UKIRT at 40: Achievements and Prospects

MEETING FUTHER POSTPONED

Given the pandemic situation, we postponed the meeting originally planned for April 14-15, and stated that we were pencilling in new dates of Sept 8-9. It is now clear that we have to once again postpone. Given the continuing uncertainty of the Covid-19 situation, the organizing committee is not attempting to set new dates at this time, but we remain in regular contact and will be working to reschedule when  it becomes feasible to do so.

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ORIGINAL INFORMATION

UKIRT has been achieving stunning IR science for forty years, and still continues. The telescope is now owned by the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii, with its main scientific programme being a continuation of IR sky surveys with WFCAM, led by the US Naval Observatory, but with a significant UK involvement.

UKIRT has now finished a complete Northern Hemisphere J-band survey; is most of the way through a hemisphere K-band survey; has made a start on an H-band survey; and is currently discussing future surveys. The data is being processed by CASU and WFAU. You can see survey progress at this CASU page, and query the data via the WFCAM Science Archive. On April 14-15 2020, we will hold a two day workshop to:

• celebrate UKIRT's achievements
• present recent scientific results
• discuss potential scientific collaborations for exploiting the data
• debate options for continuing surveys

Call for contributions

We plan some reviews of how we got here, recent progress, and presentations on how to exploit the data. However, we are also interested in contributions about:

• science results with UKIRT
• potential science collaborations
• possible future plans

If you are interested in giving a contribution at the meeting, please send a title and short abstract to ukirt40@gmail.com, the workshop email address, by Monday March 9th. 

Registration 

Sign up for the meeting at the registration page.  Note that as well as administrative costs, the registration fee of £90 includes catering, so we do need to know who is coming. Registration will be closed on Monday March 23rd.

Meeting location

The meeting will take place at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh (ROE), home to both the University of Edinburgh Institute for Astronomy, and the UKRI/STFC UK Astronomy Technology Centre. 

ROE is sited on Blackford Hill in the South of Edinburgh.  GPS navigation systems should use the postcode EH9 3HJ.

Note that this is different from the pre-1893 Royal Observatory (or City Observatory) on Calton Hill.

Accomodation 

Please arrange your own accomodation. Some recommendations are given here. 

Travel

 Please arrange your own travel, bearing in mind the start-finish times. Some general travel guidance is give here. If you fancy getting around on buses, there is a very good bus app. For taxis there is Uber, but Central Taxis and City Cabs also have apps for your phone.

Programme

Sandwich lunch will be provided for arrival on the 14th. Presentations will be on the afternoon of the 14th and the morning of the 15th, with sandwich lunch provided at the end of the morning session. There will an informal dinner on the evening of the 14th - details to be arranged.

The general idea is that the afternoon of the 14th will be mostly presentations, with the morning of 15th being a mixture of presentations and discussions about collaborations and future surveys. A full programme will be uploaded here in due course.