Call for Ideas for a Public Imaging Survey (January 2001) HOME INDEX SEARCH HELP NEWS

Suggestions will be welcomed concerning any of the following observing periods:

• Short Term, i.e. Period 68 and 69 (October 2001-September 2002) prior of the VST/OmegaCam coming into operation.
• Medium Term, i.e. from VST on (currently planned to start in P70, October 2002).
• Long Term, i.e. when VISTA will also be available (currently planned to start late in 2004).

Proposals for SHORT TERM surveys are most urgently needed, as the WGS will have to submit a proposal by April 2, 2001. However, any consideration or suggestion concerning the medium and long term phases will be carefully taken into account by the WGS, as to properly plan the short term survey(s) in the frame of a broader perspective. Scientists in the community are invited to visit the EIS home page (http://www.eso.org/eis) to review the data sets already available and the progress of the current surveys: The Deep Public Survey (DPS) and the Pre-FLAMES Survey (PFS).

With the time already allocated to the DPS in P67 one expects that the original goals (3 square degrees covered in UBVRI with WFI at the 2.2) will be fully met for BVR and possibly for I, while certainly will NOT be met for U. This was partly caused by time losses due to weather, partly by the the overall efficiency in U of WFI being significantly below what it had been assumed to be at the time of the proposal (April 1999). The infrared part of the DPS (900 square arcmin in J and Ks with SOFI at the NTT) is expected to be at least 80% completed, while one also expects the PFS to be essentially completed.Comments and suggestions on the continuation of the DPS will be welcome by the WGS which will preliminarily discuss of the possible completion of the DPS in P68-P69.

Aware of the current status of ESO Public Surveys, scientists are invited to send their suggestions for future surveys to both the chairman of the WGS (Joachim Krautter, J.Krautter@lsw.uni-heidelberg.de) and to the EIS address (eisadm@eso.org). In addition, direct contacts with members of the WGS (http://http.hq.eso.org/science/eis/eis_geninfo/eis_wg/eis_wgr.html) are encouraged.

No special form is required, but in elaborating suggestions one should consider the following guidelines:

- A Public survey should be aimed at the maximization of the scientific outcome of the VLT, and should consist of observations not likely to be covered by ``private'' proposals.

- Public surveys should also have a broad scientific goal, provide data that could be fruitfully used by astronomers working in different astronomical areas, e.g. solar system, stellar populations, observational cosmology, etc., and should be easily complemented by `private' proposals aimed at more specific scientific goals. As a consequence, in general public surveys should concentrate on broad band imaging, leaving e.g. narrow band follow up or second epoch observations to `private' proposals.

- Complementing publicly available databases should be a priority for public surveys, over complementing databases that are not accessible to the whole ESO community.

The Working Group for Surveys will collect the submitted ideas, and elaborate one or more detailed proposals to be submitted to the OPC for P68 and P69, including a description of the survey products and the distribution policy and schedule. Both the introduction of service observing at the 2.2m telescope and the considerable progress made in the development of the EIS pipeline software will enable a timely distribution of the survey products starting in the spring of 2002.

Send comments to <eisadm@eso.org>  Last update: Feb 1, 2001