Other Meetings
EAS General Assembly
EAS will meet Monday August 21, 14:00-17:30 in Meeting Room 1.1.
Several events of the European Astronomical Society (EAS) will take place in conjunction with the IAU General Assembly in Prague. In particular, the EAS General Assembly will take place on Monday, August 21, 14:00.
Although no specific scientific session will be organized in addition to the IAU events, a special day will be reserved to deal with European matters (Initiatives from the EU Commission, Actions from the EAS, reports from various EU Networks and Integrated Infrastructure Initiatives, and possibly a Job Market).
More information at: http://www2.iap.fr/eas/
ESA: GAIA
Gaia meeting Monday August 21, 15.30-17:30 in Chamber Room.
The European Space Agency's Gaia mission will be launched in 2011. Early in 2006 the prime contractor for the construction of the spacecraft was selected and the mission has now entered the detailed design phase. In parallel, preparations for the data processing aspects of the mission are underway. The new spacecraft and payload design will be presented at this other meeting along with the current status of the data processing preparations. Members of the Gaia Science Team and the Data Analysis Coordination Committee will be available to answer questions.
More information at: Gaia at IAU GA 2006 and Gaia web site.
ESO: ALMA
ALMA meeting Thursday August 24, 09:00-12:30, in Dressing Room 225.
The Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) is a large international project which will be finished by 2012 in northern Chile on a site at 5 km elevation. The site provides excellent atmospheric transmission in the millimeter and sub-millimeter wavelength ranges. The project consists of two parts: (1) the 12m Array, composed of between fifty (present construction plan) to sixty-four (project plan) 12-meter antennas that can be placed on 175 different stations for baselines up to 14.5 km and (2) the ‘Atacama Compact Array’, or ACA, that consists of twelve 7 meter telescopes placed in a compact configuration, and four 12 meter telescopes for measuring source total power. In addition to high sensitivity, frequency coverage and dynamic range, ALMA will record both interferometric and the complete source flux density. At the shortest planned wavelength, =0.3 mm, and longest baseline, the angular resolution will be 0.005”. ALMA will be able to image dust enshrouded or cold material. As such, it is the appropriate complement to 8-10 meter optical/near-IR telescopes namely the Very Large Telescope (VLT), Gemini, Subaru, LBT and Keck, and to the Hubble Space Telescope and its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, matching or exceeding the angular resolution of any of these facilities.
More information: Thomas Wilson < >
IUCAF: SPECTRUM MANAGEMENT
IUCAF will meet Friday August 18, 09:00-10:30 in Dressing Room 225
The (radio) spectrum is a finite, and increasingly precious, resource for astronomical research. In order to obtain astronomical data of sufficiently high quality, our observations must be free of harmful interference emitted by other spectrum users. To attain this goal, regulatory protection measures (such as limits on interference levels) need to be determined and introduced into legislation. The IAU-sponsored organization that represents the requirements of the worldwide astronomical community in these regulatory matters is IUCAF, the Scientific Committee on Frequency Allocations for Radio Astronomy and Space Science. The 11 IUCAF members are active at different levels: local, national, regional and global (at the International Telecommunication Union, ITU). At this open IUCAF meeting an overview will be given of its various activities and current and future issues in frequency protection, and the list of IAU representatives will be reviewed.
More information at: http://www.iucaf.org/
