.1–1 MA stars, the Astrometry: 0
most common stars of our Galaxy, in or- P
bits of 1–10 AU. Currently, over 700 micro- 0.01 0.1 1 10 100
lensing events towards the Galactic Bulge Orbit radius in Astronomical Units (AU)
are alerted in real time by the OGLE and
MOA surveys each year. During these Figure 1 (above): Exoplanet discovery space (planet Figure 2 (below): The left panel shows the caustic
mass versus orbit size) showing the 8 planets from structure of a star/planet lens, with two possible tra-
events, a source star is temporarily mag-
our Solar System (labelled as letters), 180 Doppler jectories of a source star. The right panel shows
nified by the gravitational potential of wobble planets (black triangles), 11 transit planets the corresponding observed light curves. Hitting the
an intervening lens star passing near the (blue circled crosses), and 4 microlensing planets planetary caustic, or passing close to it, induces a
line of sight, with an impact parameter (red circled crosses). Also outlined are the regions short-lived but clearly detectable photometric signal.
that can be probed by different methods: Doppler,
smaller than the Einstein ring radius RE, a
transits; astrometry; and microlensing from the
quantity which depends on the mass of ground and space. Microlensing is a cost-efficient
the lens, and the geometry of the align- way to measure the mass function of cool planets
ment. For a source star in the Bulge, with down to the mass of the Earth.
a 0.3 MA lens, RE ~ 2 AU, the projected
angular Einstein ring radius is ~ 1 mas, and Impact angle = 271.0 (deg)
0.10 Mass ratio q = 0.002
the time to transit RE is typically 20–30 Separation d = 1.2
Impact angle = 50.0 (deg)
17.5
days, but can be in the range 5–100 days.
0.05
Planetary caustic
caustic structure in the source plane, with Central caustic 18.0
θ2 /θE
0.00
one small caustic around the centre of
mass of the system, the central caustic,
and one or two larger caustics further – 0.05
18.5
0.10
0.05
θ2 /θE
0.00
– 0.05
– 0.10
%
50
%
25
Bennett et al. (2006) using HST images 1000
have detected the lens star in the micro-
lensing event OGLE-2003-BLG-235/
Planet mass (M Earth )
25
Acknowledgements
References Relevant websites
Microlensing follow-up observations would not hap-
pen without the alert systems of the OGLE and MOA Alard C. 2000, A&AS 144, 363 PLANET: http://planet.iap.fr/
collaborations. We are very grateful to OGLE and Beaulieu J. P. et al. 2006, Nature 439, 437 RoboNet: http://www.astro.livjm.ac.uk/RoboNet/
MOA, and to the observatories that support our sci- Bennett D. P. et al. 2006, ApJ 647, 171 MicroFUN: http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.
ence (ESO, Canopus, CTIO, Perth, SAAO, Boyden) Bond I. A. et al. 2005, ApJ 606, 155 edu/~microfun/
via the generous allocations of time that make this Dominik M. 2006, MNRAS 367, 669 MOA website: http://www.phys.canterbury.ac.nz/
work possible. The operation of Canopus Obser- Gaudi B. S. et al. 2002, ApJ 566, 463 moa/
vatory is in part supported by a financial contribution Gould A. et al. 2006, ApJ 644, L 37 OGLE website: http://www.astrouw.edu.pl/~ogle/
from David Warren, and the Danish telescope at Griest K. and Safizadeh N. 1998, ApJ 500, 37
La Silla is operated by IDA financed by SNF. The Ida S. and Lin D. N. C. 2005, ApJ 626, 1045
RoboNet project is funded by the UK STFC. HOLMES Udalski A. et al. 2005, ApJ 628, 109
Poul Erik Nissen 1 by silicon burning in both Type Ia and connection, we note that the 869.5 nm
Martin Asplund 2 Type II SNe. The point is that Type Ia SNe S i line is very weak in metal-poor halo
Damian Fabbian 2 are not contributing with iron until the stars and hence the measured strength
Florian Kerber 3 disc phase of our Galaxy, because their of the line may be affected by irregular
Hans Ulrich Käufl 3 occurrence is delayed by about one fringing variations of the CCD detector
Max Pettini 4 billion years relative to Type II SNe, due response, which are difficult to correct by
to the lower progenitor mass of Type Ia flat-fielding. The stronger S i lines at 921.3
SNe. and 923.8 nm are less affected by such
1
Department of Physics and Astronomy, errors, but they occur in a spectral region
Aarhus University, Denmark Sulphur is an element with an even num- hampered by numerous telluric lines that
2
Research School of Astronomy and ber of protons (Z = 16) like Mg and Si are often blended with the sulphur lines.
Astrophysics, Australian National Uni- (Z = 12 and 14), and nucleosynthesis cal-
versity culations predict that S is made in the
3
ESO same way as Mg and Si in Type II SNe. CRIRES observations
4
Institute of Astronomy, University of Hence, we expect [S/Fe] to have the
Cambridge, United Kingdom same trend with [Fe/H] as [Mg/Fe] and CRIRES is a cryogenic, infrared echelle
[Si/Fe]. Sulphur abundances derived from spectrograph designed to provide a re-
the weak S i line at 869.5 nm by Israelian solving power l/∆l of up to 100 000 be-
Sulphur is the tenth most abundant ele- and Rebolo (2001) and Takada-Hidai et tween about 950 nm and 5 000 nm as
ment in the Universe and plays an im- al. (2002) showed, however, an increasing described in detail by Käufl et al. (2006).
portant role in studies of the chemical trend of [S/Fe] towards low metallicities, The commissioning of this VLT instru-
enrichment and star-formation history with [S/Fe] reportedly reaching values as ment opens up a new opportunity for in-
of distant galaxies. Due to the lack of high as + 0.8 dex (a factor of six higher dependent determinations of sulphur
suitable sulphur lines in the visible part than the S/Fe ratio in the Sun) at [Fe/H] = abundances in metal-poor stars based
of stellar spectra there is, however, still – 2.0. They suggested that such high on high-resolution observations of the
no agreement on the abundance of sul- S/Fe ratios might be due to an enhanced S i triplet at 1.046 µm. As part of the sci-
phur in Galactic metal-poor stars, and sulphur production in supernovae with ence verification of CRIRES, a spectrum
we are therefore uncertain about the a very large explosion energy, so-called around the infrared triplet was obtained
nucleosynthetic origin of sulphur. New hypernovae. Nissen et al. (2004), on the for the halo dwarf star G29-23 (V = 10.19,
observations of infrared sulphur lines other hand, used the stronger S i lines [Fe/H] = –1.7) on 6 October 2006. The
with the cryogenic high-resolution infra- at 921.3 and 923.8 nm to derive a near- entrance slit width of CRIRES was set at
red echelle spectrograph (CRIRES) constant [S/Fe] ~ + 0.3 for halo stars in 0.4 arcsec, which corresponds to a re-
at ESO’s VLT are helping to solve this the metallicity range – 3 < [Fe/H] < –1, as solving power of 50 000 with four detec-
problem. expected if normal Type II SNe are the tor pixels per spectral resolution bin ∆l.
sole source of sulphur. More recently, In order to improve the removal of sky
Caffau et al. (2005) proposed a dichot- emission and detector dark current, the
Abundance ratios of elements in celestial omy of [S/Fe] among Galactic halo stars observations were performed in nod-
objects are usually given on a logarithmic with both high and low [S/Fe] values, ding mode with a shift of 10 arcsec be-
scale with the corresponding solar ratio which would imply a very complicated tween the two settings of the star on the
as the zero point. From the ratio between evolution of the sulphur abundance in our slit. The exposure time was 2 400 s. The
the number of iron and hydrogen atoms, Galaxy. seeing was rather poor (about 1.3 arcsec)
we define the metallicity of a star as [Fe/H] but adaptive optics was applied to im-
≡ log(NFe /NH) Star – log(NFe /NH) Sun, and in A reason for the diverging [S/Fe] results prove the stellar image, and the com-
order to get information on the nucleo- may be that errors in determining sul- bined spectrum has a very satisfactory
synthesis of an element X, we are study- phur abundances are larger than claimed signal-to-noise ratio S/N ~ 330 per spec-
ing how the quantity [X/Fe] ≡ log(NX /NFe) Star by the authors of the cited papers. In this tral dispersion pixel. This is considerably
– log(NX /NFe) Sun varies as a function of
[Fe/H]. For example, one finds that mag- 1.05
0.95
Relative flux
time), which has S/N ~ 200 around the 0.90 abundances corresponding to [S/Fe] =
S i lines at 921.3 and 923.8 nm. Further- 0.85 0.0, +0.3 and +0.6, respectively.
more, unlike the UVES near-IR spectrum, 0.80
the CRIRES spectrum at 1.046 µm is not 0.75
plagued by telluric lines and fringing resi- 0.70
9 211.5 9 212.0 9 212.5 9 213.0 9 213.5 9 214.0 9 214.5
duals.
1.04
The CRIRES spectrum of G29-23 is 1.00
shown in Figure 1 in comparison with
Relative flux
0.96
synthetic profiles of the sulphur lines
0.92
for three values of [S/Fe]. Details of the
model-atmosphere calculations and 0.88
the determination of the iron abundance, 0.84
which is based on Fe ii lines, can be found 0.80
in Nissen et al. (2007). As can be seen 9 236.0 9 236.5 9 237.0 9 237.5 9 238.0 9 238.5 9 239.0
0.4
energy states) is assumed when deriving
0.2
the S abundances. If non-LTE corrections
based on the statistical equilibrium cal- 0.0
culations of Takeda et al. (2005) are tak-
en into account, the plateau decreases to – 0.2
about + 0.2 dex as shown in the lower
– 0.4
panel of Figure 3. – 3.5 – 3.0 – 2.5 – 2.0 –1.5 –1.0 – 0.5 0.0 0.5
[Fe/H]
([S/Fe] > + 0.60) as claimed by Israelian there is an overall decrease in [S/Zn] at all cool halo giants may be particularly help-
and Rebolo (2001), Takada-Hidai et al. but the highest values of [Zn/H] consid- ful in this connection. This line is formed
(2002) and Caffau et al. (2005). Our re- ered here. Furthermore, non-LTE effects close to LTE in cool stars, because near-
sults suggest that sulphur in the Galactic are most significant at low metallicities ly all sulphur atoms are in the lower ener-
halo was made in the same way as with the result that, apparently, [S/Zn] re- gy level of the line (the ground state of
Mg and Si, i.e. by a-capture processes in verts to solar values when [Zn/H] < – 2. the S i atom), and the number of atoms in
massive SNe. Such behaviour is unusual but, given our the upper level is determined by colli-
current limited understanding of the nu- sions rather than radiative transitions. The
cleosynthesis of Zn, cannot be excluded. forbidden line is very weak, but thanks
The S/Zn ratio of Damped Lyman-alpha to the efficiency and high resolution of
systems Taken at face value, the lack of a strong CRIRES, precision measurements will be
metallicity trend in the lower panel of possible at metallicities as low as [Fe/H] ~
The sulphur abundances derived by Figure 4 would indicate that the useful- – 2.5.
Nissen et al. (2007) were combined with ness of the S/Zn ratio as a ‘clock’ of
zinc abundances determined from the the star-formation history is rather limited.
472.2 and 481.1 nm Zn i lines. Both S and The question that remains concerns References
Zn are among the few elements which the accuracy of the non-LTE calculations Asplund M. 2005, ARA&A 43, 481
are not readily depleted onto dust in the by Takeda et al. (2005); they depend Caffau E. et al. 2005, A&A 441, 533
interstellar medium. For this reason, critically on the rather uncertain cross- Chen Y. Q. et al. 2002, A&A 390, 225
they are key to studies of metal enrich- section for inelastic collisions with neutral Israelian G. and Rebolo R. 2001, ApJ 557, L43
Käufl et al. 2006, The Messenger 126, 32
ment in distant galaxies, particularly hydrogen atoms, which tend to enforce Nissen P. E. et al. 2004, A&A 415, 993
those detected as damped Lyman-alpha an LTE population of the energy levels Nissen P. E. et al. 2007, A&A 469, 319
systems (DLAs) in the spectra of high- (Asplund 2005). Future observations of Takada-Hidai M. et al. 2002, ApJ 573, 614
redshift quasars. Assuming that sulphur the forbidden sulphur line at 1.082 µm in Takeda Y. et al. 2005, PASJ 57, 751
behaves like other a-capture elements
and that Zn follows Fe, the S/Zn ratio has
been used to estimate the timescale
of the star-formation process in DLAs. In
particular, it has been argued that a solar
S/Zn ratio indicates that Type Ia SNe
have contributed to the chemical enrich-
ment and that the age of a DLA system
with a solar-like S/Zn therefore must be at 0.6 Figure 4: [S/Zn] versus [Zn/H] for Gal-
actic stars and damped Lyman-alpha
least one billion years. 0.4 systems. Typical 1-s error bars are
shown. In the upper panel the stellar
0.2
Before such a conclusion can be made, S and Zn abundances have been de-
it is important to clarify the trend of [S/Zn] 0.0 rived assuming LTE, whereas the
[S/Zn]
0.6
0.4
0.2
0.0
[S/Zn]
– 0.2
– 0.4
Stars, non-LTE DLAs
– 0.6
– 0.8
– 2.8 – 2.4 – 2.0 –1.6 –1.2 – 0.8 – 0.4 0.0 0.4
[Zn/H]
Riccardo Scarpa 1 be facing a breakdown of Newton’s law, velocity dispersion profile mimics what is
Gianni Marconi 2 rather than the effects of dark matter. observed in high surface brightness
Roberto Gilmozzi 2 elliptical galaxies. That is, the dispersion
Giovanni Carraro 3 Since globular clusters are free falling to- is maximal at the centre, then decreases
ward the Milky Way, their internal dy- toward a constant value at large radii,
namics are only affected by tidal stress, where the acceleration goes below a0.
1
Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias, which is in most cases well below a0. With data for five globular clusters, one
La Laguna, Tenerife, Spain Therefore the internal dynamics of globu- can start comparing results and, interest-
2
ESO lar clusters can be used to probe the ingly, we found that in all cases the flat-
3
Università di Padova, Italy same range of accelerations typical of tening of the dispersion profile occurs for
galaxies, without the complication of dark very similar values of the internal acceler-
matter. Following this idea, we have ation of gravity. Values are collected in
We report on the results from an on- studied the dynamics of the external re- Table 1, where we present, for each clus-
going programme aimed at testing gions of w Centauri (Scarpa, Marconi ter, its absolute V magnitude, the radius
Newton’s law of gravity in the low ac- and Gilmozzi 2003). This massive cluster where the flattening occurs, and the cor-
celeration regime using globular clus- was selected because proper motions responding acceleration derived assum-
ters. We find that all clusters studied so for several thousand stars were available ing a mass-to-light ratio of one. Within er-
far behave like galaxies, that is, their in the literature. Combining proper mo- rors all profiles flatten out at a0. It is worth
velocity dispersion profiles flatten out at tions with radial velocity information al- pointing out that these five clusters are
large radii where the acceleration of lows all three components of the velocity different in size, mass, position in the halo
gravity goes below 10 –8 cm s –2, instead vector to be obtained, thus fully address- of the Milky Way and dynamical history.
of following the expected Keplerian ing the possible effects of anisotropy. The Therefore there is no obvious reason why
fall-off. In galaxies this behaviour is as- result is clearly shown by Figure 1. The they should conspire to have a similar
cribed to the existence of a dark-matter velocity dispersion profiles, as derived for velocity dispersion profile at large radii.
halo. Globular clusters, however, are the three components of motion, are very
not supposed to contain dark matter, similar, showing that the cluster is iso- Galaxies provide us with another pow-
hence this result might indicate that our tropic (as is also indicated, by the way, erful tool to further disentangle non-
present understanding of gravity in the from its very nearly circular shape). More- Newtonian effects from other more
weak regime of accelerations is incom- over, the dispersion is found to be con- classical phenomena like tidal heating, or
plete and possibly incorrect. stant at large radii. a combination of effects like the dis-
tribution of dark remnants plus tidal heat-
Following this initial result, that could be ing plus cluster evaporation and so on,
Newtonian dynamics and globular due to some other effect like tidal that might be responsible for increasing
clusters heating, we collected data for three more the velocity dispersion in the outskirts.
globular clusters: NGC 7078 (M15) High surface brightness galaxies (HSB)
Stars within galaxies, and galaxies within and NGC 6171 (Scarpa, Marconi, and and low surface brightness galaxies
clusters of galaxies, are very far apart Gilmozzi 2004A,B), and NGC 7099 (LSB) are known to behave differently.
from each other. As a consequence, the (Scarpa et al. 2006). Data for a fourth The latter have a remarkably flat velocity
typical accelerations governing the cluster, NGC 6341 (M92), appeared dispersion profile (e.g., Mateo 1997;
dynamics of galaxies are orders of mag- recently in the literature (Drukier et al. Wilkinson 2006), allegedly due to LSB
nitude smaller than the ones probed 2006) and this cluster is also presented galaxies being dark matter dominated all
in our earth-based laboratories or in the here. In all cases (see Figure 2) the the way to their centre, while HSB galax-
Solar System. Thus, any time Newton’s
law is applied to galaxies (e.g., to infer 30
the existence of dark matter), its validity is ω Cen
severely extrapolated. Although there
are in principle no reasons to distrust
Velocity dispersion (km/s)
4
elliptical galaxies. Note that the profiles of NGC 6171
8 and NGC 7099 were derived from our own data,
while the profiles of NGC 7078 and NGC 6341 were
3 derived from data in the literature (Drukier et al. 2006
6
and references therein). The solid line has the same
meaning as in Figure 1.
2
4
2 1
0 0
0 10 20 30 40 50 0 5 10 15 20
Distance from cluster centre (pc) Distance from cluster centre (pc)
6
4
Radial velocities were derived by cross-
correlating the spectra of each target with
4 a template (the target with the best spec-
trum). The two configurations shared a
2 small number of stars, to evaluate and
2 eliminate possible offsets in the velocity
zero point. A posteriori, we verified that
no correction was necessary down to a
0 0 level of accuracy of 250 m s –1, well below
0 5 10 15 20 0 5 10 15 20 the accuracy required for our study. Fi-
Distance from cluster centre (pc) Distance from cluster centre (pc)
nally, keeping in mind that we are inter-
ested only in the velocity dispersion, the
ies are baryon-dominated at the centre. to the turn off, between 15 and 18 appar- global velocity zero point was derived
In view of what we have found for dense ent V mag. Observations were then ob- by identifying a few lines in the spectrum
globular clusters that probe the same tained with FLAMES at the ESO VLT tele- of the template. Altogether 126 radial ve-
accelerations as HSB galaxies, it is natu- scope. FLAMES is a fibre multi-object locities with accuracy better than 1 km s –1
ral to wonder whether low-concentration spectrograph, allowing the simultaneous were derived. Of these, all but two were
globular clusters behave like LSB gal- observation of up to 130 objects. We se- found to be cluster members, consistent
axies. That is, do low-concentration glob- lected the HR9B set-up that includes with the very low contamination expected
ular clusters have constant velocity dis- the magnesium triplet covering the wave- at the high Galactic latitude (b = – 89 de-
persion? length range 5143 < l < 5 346 Å at res- grees) of this cluster.
olution R = 25 900. Stellar astrometry was
derived cross correlating the stellar posi- To better constrain the velocity disper-
The case of NGC 288 tions on the EIS frames with coordinates sion close to the cluster centre, we com-
from the US Naval Observatory (USNO) bined our data with data for 24 additional
In an attempt to answer this question we catalogue, which proved to have the re- stars, mostly within 6 pc from the clus-
studied NGC 288, a low-concentration quired accuracy (0.3 arcsec) for FLAMES ter centre, and radial velocity accuracy
cluster located at 8.3 kpc from the Sun observations. Two different fibre configu- better that 1 km/s (from Pryor et al. 1991).
and 11.6 kpc from the Galactic Centre, rations were necessary to observe all the After applying an offset of 2.9 km/s to
that has internal acceleration of gravity selected stars (Figure 3). For each con- match our radial velocity zero point, these
everywhere below a0, as is the case for
LSB galaxies. The initial selection of Cluster Name Mv R (pc) a (cm s –2 ) Table 1: For each globular cluster
studied, the absolute magnitude,
targets around NGC 288 was based on NGC 5139 (w Centauri) –10.29 27 ± 3 2.1 ± 0.5 × 10 –8
radius at which the velocity dispersion
colour, as derived from the analysis of NGC 6171 (M107) – 7.13 8±2 1.3 ± 0.6 × 10 –8
flattens and the corresponding ac-
ESO Imaging Survey frames. A catalogue NGC 6341 (M92) – 8.20 12 ± 2 1.5 ± 0.6 × 10 –8 celeration due to gravity for a mass-to-
of targets was prepared including mostly NGC 7078 (M15) – 9.17 20 ± 2 1.4 ± 0.4 × 10 –8 light ratio of 1, are listed.
stars from the sub-giant branch down NGC 7099 (M30) – 7.43 10 ± 2 1.1 ± 0.4 × 10 –8
2
– 50
0 5 10 15 20 1
Distance from cluster centre (pc)
data smoothly merge with ours in the re- 2–4 21 3.21 2.41 ± 0.41
gion of overlap, showing basically the 4–6 20 5.09 2.73 ± 0.46
same velocity dispersion (Figure 3). This 6–8 22 7.18 2.52 ± 0.41
combined sample was used to search 8 –10 20 9.02 2.60 ± 0.45
for ordered rotation in NGC 288 that might 10 –12 14 10.71 2.16 ± 0.46
contribute to sustain the cluster, finding 12–14 25 12.95 1.90 ± 0.31
no evidence for rotation down to the level 14–20 17 16.12 2.17 ± 0.42
of 0.5 km/s.
Velocities from this combined data set al- erty of being rather diffuse, with a central known as MOND (Milgrom 1983) to de-
lowed us to build a well-sampled velocity surface brightness of ~ 20 mag arcsec –2 scribe successfully the properties of a
dispersion profile from the centre to al- in the V band. This has the important large number of stellar systems without
most 18 pc (Figure 4). In Table 2 we re- consequence that the internal accelera- invoking the existence of non-baryonic
port the velocity dispersion in km/s with tion of gravity is extremely small. Indeed dark matter, we see here evidence for a
1s uncertainties, together with the limits it can be shown to be everywhere be- failure of Newtonian Dynamics for ac-
of the bins, the number of stars in each low a0 for any of the typical mass-to-light celerations below a0. Given the potential
bin, and the bin centre, defined as the ratios assumed for globular clusters. impact of this claim, we urge the astro-
mean of the radii of the stars in the bin. nomical community to disprove or gen-
It is well known that LSB galaxies have eralise our results.
Looking at both Figures 3 and 4, we see velocity dispersion profiles which are
no indications of a vanishing velocity dis- remarkably flat, with no central maximum
persion at large radii, rather, the disper- (Mateo 1997; Wilkinson et al. 2006). References
sion remains constant with an average If this property is due to a breakdown of Binney J. 2004, in “Dark Matter in Galaxies”,
value of 2.3 ± 0.15 km/s over the full range Newtonian dynamics below a0 (and ed. S. D. Ryder et al., IAUS 220, 3
of radii covered by the data. not because of dark matter), then the ve- Drukier G. A. et al. 2007, AJ 133, 1041
locity dispersion of NGC 288 should Mateo M. 1997, in “The nature of Elliptical Galaxies”,
ed. M. Arnaboldi, ASPC 116, 259
The five clusters w cen, NGC 7078, mimic what is observed in these galaxies. Milgrom M. 1983, ApJ 270, 365
NGC 6171, NGC 7099, and NGC 6341, Within the errors, this is certainly the case Pryor C. et al. 1991, AJ 102, 1026
while having different sizes, different (Figure 4). The similarity between NGC Scarpa R., Marconi G. and Gilmozzi R. 2003,
masses, and different dynamical histo- 288 and LSB galaxies is striking. The ca- A&AL 405, 15
Scarpa R., Marconi G. and Gilmozzi R. 2004a,
ries, have the common property of being nonical explanation for the constant IAUS 220E, 215
highly concentrated, thus the acceler- velocity dispersion in LSB galaxies is that Scarpa R., Marconi G. and Gilmozzi R. 2004b, in
ation of gravity in their central regions is these objects are dark matter domi- “Baryons in Dark Matter Halos”, eds. R. Dettmar
above a0. Only in the outskirts is the nated all the way to their centres. In the et al., SISSA, Proceedings of Science, 55.1,
http://pos.sissa.it
acceleration below this value. All these case of a globular cluster, this expla- Scarpa R. et al. 2007, A&AL 462, 9
clusters are found to behave like HSB nation is quite unpalatable. Thus, in view Wilkinson M. I. et al. 2006, The Messenger 124, 25
elliptical galaxies, i.e. to have a constant of these results for globular clusters and
velocity dispersion at large radii. By also of the amazing ability of a particular
contrast, NGC 288 has the peculiar prop- modification of the Newtonian Dynamics
Jens Zuther 1 result from galaxy interactions. For Ultra ite nature. Their soft X-ray spectra are
Sebastian Fischer 1 Luminous Infra-red Galaxies (ULIRGs), flat, but it is still not clear how this strong
Jörg-Uwe Pott 1, 2 which show the most extreme cases of and hard X-ray emission can be recon-
Thomas Bertram 1 infrared nuclear activity, there is intriguing ciled with the weak optical Seyfert char-
Andreas Eckart1 evidence for a connection between acteristics. The faintness of these objects
Christian Straubmeier 1 galaxy interaction and nuclear activity. in the X-ray, as well as in the optical
Christof Iserlohe 1 domain, has prevented them from being
Wolfgang Voges 3 Internal triggers are based on instabil- studied in detail so far.
Günther Hasinger 3 ities generated from within the host. For
example a two-step process has been
proposed that is able to sweep the inter- The SINFONI observations
1
I. Physikalisches Institut, Universität zu stellar medium (ISM), via a stellar bar,
Köln, Germany from large scales into a disk of several Near-infrared imaging spectroscopy (cf.
2
ESO hundred pc in radius. In the second step, Gillessen et al. 2006) has considerable
3
Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterres- further instabilities (bar-within-bar) drive advantages over visible wavelength spec-
trische Physik, Garching, Germany the material close to the nucleus, until troscopy. Besides the much smaller dust
viscous processes take over the angular extinction, there are a number of NIR
momentum transport. diagnostic lines that probe the stellar and
The new VLT instrument SINFONI non-stellar content in Mrk 609. Among
gives us a view onto the circumnuclear While in quiescent galaxies, extensive these are hydrogen recombination lines,
properties of AGN in unprecedented star formation appears to be related ro-vibrational transitions of H2, stellar fea-
detail, even beyond our local Universe. to large-scale bars, the observational evi- tures like the CO(2–0) and CO(6–3) ab-
As a science verification target, the dence for non-axisymmetry-related sorption band heads, as well as forbid-
showcase object Mrk 609 demonstrates nuclear activity is not as clear for Seyfert den lines like [Fe ii] and [Si vi].
impressively the necessity of adaptive galaxies. A slight but significant increase
optics assisted integral-field spectros- in the galactic-bar fraction of active gal- The data (Zuther et al. 2007) have been
copy in order to distinguish between axies has been found when compared to acquired during the science verification
Seyfert and starburst characteristics on non-active galaxies. This does not appear phase of SINFONI in August/October
nuclear scales. to be the case for nuclear bars. Further- 2004. For the first time we have spatially
more, there are a considerable number of resolved the circumnuclear environment
AGN that show no signs of the presence on the scale of 270 pc in the J and H + K
Fuelling of nuclear activity of a bar, as well as of non-active galaxies bands (Figure 1). The morphology is com-
that do possess bars. plex, and the continuum image reveals
The presence of the Seyfert phenomenon a stellar bar-like structure superposed on
is supposed to originate in the accre- the point-like Seyfert nucleus (Figure 1a).
tion of matter onto a super-massive black Mrk 609: a starburst/Seyfert composite The distribution of hydrogen recombina-
hole (SMBH) in the centre of a galaxy. galaxy tion emission (Paa) is clumpy and peaks
Nuclear activity is composed of nuclear at the tip where the potential bar meets
starbursts and Seyfert-like emission. Mrk 609 is classified as a starburst/ the spiral arms and in regions along the
The fuel necessary for driving this activity Seyfert composite galaxy. This class of minor axis (Figure 1b). The presence of
has to be transported from galactic AGN appears to be best suited to study nuclear broad Paa and [Si vi] are clear in-
scales (~ 10 kpc) down to nuclear scales the starburst-AGN connection, since dicators of the accretion of matter onto
of ~ 10 pc. We are still far from under- the AGN and starburst components pre- a nuclear supermassive black hole. The
standing the detailed processes that cre- sent themselves at the same level of distribution of molecular hydrogen follows
ate non-axisymmetric potentials leading activity (Moran et al. 1996). Composite the continuum shape, while that of [Fe ii]
to the dissipation of angular momen- galaxies can be characterised by optical is aligned with the minor axis of the
tum. Such instabilities are needed for the spectra which are dominated by star- continuum and with the H-recombination
gas and stars to fall towards the nuclear burst features, while the X-ray luminosity emission (Figure 1c and 1d).
region. However, considerable theoretical and its variability are typical for Seyfert
as well as observational effort has been galaxies. The former property is based on The well established BPT emission line
made to understand these processes the emission-line diagnostic diagrams diagnostics at visual wavelengths fail
(e.g. Shlosman et al. 1990; Knapen 2005). by Baldwin, Phillips and Terlevich (BPT for regions with considerable extinction.
We can distinguish external and internal 1981). Close inspection of the optical Recently it was found that an analogous
triggers of the fuelling process: spectra often reveals some weak Seyfert- NIR line diagnostic diagram, using [Fe ii]/
like features, e.g. [O iii] being significant- Pab and H2/Brγ line ratios, allows us to
External triggers are related to the envi- ly broader than all other narrow lines, or a distinguish between starbursts (photoion-
ronment of galaxies and gravitational weak broad Ha component. There is a isation excitation), AGN (mixed excitation),
interaction. Non-axisymmetry, which can resemblance to narrow-line X-ray galax- and LINERs (shock excitation). In this dia-
lead to loss of angular momentum, can ies, which also show spectra of compos- gram, the nucleus of Mrk 609 shows
1�
Gas Stars E
Sandra Savaglio 1 shift was measured in 1997, when GRBs The GRB host galaxy population
Tamás Budavári 2 were finally confirmed to be cosmologi-
Karl Glazebrook 3 cal sources. Today there are 108 GRBs There is no doubt that studies of GRB
Damien Le Borgne 4 with measured redshift, the highest being host galaxies are entering into a realm of
Emeric Le Floc’h 5 GRB 050904, at z = 6.3. The typical galaxy formation that was hardly known
Hsiao-Wen Chen 6 energy emitted by a GRB, in a couple of before. The reason is that GRB hosts
Jochen Greiner 1 minutes, is 10 51 ergs, equivalent to the are generally faint and detected at high
Aybuk Küpcü Yoldaş1 energy emitted by the sun in 10 billion redshifts. Similar galaxies are very hard
years. to find using conventional techniques,
because they would require very long
1
ax-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial
M Today GRBs are primarily discovered by integration times, even for the largest and
Physics, Garching, Germany the satellite Swift (http://swift.gsfc.nasa. most efficient telescopes.
2
Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, gov), the dedicated NASA mission which
USA in two years of operation helped to double GRB events offer a shortcut to the quest
3
Swinburne University, Melbourne, the number of measured redshifts. With for faint and distant galaxies. They are
Australia the growing data collected from space detected as short and energetic events.
4
CEA-Saclay, Gif-sur-Yvette Cedex, and ground telescopes, and the advent The localisation (and for a fraction of
France of Swift, our group decided to create a them the redshift) is measured from the
5
Institute for Astronomy, Honolulu, database, available to scientists, which bright X-ray and optical afterglow. We
Hawaii collects observational results on the gal- know that long-duration GRBs occur in
6
University of Chicago, USA axies hosting GRB events. We called it regions of star formation, therefore, they
GHostS, or GRB Host Studies. Our focus are associated with galaxies. Dedicat-
is to explore and unveil the nature of gal- ed programmes can observationally com-
GHostS is the largest public data-base axies in which GRBs occur. Our goal is to plete the investigation.
on gamma-ray burst (GRB) host galax- answer fundamental questions, such as:
ies and is accessible at the URL http:// are these galaxies different from the gen- In our GHostS search, we want to explore
www.grbhosts.org. Started in 2005, it eral galaxy population; are they special in many of the most interesting galaxy pa-
currently contains photometric and any way; can we use them to understand rameters, such as metallicity, star-forma-
spectroscopic information on 39 GRB galaxy formation under extreme condi- tion rate, stellar mass, age of the stellar
hosts, almost 2/5 of the total number tions? population and dust extinction. Each of
of GRBs with measured redshift. It will these parameters are very difficult to de-
continue to grow, together with the un- Today the GHostS database includes rive. One difficulty is the faintness of the
stoppable data flow from the obser- results for 39 GRB host galaxies. This is typical GRB host. Moreover, the data ob-
vatories all over the world, every time a large number, considering that only tained by the community are often not
a new event is discovered. Among 108 GRBs have known redshift (see Fig- homogeneous. To complicate the picture,
other features, GHostS uses the Virtual ure 1). the tools often used to derive the physical
Observatory resources. quantities are affected by systematic un-
certainties which are sometimes greater
than the relations being derived.
The Gamma-Ray Burst phenomenon
The typical GRB host is a star-forming, 9 Figure 2: Histogram of the stellar mass
of GRB host galaxies in the redshift
low-mass and low-metallicity galaxy, de-
8 interval 0 < z < 6.3, from the GHostS
tected at redshift below z = 2. The mean sample. The mean stellar mass is
stellar mass we derived in our sample 7 of the order of the stellar mass of the
is similar to the stellar mass of the Large Large Magellanic Cloud. This is ten
times smaller than the stellar-mass
Magellanic Cloud (Figure 2). Observation- 6 limit reached by the deepest high-
al limitations prevent us from fully explor- redshift galaxy surveys, performed by
Number
2 10 –17
Hβ
1 10 –17
at a rate that is ten times higher, about
6 MA yr –1. This gives a specific star for-
0
mation (the SFR per unit stellar mass) of 5 000 5 500 6 000 6 500 7000 7500
100 times that in the Milky Way. Similar Wavelength (Å)
The Puzzle of the Lya Galaxies: New Results from the VLT
Christian Tapken 1 able. Because of the large distance, the about 0.5, that neither galaxy formation
Immo Appenzeller 2 light emitted by the young galaxies as far- nor star formation was well understood,
Armin Gabasch 3, 4, 5 UV radiation is redshifted to the red and that the most advanced astronomical
Jochen Heidt 2 near-infrared spectral range. Hence, the detectors were image tubes followed by
Ulrich Hopp 3, 4 detection of such objects requires obser- photographic plates, and that there ex-
Ralf Bender 3, 4 vations at these wavelengths. isted only two astronomical telescopes
Stefan Noll 3, 4 with apertures exceeding 2.5 m. Since in
Stella Seitz 3, 4 As the most promising way to find these 1966 getting time at the largest existing
Sabine Richling 6 objects, Partridge and Peebles proposed telescopes was probably as difficult as
to search for their Lyman-a (Lya) line today, Partridge and Peebles assumed
emission. This spectral line, due to transi- for their feasibility estimates a more mod-
1
Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, tions from the first excited energy level est (and more typical) 90-cm telescope,
Heidelberg, Germany to the ground state of hydrogen atoms, is equipped with an image tube with an
2
Landessternwarte Heidelberg-König- important in many astrophysical proc- S1 cathode. With these assumptions
stuhl, Heidelberg, Germany esses. In normal galaxies Lya emission is Partridge and Peebles predicted that the
3
Universitäts-Sternwarte München, produced during the recombination of Lya emission of very young galaxies
Germany interstellar hydrogen gas, which has been at z ≈ 7 should be detectable with an
4
Max-Planck-Institut für Extraterres- ionised by hot stars. Simple estimates exposure time as short as five minutes(!).
trische Physik, Garching, Germany show that up to about 2/3 of the Lyman
5
ESO continuum photons (and up to about 6 %
6
Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, France of the total luminosity) of hot stars can The search for the Lya emitting galaxies
be converted into Lya photons. This also
means that, in principle, Lya emission Prompted by the 1967 paper, many dif-
Observations of high-redshift galaxies equivalent widths of the order 100 to ferent groups started searching for red-
show that at early cosmic epochs the 200 Å can be expected in the spectra of shifted Lya (and UV continuum) emission
cosmic UV radiation field appears to be such galaxies. of high-redshift galaxies. However, al-
dominated by small galaxies with strong though a large amount of observing time
Ly-alpha emission. Although usually Of course 6 % is still only a minor fraction was invested, and although the surveys
small and of relatively low luminosity, of the total emitted luminosity. However, soon reached much fainter magnitudes
these galaxies are easily identified from as noted by Partridge and Peebles, in the than those predicted by Partridge and
their line emission. Observations with small wavelength range covered by the Peebles, for many years no redshifted
the VLT resulted in significant progress Lya line, the expected spectral flux densi- Lya emitting galaxy was found. Some
in the understanding of the nature of ty is much higher than in the adjacent Lya emission was detected from distant
these distant galaxies and of their role continuum. Therefore, detecting the line radio galaxies and from some galaxies
in the early Universe. emission against the strong sky back- associated with distant QSOs. However,
ground in the red spectral range ap- it was not clear whether starbursts or
peared much easier than looking for the non-thermal ionising sources were re-
The pioneers: R. B. Partridge and continuum emission. sponsible for the Lya emission from these
P. J. E. Peebles objects.
In 1967 sensitive astronomical detectors
The history of the Lya galaxies began in were limited to wavelengths ≤ 1 µm. Thus, Starting about 1995, many galaxies with
1967 with a pioneering paper by R. B. observations of the redshifted Lya line redshifts of z ≈ 3 were discovered using
Partridge and P. J. E. Peebles. In this arti- appeared feasible only up to redshifts the Lyman-break technique. Practically all
cle, published in the Astrophysical Jour- where the observed wavelength of Lya the distant galaxies found with this tech-
nal, the two Princeton University astro- does not exceed 1mm, which means red- nique showed clear spectroscopic sig-
physicists discussed the formation of the shifts z = ∆λ/λ ≤ 7. In view of this limita- natures of strong starbursts. However, in
first galaxies in the Universe. They con- tion, Partridge and Peebles calculated most cases the Lya line occurred ei-
cluded that the first galaxies probably the emitted luminosity and the expected ther in absorption or as a relatively weak
began their lives with strong initial bursts observed Lya flux emitted at an epoch emission feature. Similar results were
of star formation at cosmic epochs cor- corresponding to z ≈ 7. found for samples of high-redshift gal-
responding to redshifts between 10 and axies selected on the basis of photomet-
30. Because of the presence of many To appreciate the courage and foresight ric redshifts (see Figure 1).
massive, hot, and luminous stars in these of taking up this topic in 1966, when the
starbursts, Partridge and Peebles pre- paper was submitted, we have to recall More detailed models of starburst gal-
dicted very high ultra-violet (UV) luminosi- that the Cosmic Microwave Background, axies soon provided a plausible explana-
ties of the newly formed galaxies, and confirming the present cosmological tion for the weakness of the Lya emis-
they estimated that the light emitted by concepts, had been discovered just one sion of the young z ≈ 3 galaxies. Partridge
such objects during the first few hundred year before, that the most distant galaxy and Peebles were certainly correct,
million years should actually be observ- known at that time had a redshift of noting that in young starbursts copious
10 Figure 3: FORS spectrum of the Lya compact, strong starbursts. The combi-
galaxy FDF-4691 (from Tapken et al.
FDF-4691 nation of the relatively broad intrinsic Lya
2004).
8 profiles and the expansion of a neutral
hydrogen shell readily explains the fact
Ly–lim
Lyα
Si IV
Lyβ
C IV
Lyγ
NV
Flux (10 –21 Wm –2 Å –1)
C II
2
From our results, we conclude that, al-
though a relatively small amount of
neutral matter along the line of sight cer-
0
4 000 5 000 6 000 7000 tainly plays a role, the high intrinsic
Wavelength (Å) velocity dispersion of the emitting ionised
gas and large-scale outflows of the
atom is moving relative to the volume We have used the VPH grisms available neutral hydrogen are the main reasons for
emitting the Lya line with a velocity larger on the FORS instruments to obtain the escape of a large fraction of the Lya
than the line widths, the atom cannot medium-resolution spectra of a sample of photons from the observed galaxies. The
absorb or scatter the Lya photons. In this Lya emitting high-redshift galaxies in small continuum flux (relative to other
case the Lya photons can penetrate the the FORS Deep Field (Appenzeller et al. high-redshift galaxies) indicates a low
neutral hydrogen layer and escape. Such 2004). The observed Lya profiles were total mass of the hot stars of Lya galax-
velocity differences are not unexpected compared to model profiles, which were ies. If the mass of the hot stars is a mea-
since the velocity of sound is much computed using the radiative transfer sure of the total mass of these objects,
higher in the hot Lya emitting gas than in code of Meinköhn and Richling (2002), Lya galaxies are probably of lower (and
the cool neutral hydrogen layers. Thus, which is particularly well suited for mod- more normal) mass than other known
assuming turbulent media with subsonic elling resonance scattering in moving high-redshift galaxies. Therefore, they
turbulence, the Lya lines emitted by media. Examples of the observed profiles probably have lower gravitational poten-
the hot ionised gas are expected to have and model fits are presented in Figure 4. tials, which may explain the observed
profiles which are significantly broader For these computations (described in strong outflows.
than the velocity dispersion of the scat- detail in Tapken et al. 2007) we assumed
tering layers. However, because of the a central volume of turbulent, ionised
very high absorption cross-section of hydrogen, emitting the Lya radiation. This The space density of Lya galaxies and
neutral hydrogen, even the outer wings of region was assumed to be surrounded by their role in cosmic evolution
the absorption profiles can prevent the a shell of dusty neutral hydrogen.
escape of the Lya photons. On the other As noted above, most known Lya galax-
hand, it can be shown that the probability The calculations showed that the ob- ies are small and have intrinsically faint
for an escape of the Lya photons can served profiles could be reproduced rea- UV continua. However, already Hu et al.
increase strongly if large-scale velocity sonably well with this model, if a modest (1998) found for the redshift range 3.4 <
fields are present in the scattering layers. (10–200 km s –1) expansion velocity of z < 4.5 a total star-formation density due
Mechanisms producing such large-scale the neutral hydrogen shell was assumed. to the Lya galaxies which is comparable
velocity fields can be mass infall, or mass From the observed line wings (which are to that due to all other known high-red-
outflows from the galaxies powered by not much affected by the neutral hydro- shift galaxies. Since Lya galaxies tend to
stellar winds or radiation pressure from gen shell) high velocities (> 600 km s –1) of be less affected by reddening than other
the central stars. Since such velocity the ionised gas could be derived. These high-redshift galaxies, they are expected
fields also affect the profiles of the Lya high velocities can be explained by super- to dominate the UV radiation field at these
lines, line profile observations provide a sonic turbulence caused by supernova redshifts. Moreover, studies of high-red-
critical test of this hypothesis. shocks and strong stellar winds in the shift galaxy samples based on photomet-
FDF-4691 20
15 FDF-5215 FDF-7539
4
15
3
10
Flux
Flux
Flux
10
2
5
5 1
0
0 0
– 2 000 –1000 0 1000 2 000 –1000 0 1000 –1000 0 1000 2 000
Velocity (km s –1) Velocity (km s –1) Velocity (km s –1)
ric redshifts (and, therefore, relatively free was an extension of the luminosity func- dows’ covers about 20 nm wavelength
of selection effects) show that the fraction tion to lower luminosities, which was pos- interval near l = 815 nm (corresponding
of Lya emitting galaxies is increasing with sible as a result of the superior sensitivity to a Lya redshift of z ≈ 5.7). This win-
redshift (Noll et al. 2004). According to of the FORS2 instrument and a spe- dow is particularly important since, at this
Shimasaku et al. (2006) at z = 6 about cially developed set of narrowband filters wavelength, photometric and spectro-
80 % of all high-redshift galaxies are Lya (Tapken et al. 2006). scopic follow-up observations are still rel-
galaxies with intrinsic Lya emission equiv- atively easy. Therefore, this window was
alent widths > 100 Å. Hence, at very Like all current searches for Lya galaxies, also used for our VLT observations. To
high redshifts these objects are expected the survey carried out with the VLT used reach an optimal sensitivity, the wave-
to strongly dominate the cosmic UV radi- sky images obtained through a combina- length interval of the 815-nm OH window
ation field and the cosmic ionisation. tion of broadband and narrowband fil- was covered by a set of three filters (Fig-
ters. Normal galaxies, where the light is ure 6). In this way it is possible not only to
For a more quantitative assessment of dominated by the stellar continua, tend avoid the strong OH lines outside the
the role of the Lya galaxies in the early to be visible with a similar brightness in window, but also to partially suppress the
Universe obviously a reliable knowledge many different filter bands. Emission-line weaker lines still present inside the
of their space density as a function of objects are characterised by an excess 815-nm OH gap. Because of the resulting
luminosity and redshift is needed. There- emission in one or, if the emission line co- lower background, the VLT observations
fore, during the past years, various differ- incides with the overlap region of two allowed us to reach significantly lower
ent groups have invested much work to filters, in at most two adjacent filter bands Lya luminosities than had been possible
derive this so-called ‘luminosity function’ (see Figure 5). Filter photometry allows a before.
of the Lya galaxies at different redshifts. reliable detection of galaxies which have
There were basically two types of such emission lines in their spectra. More dif- Figure 7 shows the results together with
programmes: firstly, large-area surveys ficult and more complex is the unambigu- luminosity function data from another
were used to improve the number statis- ous identification of the observed emis- recent survey. The new data confirm the
tics of these objects; secondly, very deep sion lines as Lya. For this purpose one high space density of faint Lya galaxies
observations in smaller fields were used needs reliable photometric redshifts and at high redshift. In particular up to z ≈ 6
to reach fainter Lya galaxies and to derive low-resolution spectra of the candidate the space density seems not to decrease
the faint part of the luminosity function for galaxies, which rule out other identifica- with redshift. On the other hand, the ob-
these objects. This faint part is important, tions of the observed lines. served luminosity range and the number
since, within the observational limits, faint of observed objects are still too small, to
galaxies are always more numerous than In order to reach an optimal signal-to- constrain the luminosity function well.
the bright ones. noise ratio, the passbands of the narrow- Although much progress has been made,
band filters used for searches of Lya obviously more work is needed to derive
Particularly successful among the large- galaxies are designed to coincide with the radiation field produced by the Lya
area surveys were studies carried out wavelength regions of particularly low galaxies with an adequate accuracy.
with the wide-field SUPRIME camera of night sky background. Since most of the
the Japanese national telescope Subaru night sky background in the red and
(see, e.g., Shimasaku et al. 2006). These near-infrared is due to airglow produced Future work and outlook
surveys resulted in important informa- by OH molecules in the high atmosphere,
tion on the space density of luminous Lya the spectral regions of low sky back- Several ambitious large-area searches for
galaxies and on the cosmic variance of ground are the gaps or ‘windows’ in the Lya galaxies are underway which will
this quantity. Our contribution to the topic OH line spectrum. One of these ‘OH win- further improve the statistics of these ob-
2
for such programmes can be obtained.
1
Acknowledgements
Atacama landscape
view near the
ALMA Site Museum at
3 200 m.
Astronomical News
Figure 12: Four representative plants at the vege- ground), than on bright colours, in order tion limit. As a result, the areas occupied
tation limit in humid places at Cerro Toco Toco.
to attract hymenopter pollinators whose by high Andian plants are now disjunct.
Top left: Calandrinia sp.; top right: Menonvillea sp.
(4 820 m); lower left: Perezia atacamensis (4 700 m); eyes, or ocelli, are sensitive down to An example of severe area restriction is
lower right: Werneria pinnatifida (4 700 m). UV-B radiation. that of Calceolaria stellariifolia (Figure 13),
found in only half a dozen sites, spread
The present geographical distribution of over 1500 km in the high Andes. When
high Andes plants reflects the restric- isolated, plants may follow divergent ge-
A notable character of the high-altitude tion of areas consequent on the climate netic evolution, they have no chance to
flowers is the restriction of their colour warming after the Ice Age. Intermediate merge their genes again before the next
range. They look unattractive to the altitude plant communities had to move glaciation.
human eye: blue, orange, red colours are up by about 1 km, migrating towards
no longer present. Most flowers are the altiplano on gentle slopes east of the Plants reaching the maximum altitude
white, yellowish or at best bright yellow Atacama Desert core, or towards the around ALMA belong to the Senecio
(Figure 12). With a very low ground top of isolated mountain ranges. Those genus. Senecio Puchii is frequently seen
coverage, plants appear to rely more on already growing on the altiplano during up to 4 750 m. Senecio aff. algens (Fig-
petal UV-reflectivity, (increasing the con- the Ice Age are found presently on iso- ure 14), replaces it at higher altitude, in
trast between the flowers and the lated peaks, close to the upper vegeta- sunny places between 4 850 and 5150 m.
Uta Grothkopf, Claudio Melo, time. In this paper, we apply h and h(t) to gramme type, observing cycle, observ-
Christopher Erdmann, Andreas Kaufer, selected observatories as well as to the ing mode, etc. In addition, almost all
Bruno Leibundgut (all ESO) VLT instruments. respondents investigate their high-impact
papers (“most productive instrument,
There are several caveats to bibliometric programme, individual authors”, etc.) A
The productivity and scientific impact of studies, in particular when used for study of highly cited papers and their
observatories and individual instru- comparison across various institutes. De- distribution among facilities is carried out
ments are one measure of their suc- spite attempts to synchronise the meth- every year in April at the Space Tele-
cess. This article presents the results of ods applied to compile science biblio- scope Science Institute (Madrid and
a study where we have applied the graphies, criteria for paper selection are Macchetto 2007).
h-index, previously proposed for indi- still defined by the individual observato-
vidual researchers, to major ground- ries and are therefore not identical. Simi- All methodologies used by observatories
based observatories (VLT, Keck, Gemini, larly, methodologies for building tele- have some advantages and some dis-
Subaru) as well as individual VLT instru- scope bibliographies vary (for instance, advantages: counting publications meas-
ments. The concept is expanded by retrieval of relevant publications through ures the productivity of facilities, but does
exploring the time-dependence of the database (ADS) searches alone, through not indicate whether or not these publi-
h-index h(t). Overall, the VLT appears screening of paper journals, etc.). Even cations actually have any influence on the
to be among the most successful 8-m- more importantly, comparing telescope advancement of astronomy. Looking at
class telescopes. We also show that statistics is problematic because of the the numbers of citations does indicate
ESO instruments are making important different features and ways of operation the impact among the astronomical com-
contributions to progress in astronomy. of ground-based and space-based tele- munity, but values can easily be inflat-
scopes, different apertures and numbers ed by a few extremely highly cited pa-
of instruments, different wavelengths pers. Investigating so-called high-impact
Introduction of observations, etc. Any comparison has papers and their distribution across ob-
therefore to be interpreted with utmost servatories is less biased, but retrieving
In order to examine their return on invest- care in order to avoid unbalanced or such statistics is by far not as straight-
ment, major observatories around the wrong conclusions. forward as mere publication and citation
world have developed metrics to trace counting.
their scientific output. Such metrics often
focus on the observatories’ productivity Use of bibliometrics by observatories Several in-depth studies have been car-
and impact in the scientific community. ried out by Trimble et al. who investi-
These two factors are typically measured In preparation for a presentation given at gated productivity and impact of optical,
through the number of scientific publica- the IAU General Assembly in Prague, space-based, and radio telescopes,
tions based on astronomical data and the Czech Republic in August 2006, we con- respectively (Trimble, Zaich and Bosler,
citations these publications generate, re- ducted a survey among large observa- 2005, 2006; Trimble and Zaich 2006).
spectively. The methodologies used to tories to better understand what kind of The authors analyse papers, citations
compile the ESO Telescope Bibliography, telescope statistics are compiled at ob- and impact factors of articles from
a database that lists all papers based on servatories, at which intervals, and by 18 journals regarding their distribution
ESO data, as well as publication and whom.1 All respondents regularly gather among facilities, thus avoiding the bias
citation statistics derived from this data- total and/or average numbers of their that typically can be noted in studies
base have been documented in Leib- refereed publications, the majority also from individual observatories.
undgut, Grothkopf and Treumann (2003) monitor unrefereed publications (e.g.
and Grothkopf et al. (2005). The Tele- conference proceedings), either regularly
scope Bibliography is publicly available or on request. Citation statistics of refer- The h-index
via the web (http://www.eso.org/libraries/ eed publications are collected by all re-
telbib.html) as well as through the “Select spondents, even though only half of them In order to overcome some of these dis-
References In: ESO/Telescopes” filter does so on a regular basis, the remaining advantages, J. E. Hirsch of the University
at the ADS (see Delmotte et al. 2005 for 50 % only on request. of California at San Diego suggested
more details). a new and surprisingly simple measure
As can be expected, observatories com- which he called the h-index (Hirsch
In a recent paper, Hirsch (2005) proposed pile statistics tailored to their individual 2005). While the h-index originally was
a new index to measure research output, needs, for instance number of publica- meant to be a measure for the research
the so-called h-index. While originally tions and citations per instrument, pro- output of individual scientists, we ex-
meant to analyse the productivity of indi- tend it here to observatory publication
vidual researchers, we recently intro- 1
he following observatories responded to our
T statistics. In order to determine this value,
duced it into telescope statistics (Groth- questionnaire (http://www.eso.org/libraries/ one needs a list of all relevant papers,
telstats-questionnaire.html ): CFHT, Chandra,
kopf and Stevens-Rayburn 2007). Based Gemini, HST, Isaac Newton Group, Keck, NRAO,
ranked by decreasing citation counts; h
on h, we developed h(t) which reflects Subaru, XMM Newton. For more information, can then be found where the citation
changes of the h-index in the course of contact Uta Grothkopf at esolib@eso.org. count is at least as high as the rank. Thus,
The m-parameter
Observatory Range of years Years since h m Table 1: Range of years of publica-
of publications first publication tions, number of years since first
It must be noted that, tempting as it may
VLT 1999–2006 8 79 9.9 publication, as well as h and m of the
be, comparing h alone among observ- observatories included in our study.
Keck 1996–2005 11 113 10.3
atories (or researchers) does not lead to a
Gemini 2000–2006 7 33 4.7
meaningful result. Facilities that have
Subaru 2000–2006 7 41 5.9
been operative for many years obviously
had much more time to produce publi-
cations and accumulate citations, hence
their h-index can be expected to be con- h-index Figure 2: h-index for the VLT, Keck,
Gemini, and Subaru observatories as
siderably higher than that of younger 120
of April 2007. Note that h correlates
facilities. Hirsch therefore introduced the with the number of years of operation.
so-called m-parameter. For individual re- Hence, older observatories tend to
100
searchers, this value is computed by have higher h indices.
dividing h by the numbers of years since
publication of the first paper. Correspond- 80
ingly, when applied to observatories, h
is divided by the number of years of oper-
ation; hence it reflects the various ‘life- 60
times’ of facilities.
40
Figure 4 shows h over time applied to the Figure 4: h(t) of Keck, VLT, Subaru and Gemini by Keck Subaru
years after first publication (as of April 2007). VLT Gemini
observatories in our study. Trends in-
dicated by h and m are confirmed. Keck
has always been performing extremely
well, with a steeply increasing h-index
right from the start. The VLT started well
and has even improved during recent Gemini North and South as well as VLT Performance of the VLT instruments
years. Both Subaru and Gemini are now UT1, 2, 3, and 4 all came online sequen-
on their way up after a slightly slower tially, increasing the available obser- In order to investigate the specific perfor-
start. ving time over the years. A future study mance of the VLT instruments, we ap-
may investigate h(t) based on the actual plied h, m, and h(t) to them. We restrict
In this study, all observatories are treated observing time of each observatory. this analysis to the VLT because instru-
as entities. This does not accurately re- ment-level information for La Silla papers
flect their early years. Keck I and II, has been systematically recorded only
keeps growing, but at a much slower The bottom line is that we should take the Hirsch (2005) points out that the h-index
pace. Thus the h(t) would have a curve- results presented in Figure 5 with cau- is prone to depend on the field of study
of-growth shape (similar to those found in tion since none of the potential biases (Physics, Biology, etc.). This is true even
chemical abundances studies). discussed above were taken into account within astronomy. For instance, astrono-
and therefore the results presented here mers in the gamma-ray burst community
In the case of instruments designed for are very preliminary. Having said that, have higher h-indices than their col-
individual observations, papers can it might be interesting to peruse the ef- leagues in other areas, partly because of
be based on a few observations and the fort of using the h-index to measure in- the importance of the field, but also be-
full cycle (from proposal submission to strument impact and performance in a cause of the size of the collaborations
paper acceptance) can be as short as deeper and more thoughtful study where and the rate of publications.
one year. In contrast, papers presenting all biases are considered.
results based on a large amount of If this effect is present with regard to in-
data collected by survey-like instruments struments, it may indicate that a given
(e.g., VIMOS and FLAMES) can take Conclusions instrument is flexible enough to produce
years to be released. But when these pa- papers in a wide range of astronomical
pers are finally published, the impact can The h-index is a simple, yet powerful in- fields. The numbers in Table 2 show that
be immense. dicator that has some important ad- the first-generation VLT instruments have
vantages compared to other bibliometric similar h-indices. They constitute an
Another bias hidden behind the compu- methods: example of such versatility, since they are
tation of h(t) has to do with the com- – it combines productivity and impact; used for observations ranging from the
plexity of the new instruments, which in – it can be relatively easily determined Solar System to cosmological applica-
some cases are aimed at tackling prob- using the ADS; tions. However, other biases influencing
lems that require the use of cutting- – it is neither affected by a large number h(t) need to be carefully corrected before
edge technology. Using a complex (new) of publications with few or no citations a detailed comparison is made. In this
technology usually implies large over- (which usually suggests high productiv- sense, our results concerning the h-index
heads. This is the case of AO instruments ity, but not necessarily high impact) nor for instruments are regarded as prelimi-
and even more pronounced in the VLTI by extraordinarily high citations of only nary.
observations whose complexity is of a a few papers (which inflates citation
higher degree than that of any other VLT counts).
instrument. Acknowledgements
The h-index is therefore more balanced This research has made extensive use of NASA’s
However, the h(t) can also be influenced than other measures if one bears in Astrophysics Data System Bibliographic Services.
by circumstances not related to the in- mind the usual caveats intrinsic to biblio-
strument at all. For instance, there is no metric comparisons. It is important to
References
question that one of the strengths of note that h depends on the number of
the first suite of VLT instruments (FORS1, years of operation and therefore needs to Delmotte N. et al. 2005, The Messenger 119, 50
UVES, ISAAC and FORS2) is its versatil- be combined with the m-parameter Grothkopf U. et al. 2005, The Messenger 119, 45
ity, being used from Solar System to cos- in order to avoid biased interpretations. Grothkopf U. and Stevens-Rayburn S. 2007, in
“Library and Information Services in Astrono-
mological applications. In addition to my V”, eds. S. Ricketts, C. Birdie and E. Isaksson,
this versatility, these instruments were fa- ASP Conference Series, astro-ph/0610274
voured by the fact that they were the Hirsch J. E. 2005, Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. 102, 16569
only ones available to the community dur- Leibundgut B., Grothkopf U. and Treumann A.
2003, The Messenger 114, 46
ing the first years of operation of the VLT. Madrid J. P. and Macchetto F. D. 2007, in “Library
Moreover, they were mounted almost ex- and Information Services in Astronomy V”, eds.
clusively on each of the UTs. Nowadays, S. Ricketts, C. Birdie and E. Isaksson, ASP Con-
the situation is very different. New instru- ference Series
Trimble V., Zaich P. and Bosler T. 2005, PASP 117,
ments have to compete for UT time. 111
For instance, on Kueyen UT2, the time is Trimble V., Zaich P. and Bosler T. 2006, PASP 118,
shared between UVES, FORS1 and 651
FLAMES. Therefore, in order to be fair, the Trimble V. and Zaich P. 2006, PASP 118, 933
h(t) curve shown in Figure 5 has to be
corrected by the effective fraction of time
used by each instrument.
Francesca Primas (ESO) b) ESO Faculty members, Fellows and a) ESO staff members
Students;
c) ESO Governing Bodies and Commit- Established members of ESO personnel
Equal career opportunities require tees: Council, Observing Programmes are identified as International Staff Mem-
working conditions that make it possi- Committee, Scientific and Technical bers (ISM), whereas Paid Associates (PA)
ble to reconcile family needs and career Committee, Users Committee, Finance belong to the so-called non-established
development. This article describes Committee; personnel. Typically about 7 to 10 PA are
the goals and main findings of a pilot d) ESO Visitors; employed at ESO per year and these are
investigation that has recently been e) invited speakers at ESO Lunch Talks included in the overall statistics of ESO
carried out at ESO focusing on gender and the Munich Joint Astronomy Col- staff.
balance issues. loquia.
Figure 1 displays the fraction of female
ESO staff over the past eight years. Dur-
Over the past decades, several studies in The project and its outcomes ing the same time the ESO staff in-
Europe (e.g. within the FP5-FP6 pro- creased from 239 ISM in 1999 to 329 ISM
grammes) and the United States have Once all the data were gathered, we in 2006. This is also reflected in the
considered gender distribution, and in compiled and analysed statistics on the recruitment statistics: ESO recruited
particular the status of women, in dif- distribution of female and male employ- 33 women (17.7 %) compared to 153 men
ferent sciences. Gender equality and dual ees by various categories. The numbers (82.3 %) between 2000 and 2005. Al-
careers are just two of the many aspects reported here cover all international staff though the number of women employed
that have been closely scrutinised. In of ESO, i.e. at both the ESO Headquar- as ISM has increased from 44 to 59
astronomy, the Baltimore Charter and the ters in Garching and ESO Chile, with the over this period, it has clearly lagged
Pasadena Recommendations are among latter including the Vitacura offices and behind the pace of male hiring. Among
the main outcomes of these investiga- the La Silla Paranal observatory. Where the women hired, nearly half (16 or
tions and provide guidelines on how the appropriate, we have split the analysis for 48.5 %) were scientists, 12 (36.4 %) were
situation of women in astronomy could the two main ESO regions. In the follow- administrative staff and only 5 women
be improved. Further, several working ing sections, we will briefly comment on (15.2 %) were engineers. When the break-
groups have been established by interna- the results obtained for the different cate- down is done by ESO division, one finds
tional scientific bodies. With ESO as a gories (a–e) that were scrutinised. that while the Office of the Director Gen-
multi-cultural research organisation, it be- eral and Administration have a nearly
came clear that a similar, systematic study even gender balance, the technical divi-
of its current gender distribution was an sions have, in general, a very low frac-
important goal to achieve. This article
presents the first results of such a study.
Figure 1: Yearly gender distribution of all ESO
International Staff Members and Paid Associates
(dark blue: male, light blue: female).
The project and its goals
40
b) The ESO Faculty, Fellows and Students
2000 2000
2001 2001
2002 2002
2003 2003
2004 2004
2005 2005
2006 2006
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 10 20 30 40 50 60
% %
Figure 4: Percentage of female fellows in Garching, Figure 5: Percentage of female students in Garching,
in Chile, and as a whole. in Chile, and as a whole.
contracts (two years in almost all cases, whereas in Garching, a realistic balance We noted that the more technically-
with the International Max-Planck Re- of women on the committee has been oriented committees show a very low
search School (IMPRS) contracts run- achieved. The fraction of women on this percentage of female representatives,
ning for three years – currently there are committee is higher than the average whereas other committees (e.g. Finance
six such positions at ESO Garching). The of the Faculty astronomers. Committee and the Users Committee)
distribution between Garching and Chile have reached a very balanced gender
is fairly balanced, with the large fluctua- distribution. However, every committee
tions for Chile due to the small number of c) ESO Governing Bodies and External shows a positive trend, and the female
students (ten positions). Committees representation is increasing, though at a
slow pace.
Overall, the situation with young re- ESO has one main governing body
searchers at ESO has improved over the (Council) and several specialised commit-
past few years. With the exception tees that have the task of making deci- d) ESO Visitors
of 2003, the ratio of female students has sions and/or recommendations on spe-
been consistently above 30 %. The cific matters. Since membership to these The ESO Scientific Visitor Programme
number of applications from female stu- committees is selected in different ways aims to promote the scientific interaction
dents is also steadily increasing. (not only among different committees, between ESO and its community and
but even among different countries for to enhance ESO’s role as an astronomical
We further investigated the composition the same committee), the numbers we centre of excellence. The programme
of the selection committees for the fel- have gathered on this category are more is under the responsibility of the Head of
lows and the students. In Chile, during complex to interpret. the Office for Science, who appoints the
the past few years not a single woman members of the two Visitor Selection
has been nominated to this committee, Committees (VSC, one in Garching and
one in Vitacura) and their respective are also made based on suggestions Female | Male
provided by other ESO staff members. LT JAC
chairs. Applications to the ESO Scientific
1999 3 | 49 1 | 32
Visitor Programme can be submitted by
Together with MPA, MPE and the LMU- 2000 4 | 37 5 | 28
any scientist with an interest in ESO ac-
Sternwarte, ESO-Garching also co-orga- 2001 10 | 29 2 | 29
tivities and/or collaboration with ESO staff
nises the Joint Astronomy Colloquia (JAC) 2002 5 | 29 4 | 26
members. ESO can also make formal in-
series, also held on a weekly basis. The 2003 11 | 28 1 | 27
vitations to scientists with a high scientific
JAC committee includes representatives 2004 6 | 19 5 | 30
profile. On average, ESO Garching is able
from all involved institutes. This is recog- 2005 5 | 23 4 | 33
to support between four and five visitors
per month. nised as the main scientific colloquium of
the week. Table 2: Gender distribution among the invited
speakers to Lunch Talks (LT) and the Joint Astron-
From the data we have been able to
omy Colloquium (JAC).
collect, i.e. the gender distribution of the Table 2 shows that gender distribution in
applicants, as well as of the approved the Lunch Talk (LT) series is clearly
and invited visitors over the past eight more balanced than the one among JAC stant for the past eight years. The women
years (1999–2006) at ESO Garching, there speakers, but there is clearly room for employed at ESO are preferentially in
is clearly no discrimination in the approval improvement here as well. The numbers lower grades with very few women in sen-
of the applications – ESO Garching is in the table are yet another reflection of ior positions. In other words, the signifi-
usually able to approve almost all applica- the fact that there are more junior than cant increase in the number of newly-
tions. Nevertheless, we note that despite senior female astronomers. Considering hired staff members required by the start
the fact that the ESO visitor programme the higher relevance of the JAC series, of VLT operations has not resulted in
is open to everybody, the number of the very low number of female speakers a corresponding increased fraction of fe-
female applicants represents a very small is discouraging. The JAC committee is male staff (at any level).
percentage; the reason for which is not currently chaired by a woman and it will
easy to uncover. One possibility is that be worthwhile to monitor the selection 2. The conspicuous lack of senior female
for female astronomers with family com- of speakers in the coming years. astronomers is striking. The fraction
mitments, it is notoriously difficult to take of women in the Assistant and Associate
leave of absence from their home insti- levels is encouraging, although not yet
tute. However, there is clearly room for Present and future satisfactory, and it reflects the recent em-
improvement, especially for the targeted ployment history. The Assistant Astron-
high-profile astronomers: here, the num- All the numbers collected so far and dis- omer level is the entry level for Faculty as-
bers are extremely small (only three wom- cussed in this report have been taken tronomers at ESO and these are the
en in the last few years), and ESO should at face value, i.e. they represent snapshot junior members. It seems important to
make a special effort to attract senior views of the gender distribution among assess what support is required to have
women for extended visits. ESO staff and various ESO governing these women succeed both in their re-
bodies and committees, during the last search and at ESO, as well as to increase
We note that the composition of the VSC- few years. No attempt has yet been made their number further and ensure that the
Santiago at the beginning of this year to compare these numbers to, for in- fraction does not decline with increasing
included one female and seven male as- stance, the number of applicants and seniority. In a few years these numbers
tronomers, which is identical to the 2006 eventually short-listed candidates for any should be critically assessed and the rea-
situation of the VSC-Garching. given staff position. This type of com- sons for possible changes examined.
parison was readily available for the Fel-
lows and Students only, as discussed 3. The gender distribution among the
e) Invited speakers to Joint Astronomy above. Due to this incompleteness, it is ESO Fellows and Students is in general
Colloquia and ESO seminars difficult to properly interpret these num- higher than for the staff and the Faculty.
bers and draw firm conclusions. In what The selection of the Fellows and Students
ESO is a very lively scientific environment, follows, we attempt to flag the most im- does not show clear discrimination, but
where many scientific talks are organ- portant outcomes of this pilot project and constant awareness in the selection
ised on a weekly basis, both in Garching possible future actions that ESO is con- process is still required. The low female
and in Santiago. ESO-Garching has its sidering. selection rates in 2003 and 2004 are a
own Lunch Talk (LT) series, organised by warning not to neglect this issue.
an appointed team of ESO-Garching 1. Concerning ESO Staff, we have estab-
staff (usually two to three members, who lished that the gender distribution is 4. For the Scientific Visitor Programme, it
change every two to three years). This not very balanced (18 % female versus would probably be helpful to assemble
committee has the task of running a full 82 % male). The balance is far from being a list of high-profile female scientists to
schedule of weekly talks, by inviting satisfactory, especially in the more tech- become the target of official invitations to
speakers who cover a broad range of sci- nically-oriented divisions, where very few visit ESO. If no improvement is seen over
entific activities and interests. Invitations women are employed. It is disappointing a given amount of time, then one should
that this distribution has remained con- try to understand the main reasons that
Michael Sterzik, Christophe Dumas ness of the field for the next generation of of highest relevance for the massive
(ESO) researchers. Each of the four sessions follow-up of planetary transit candidates
was organised around three presenta- (Queloz).
tions by invited speakers, each of 45 min,
Motivation all contributing to the discussion from a Direct imaging of extrasolar planets is a
complementary perspective of Solar Sys- key science driver for many future ground-
Nowadays, the ESO premises in Vitacura tem and extraplanetary sciences. The and space-based instrument develop-
host more than 80 PhD students, fel- addition of contributed talks and a large ments. A few extrasolar giant planets
lows and astronomers, and represent the number of posters deepened our under- (EGPs) around nearby young stars are
research centre for the scientific staff de- standing of each subject. All available already in reach of current adaptive-
ployed at the different observatory sites time-slots were intensively used for lively optics assisted NIR companion search
in Chile. Several topical working groups and open discussions and some poster programmes, and a leap of the astro-
help locally to actively promote and foster pop-up sessions were organised at the physical understanding of EGPs is ex-
joint research initiatives among ESO sci- end of each day. pected with the next-generation high
entists. One example is the “Planetary contrast imagers, like SPHERE (Mouillet).
Sciences Research Group” at ESO Chile Astrochemistry provides another im-
(http://www.sc.eso.org/santiago/science/ Scientific highlights portant link from our own Solar System
PlanetaryGroup), which seeks to under- to other planetary systems. Deuterium-to-
stand the formation of planetary systems A few subjectively selected highlights hydrogen ratios appear remarkably simi-
at large and the place occupied by our may demonstrate the scientific ideas and lar in comets and in the interstellar me-
own Solar System. Group members are prospects presented during this work- dium (Kamp). Comets, as messengers
actively involved in observation-oriented shop. from the early Solar System, may reveal
programmes making use of ESO facilities the answer to questions like, why is the
to carry out front-line research ranging The physical, chemical, and morphologi- Earth wet and alive? (Mumma). Transiting
from discoveries of new brown dwarfs cal evolution of circumstellar discs from (eclipsing) planets play a key role in un-
and exoplanets, to the study of primitive gas-dominated rotating optically thick derstanding their physics and chemistry.
Solar System bodies. structures towards thin planetesimal discs Atmospheres of hot Jupiters can be stud-
is a key to understand the formation of ied in detail by transmission spectros-
Encouraged by the fruitful interdiscipli- planetary systems in general, and our own copy, while mass-radius-composition
nary research approach of our own Solar System in particular. Disc models relations allow the interior of super-earth
group, we proposed to gather both com- can be best constrained by applying a planets to be probed: the era of com-
munities of Solar System and extra- combination of modern observing tech- parative exoplanetology has just started
planetary system scientists and organise niques, utilising the highest spatial resolu- (Charbonneau)!
the international workshop “Observing tion imaging in the optical and NIR in
Planetary Systems”. The main idea was to scattered light, polarimetry and SED de- The search for signatures of life on exo-
explore the synergy between these two termination. Dust settling, i.e. the vertical planets by the detection of atmospheric
communities and confront them with four segregation of particles with different and surface biomarkers is a far-reaching
key topics: from Discs to Planets; Search masses and sizes can now be directly goal of future, ambitious, space-based
for Planets; Planetary Chemistry; Towards probed (Menard). The dynamical history missions. Both ESA and NASA are active-
other Earths. In order to establish such of our own Solar System, as recon- ly promoting missions not only to detect,
meetings as part of our research culture, structed by sophisticated numerical but also to characterise, the physical
we selected the venue to be in our refur- N‑body integration, teaches us charac- conditions of terrestrial planets (Fridlund,
bished, large, conference room in Vita- teristic differences and/or similarities with Lawson). Today, Earth is still the only
cura, equipped with state-of-the-art au- known extrasolar systems, such as why known planet that hosts life, and it can
dio-visual facilities. does our Solar System not have a hot serve as a template to discuss potential
Jupiter? The most likely reason is the res- biosignatures in other habitable worlds.
The response from the community was onant hierarchical configuration of our The search for life beyond our Solar Sys-
overwhelming. While our original plans four gas giants. Late heavy bombard- tem may soon become a reality – exciting
were to limit attendance to 60–80 partici- ment, a cataclysmic episode of planetesi- times are ahead (Kaltenegger)!
pants, nearly 120 scientists participated mal infall on terrestrial planets, requires a
in the workshop, many of them worldwide large reservoir of planetesimals and ap- Contributed talks and posters presented
recognised leaders in their field: about pears therefore compatible with the dust the latest results from ground-based and
half of the participants were from Euro- excesses observed in debris discs space-based (e.g. Spitzer) observatories
pean countries, 20 % from the USA, 20 % (Morbidelli). Accuracy limits of radial ve- in the search for exoplanets and the
from Chile, 5 % from other South Ameri- locity searches for exoplanets are con- study of planetary-system formation, in-
can countries, and a few researchers tinuously improving, and the physical cluding our own. The prospects for future
joined us from Japan and Australia. A limits have still not been reached (con- ground-based interferometric, radial-
healthy number of students (~ 30 % of the trary to what was thought ten years ago). velocity and high-contrast imaging instru-
participants) demonstrated the attractive- Precision RV studies will continue to be ments in the field of exoplanet search
Rein Warmels, Gabriele Zech (ESO) The ESO Web plays an integral and in- and is critical for coordination and disse-
dispensable role in the process of doing mination of information, both internal and
science with ESO’s observing and external to ESO, in particular in the area
Recently, the ESO Web went through a archive facilities. It provides an effective of science and archive operations.
major revision and was re-launched and adaptive medium for exchanging
with a new Look and Feel and new navi- information, documents and images be- The ESO Web started its service in 1994.
gation tools. This article gives an over- tween scientists, engineers, the media Since then it has expanded rapidly, both
view of why and how the ESO Web has and the general public. Furthermore, it in the amount of information and serv-
changed. provides various services to the commu- ices that are provided as well as in terms
nity of users of ESO’s observing facilities of access rates. Currently, the statistics
show that on average 100 000 pages are adapting to the fact that the large majori- observing facilities and the astronomy
viewed per month, representing a data ty of web users are from the public do- programmes using these facilities, con-
transfer volume of the order of 20 Gbytes. main. Other objectives for making a new tact and travel information, ESO’s public
ESO web included: affairs’ activities (including information for
In spite of the information and services – improve the appearance, i.e. give the press and media), the new ESO Public
that have been added to the ESO Web ESO Web a more modern ‘Look and Image Archive (Figure 2), as well as infor-
continuously over the past years, its struc- Feel’; mation for ESO’s industrial partners and
ture has not been adapted; the ‘Look – improve the navigation and provide about current vacancies.
and Feel’ still reflected the predominantly more functionality;
science-oriented approach and usage – improve page content, in particular The Science area (Science Users Infor-
of the ESO Web in the mid-nineties. Since make sure that the content is up-to- mation) provides information and serv-
then ESO’s observing facilities have been date. Remove old and outdated pages ices for professional astronomers cover-
greatly enlarged: Paranal has become and information; ing ESO’s observing and archive facilities.
fully operational, the concept of service – restructure the site to serve the differ- Examples are instrument information,
observing was introduced to maximise ent user groups more efficiently; Phase I proposal submission, policies
the operational efficiency and scientific – find and assign responsible persons for and procedures, service observing and
productivity, and the ESO/ECF Science well-defined areas. data processing. Also information about
Archive and Virtual Observatory archival science activities, science meetings,
research facilities are being offered. In The new ESO Web has three major user the library, and publications can be found
addition, over the past years a large num- areas: here. In the Science area pages at the
ber of science collaborations and pro- 1. Public. This area is intended for the top navigation levels have been imple-
jects, and public outreach programmes, general public, press and media, (po- mented with the new Look and Feel.
were initiated. tential) industrial partners and people Lower level pages that are still in the old
interested in working at ESO. The area format will be converted later.
New information and services were is completely new, partially based on
added arbitrarily to the old structure and existing information, but also with new Most of the information in the Intranet
could not easily be integrated into the content. area is still in the old layout. It is intended
existing navigation. Consequently, the 2. Science Users. The area is intended for that also in this area the new Look and
ESO Web became increasingly complex, professional astronomers who are Feel will be implemented.
barely maintainable and it became in- doing, or are planning to do, research
creasingly difficult to store new informa- using ESO facilities. The new structure of the ESO Web is re-
tion and services that would be easy to 3. Intranet. This area is for ESO Staff only. flected in the navigation bar to the left
find and use. and the breadcrumb navigation at the top
The new Look and Feel has been imple- of each page. The main areas of Public,
In particular, the start of science opera- mented throughout the whole Public Science, and Intranet can be accessed
tions of the VLT and its scientific re- area (ESO for the Public – see Figure 1) via separate buttons. Each area has its
sults triggered a substantial increase in and includes information of general inter- own navigation menu that helps the user
the awareness of ESO amongst the est. Examples are descriptions of ESO’s to easily find the information or service of
public and the media and, consequently, interest.
a noticeable change of user profile of
the ESO Web. Meanwhile, nearly every
private citizen has Internet access and
expects that information can be found
easily. To support this new aspect of In-
ternet usage, which includes the require-
ment to present ESO’s activities to the
general public, ESO’s Web presence had
clearly to be revised and improved.
Fellows at ESO
Personnel Movements
European Organisation
for Astronomical
Research in the
Southern Hemisphere
Announcement of
3–4 September 2007, Garching, Germany 5–6 September 2007, Garching, Germany
Now ALMA has entered its main con- from future ALMA users. Also, a sample and the Planck mission will also be oper-
struction phase, ESO and RadioNet are of exciting recent scientific results, rele- ational, and provide unprecedented far-
organising two back-to-back meetings in vant to ALMA and the opportunities infrared survey capabilities. The progress
Garching, aimed at the European astro- afforded by ALMA in its Early Science in wide-field near-IR detectors on dedi-
nomical community. phase, will be presented. cated telescopes such as VISTA will also
provide a major new data set for ALMA
The ALMA Community Meeting will start The “Surveys for ALMA” workshop will follow-up observations. The aim of this
at 14:00 on Monday 3 September 2007 directly follow the Community Meeting, one-and-a-half day meeting is to coordi-
and end in the late afternoon of Tuesday starting on Wednesday 5 September, and nate the planning of these preparatory
4 September. The aim of this one-and-a- end at lunchtime on Thursday 6 Septem- surveys for ALMA, and to solicit feedback
half day meeting is to keep the European ber. The rationale behind this meeting is from the community in the planning of the
astronomical community informed about as follows. While ALMA is being con- early science follow-up with ALMA from
ALMA progress since the last ALMA structed in Chile, several ground-based these surveys. The potential for deep
Community Day in September 2004. The millimetre and submillimetre observato- legacy type surveys with the completed
meeting will provide information about ries worldwide are being upgraded and ALMA array in 2012 will also be briefly
the project status, and additional reports are now coming online. The excellent discussed.
on other ALMA activities such as the wide-field survey capabilities of large bo-
status of software. The definition of the lometer arrays such as LABOCA and If you would like to register for one or
ALMA Operations Plan and the organisa- SCUBA-2 on single-dish sub-millimetre both of these meetings, or would like to
tion of the European ALMA Regional telescopes such as APEX and the JCMT, obtain further information, please visit
Centre (ARC) has considerably advanced and the upgraded (sub-)millimetre arrays, http://www.eso.org/projects/alma/
during the last year. Plans for ALMA op- such as IRAM, allow prospective ALMA science/meetings/gar-sep07/
eration and for the organisation of the users to develop ambitious science
ARC network in Europe will be presented projects and prepare for the use of ALMA. The registration deadline is 13 July 2007.
and discussed at the Community Meet- During the first years of operation of
ing, with the aim of obtaining feedback ALMA, the Herschel Space Observatory
This meeting will focus on the following 4. Theoretical models and empirical con- Scientific Advisory Committee:
question: how does gas get into galaxies straints on the global efficiency Jacqueline Bergeron (IAP), Andi Burkert
and what are the processes that regu- with which gas is converted into stars (MPIA), Chris Carilli (NRAO), Francoise
late the rate at which the gas then turns in galaxies Combes (ObsPM), Andy Fabian (IoA),
into stars? The conference will bring 5. Gas inflow mechanisms Reinhard Genzel (MPE), Ortwin Gerhard
together both theoreticians and observa- 6. Feedback processes in galaxies (MPE), Tim Heckman (JHU), Guinevere
tional astronomers working at different 7. The nature of the Warm/Hot Intergal- Kauffmann (MPA), Rob Kennicutt (IoA),
wavelengths, using different techniques, actic Medium (WHIM). Does gas cool Eliot Quataert (University of California,
both at low and at high redshifts. The from the hot phase? Insights from Berkeley), Piero Rosati (ESO), Renzo
topics to be addressed in the conference XMM/Chandra Sancisi (INAF), Ken Sembach (STScI),
are: 8. Physical constraints on gas in the Mike Shull (University of Colorado,
1. H i observations of gas in and around vicinity of galaxies from quasar ab- Boulder), Ian Smail (Durham), Jonathan
nearby galaxies sorption lines Tan (ETH, Zurich)
2. The relation between atomic and 9. Star formation in high-redshift galaxies
molecular gas Further information can be found at
3. Insights into the gas-star cycle in http://www.mpa-garching.mpg.de/
galaxies from new panchromatic data ~gassf07/
sets
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81805 München Front Cover Picture: The three types of ALMA antenna at the ALMA Test Facility at
Germany Socorro, New Mexico are shown, from left to right: US (Vertex RSI); European (AEC
Consortium); Japanese (Mitsubishi). Since this photograph, the Japanese antenna
© ESO 2007 has been removed and the US and European antennas have been linked interfero-
ISSN 0722-6691 metrically (see ESO PR 10/07). Photograph by Hans Hermann Heyer (ESO).