SCIENCE WITH THE NEW HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE AFTER SERVICING MISSION 4
JANUARY 29-31, 2008 - CNR CONFERENCE CENTRE, BOLOGNA, ITALY
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Bologna Astrophysics Workshop

Science with the new
Hubble Space Telescope
after Servicing Mission 4

January 29th-31st, 2008
CNR Conference Center
Bologna, Italy

Final Announcement, January 15th, 2008

Dear Colleague,

As you can see from the final program posted on the web page of the conference and attached here in pdf version for your convenience, the workshop is shaping up to be quite successful in its primary objective to disseminate new and fresh ideas on how to maximally exploit this opportunity.

The coverage of the main areas of science accessible to the refurbished HST is quite extensive and the speakers all have considerable expertise in their field such as to guarantee a free flow of information.

There is still plenty of room for participation or poster contributions on any subject pertinent to the mission.

Details on how to register and submit a poster can be found on the conference site (www.iasfbo.inaf.it/bawhst).

Pre-registration and the welcome party will take place on Monday, January 28th, at Grand Hotel Baglioni, Via Indipendenza, 8 (http://www.baglionihotels.com/pages/eng_hp_bologna.jsp) starting at 17:30 and 18:00 respectively.

Hoping to see you all in Bologna at the end at the end of January, I send you my best wishes for a happy new year and regards.


Francesco Paresce SOC chair



Second Announcement, November 6, 2007

The goals of the workshop are to:

  • inform the general astronomical community of the exciting scientific opportunities offered by the refurbished HST in the area of ultraviolet to near infrared imaging and spectroscopy;
  • provide insight in and detailed information on the new HST imaging and spectroscopic capabilities and characteristics and general information about the mission;
  • provide more detailed information about initial calibration observations, the COS Guaranteed Time (GTO) observing programs and plans for Early Release Observations (ERO) and Early Release Science with both COS and WFC3;
  • provide future General observers (GOs) with an opportunity to present ideas for open time programs;
  • provide future GOs with details in the area of astronomical observing templates, observation planning, data reduction, and data products and archiving;
  • provide a forum where putative GO proposers can meet each other and exchange ideas, and interact directly with members of the instrument teams and STScI staff;
  • help identify key scientific topics with the highest scientific importance and impact and the observing programs of maximum long-term value to the entire astronomical community. These key programs may require large amounts of observing time on one or more targets or sky areas, collaborations of many astronomers from several institutions and innovative ideas or applications.

The topics covered will be:

  1. The servicing mission and new capabilities
  2. Solar System
  3. Debris Disks
  4. Exoplanets
  5. Stars
  6. Resolved Stellar Populations
  7. Unresolved Stellar Populations
  8. Nearby galaxy surveys
  9. Galactic Nuclei and AGN
  10. Gamma ray bursts
  11. Cosmology (SNe, Dark Energy, Cosmic Web, Strong and Weak Lensing, IGM)
  12. Galaxy Formation and the IGM

Confirmed Speakers:

A. Aloisi, T. Burch, A. Cavelier des Etangs, A. Cimatti, G. De Marchi, F. Ferraro, C. Froning, M. Giavalisco, R. Gilmozzi, J. Green, R. Kimble, L. Koopmans, S. Larsen, D. Leckrone, E. Lellouch, K. Noll, R. O'Connell, I. Pagano, G. Piotto, A. Renzini, A. Roberge, P. Rosati, M. Shull, L. Stanghellini, N. Scoville, E. Tolstoy, B. Whitmore, M. Wyatt, M.R. Zapatero Osorio

Conference location and dates

The Workshop will take place at the CNR Conference Center Area of Bologna, Via P. Gobetti 101, from Tuesday, January 29 to Thursday, January 31 - 2008

Registration Fee

The regular conference fee is 100 euros if the payment is made before November 1st. After this date, the regular fee due is 150 euros.

Oral presentations

Time allocation is 20 minutes + 10 minutes discussion for all oral presentations.

Poster presentations

Panels of A0 format (119 cm high and 84 cm wide) will be allocated for the poster presentation. Each presenter will find the number of his/her poster on the web page of the Conference. There is no poster submission deadline.

The poster will remain on display through the whole duration of the Conference.

Transportation to the Conference Centre

A shuttle bus will collect the conference participants at specific meeting points in the morning and will take them back once the sessions have finished in the evening.

The shuttle schedule with the meeting points will be displayed in the hotels where reservations have been made. The bus shuttle timetable will be posted as soon as possible on the web.

Visa Requirements

All foreign participants must have a valid passport except the European Union citizens, who need only an identification card. Invitation letters to apply for a visa will be sent by the Secretariat upon request. If you need an invitation letter from the LOC, let us know.

Conference dinner

A conference dinner has been organized for the evening of January 30 at Palazzo Isolani that has been one of most outstanding buildings in Bologna since the XV century. The cost of the dinner is 45 Euros per person.

Accommodation

Block bookings at special conference rates have been made at hotels in various price categories in Bologna. The selected hotels are situated within 10 minutes bus travel time from the CNR Conference Centre. Due to the limited hotel availability in Bologna participants are strongly suggested to reserve by December 15, 2007.

Deadlines

  • Early reduced registration fee deadline: November 1, 2007
  • Abstract submission deadline to be considered for:
    • an oral presentation: December 1, 2007
    • inclusion in the Book of Abstracts: January 15, 2008

For more information on all aspects of the meeting please consult the conference web site: www.iasfbo.inaf.it/bawhst



First Announcement ----- August 20, 2007

Dear Colleague:

In August 2008 the final servicing mission (SM4) will be launched from KSC to refurbish the Hubble Space Telescope ("Hubble"). Astronauts will install new batteries, new gyroscopes, a refurbished Fine Guidance Sensor and two new science instruments: the Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS). Plans are also being developed for potential repairs to the STIS and the ACS/WFC and ACS/HRC instruments that are presently inoperable. These upgrades will further expand Hubbles' capabilities, and keep Hubble functioning at the forefront of astronomy well into the next decade.

The Cycle 17 Call for proposals to observe with this refurbished HST will be released by the Space Telescope Science Institute on December 3rd, 2007 with a deadline of March 7th, 2008. Obviously, the competition for observing time on such a cutting edge facility will be high and proposals will have to be well motivated and of the highest scientific merit to succeed.

In order to raise awareness on the expanded scientific capabilities of Hubble after SM4, we are organizing a 3 day workshop in Bologna, Italy, on January 29- 31, 2008. The aim of the workshop is to inform participants of the exciting scientific opportunities offered by the refurbished HST and provide a forum where future GO proposers can meet each other and exchange ideas, and interact directly with members of the PI consortia and with STScI and NASA staff involved in the project. We hope participants will present contributed talks or posters that describe their ideas for exploiting this opportunity in their scientific areas of expertise.

There will be invited talks featuring the expected status of the HST after orbital verification and the science that can be accomplished with the new capabilities. Contributed talks and posters focusing on future HST science in the context of past and current work are welcome. If you wish to present a scientific project in form of a contributed talk or poster, please indicate the title of your presentation and give a short abstract. There will be no formal proceedings, but we plan to make the presentations available on the conference website.

We therefore invite you to participate and consider submitting a paper or poster. For more information and registration, please visit the workshop web site at:

www.iasfbo.inaf.it/bawhst

We look forward to your active participation.

Best regards,

Francesco Paresce
SOC Chair


Contacts

e-mail: hst.conf@iasfbo.inaf.it

web: http://www.iasfbo.inaf.it/bawhst/