Driving SALT Science Outputs

South African Townhall talk on driving the science outputs from the Southern African Large Telescope

Transcript

1. Driving SALT Science Outputs Steve Crawford SALT Science Data Manager On behalf of SALT Astronomy Operations SAAO/SALT Saturday, June 27, 15
2. Highlights of the last year Saturday, June 27, 15
3. Improved RSS Throughput Saturday, June 27, 15
4. Stable HRS Operations Credit: Lisa Crause Saturday, June 27, 15
5. Improved Efficiency Saturday, June 27, 15
6. First Nature Paper Saturday, June 27, 15
7. Deep MOS observations Saturday, June 27, 15
8. Multi-wavelength Astronomy Saturday, June 27, 15
9. SALTICAM Observations Saturday, June 27, 15
10. SALT Science Conference #saltsc15 Saturday, June 27, 15
11. Scientific Productivity See Anja Schröder’s presentation:http://ssc2015.salt.ac.za/wp-content/ uploads/sites/77/2015/06/Schroeder-Poster.pdf Saturday, June 27, 15
12. Scientific Productivity SALT’s Impact Factor = 8.25 Saturday, June 27, 15
13. Can we do better? Saturday, June 27, 15
14. Achieving 10m class science Engineering Upgrades •SAMS •Tracker Upgrade •RSS Guide Camera upgrade Expected 2017 NIR Integral field spectroscopy • 0.8 – 1.7 um Saturday, June 27, 15
15. Call for Proposals Next Call comes out on Thursday July 2. The Phase 1 proposal deadline is 31 July 2015 at 16:00 UT See Petri’s Talk: “Maximizing your SALT Observations” http://ssc2015.salt.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/ sites/77/2015/06/Vaisanen- MaximizingChances.pdf SASTAC’s Criteria http://astronomers.salt.ac.za/ proposals/time-allocation-criteria/ Saturday, June 27, 15
16. Paul Kotze’s SALT Scheduler Saturday, June 27, 15
17. Call for Help Do you have data? Do you need help reducing it? Contact salthelp@salt.ac.za Come for a visit! Saturday, June 27, 15
18. Pipelines wavelength Counts Saturday, June 27, 15
19. Dream Big Saturday, June 27, 15
20. Key Programmes SALT is a SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY Telescope But it is being used as a General Observing Telescope Key Programmes Challenge: What could you do with 10/20/100 nights of SALT time? Saturday, June 27, 15
21. Synergy with MeerKAT http://ssc2015.salt.ac.za/wp-content/uploads/sites/77/2015/06/Blyth.pdf But MIGHTEE, thunderKAT, MeerKAT Absorption Line Survey, and many more Saturday, June 27, 15
22. Larger share in SALT? RSA currently only has a 35% share in the telescope (equal to about ~50 clear nights per year) The RSA TAC is typically oversubscribed by a factor of ~2 Many good programs need multiple semesters to complete or are rejected completed RSA community producing papers at higher fraction then its share Saturday, June 27, 15
23. SALT in 10 years? Ground Layer Adaptive Optics for regular sub-arcsecond image quality? SALT 2 to take up the large need for spectroscopy? How to support LSST Observations? SALT’s place in a world with ELTs? Saturday, June 27, 15
24. Summary • SALT is productive • SALT can and will do better • But what will we do next? Saturday, June 27, 15