India-TMT science and training workshop: Maximising the Indian participation

Overall goal:
Engage the Indian astronomy community to prepare for the early science with TMT and contribute to the development of instrument concepts, simulation and data pipeline. The workshop is expected to provide an overview of TMT capability, opportunities for science & instrumentation within TMT project. The hands on training for students will help to understand the challenges of the data processing requirements of large telescopes. We believe that ASI offers the best possible forum for such community explorations. The high resolution spectroscopy workshop at ASI-2016 has helped with the India-led white paper for a high resolution spectrograph for TMT as a potential 2nd generation instrument.

Background:
During the last couple of years, several of the TMT key subsystems have completed the final design and entered the construction phase. India has made significant contributions to the development of telescope primary mirror (M1) segment support system assemblies and M1 polishing. Telescope and observatory control software (OSW) is being developed in India. OSW also provides a framework for the entire software system of the observatory, instruments and other subsystems. The first light instrument IRIS has completed the preliminary design review, hence it is an ideal time to discuss about early science from the observatory. TMT instruments are complex to meet the ambitious science goals and early science planning requires good understanding of the instrument characteristics. Engaging observers in the early phase of design, development, calibration and simulation will help to maximize the scientific productivity.

This workshop is one of the initial steps towards organising ourselves for the early science and understand the capabilities of the observatory and the instrumentation. Discussions on india-TMT working groups and key project proposals, will help to form working groups to develop tools and simulation that will provide a heads-up for the early science. We also propose a dedicated hands-on working session on multi-object spectroscopic data and a hackathorn for more experience group.

Expected outcome:
Forming national science/instrumentation working groups on focussed science areas and prepare for large observing key proposals. Expand the participation in the first light instruments beyond the current institutions. Planning for proto-typing of 2nd generation instruments that can be potential instruments for the existing 2 & 3.6m telescope in the country. Training on IFU data will help in the near-term will benefit the users in observing with DOTIFS at the 3.8 DOT.
Expected number of participants: 100

For the hands on session: Laptop with linux OS and IRAF & IDL installed

Participants click here

Additional information for the participants:
Overview of SDSS-MaNGA , Keck-DEIMOS , VLT-GIRAFFE instruments will be useful for the Hands-on session
Contact Details for hands on session:
ramyas.itcc@iiap.res.in , devika.itcc@iiap.res.in , sivarani@gmail.com