[TDA_wg] Los Alamos Stellar Pulsation Conference 2016: Third Announcement

Fri Feb 26 11:57:32 EST 2016

Of interest to the IAU time domain working group:

> Begin forwarded message:
> 
> From: Márcio Catelan <mcatelan at astro.puc.cl>
> Subject: Los Alamos Stellar Pulsation Conference 2016: Third Announcement
> 
> 
>  
>  
> Third Announcement
>  
> We are pleased to announce that the conference web page, where you can find more information about the venue, registration, and lodging options, is now online (this URL <http://pulsation2016.contactochilecom.cl/>). Registration is now open as well; please recall that access to the ALMA tour will be done on a “first come, first serve” basis, so make sure you register as soon as possible! Deadlines are listed based on the official time in continental Chile (GMT -3:00). 
> 
> The meeting will be held at Hotel Cumbres (URL <http://www.cumbressanpedro.com/default-en.html>), and we have reserved blocks of rooms at six additional nearby hotels, all within walking distance (2.5 km). Since prices have been painstakingly negotiated by us directly with the hotel owners, you will only be able to book a room in one of these hotels by registering through our website. It is very important for the successful outcome of our organization that you do not attempt to book your room by other means and/or at different hotels! Thank you in advance for your cooperation in this regard. 
> 
> Limited support will be available for students and postdoctoral fellows. When you register, please make sure to specify your needs accordingly.   
> 
> From this point onwards, if you have any questions regarding the logistics, please contact Andrea Lagarini (e-mail <mailto:andreapulsation2016 at contactochilecom.cl>) and/or Soledad Varela (e-mail <mailto:pulsation2016 at contactochilecom.cl>). 
> 
> We look forward to seeing you in San Pedro in a few months! 
> 
> 
> Wolfgang Gieren & Márcio Catelan
> 
>  
> 
>  
> Second Announcement
>  
> We are pleased to announce that the 22nd edition of the Los Alamos Stellar Pulsation Conference Series will take place at Hotel Cumbres (URL <http://www.cumbressanpedro.com/default-en.html>) in San Pedro de Atacama, northern Chile, in the period between Nov. 28 and Dec. 2, 2016. The Scientific Rationale, along with the SOC and LOC compositions, are listed below. We will actually start with a welcoming cocktail reception on the evening of Sunday Nov. 27, and the science sessions will end by lunch time on Dec. 2. 
> 
> San Pedro, in the midst of the Atacama Desert, is located at a privileged position, both in terms of its spectacular landscape and state-of-the-art astronomical infrastructure. We are organizing a whole-day visit to the ALMA Observatory site on Wednesday Nov. 30, as part of the official program. Availability is limited, and participation will be assigned on a first-come, first-serve basis, upon payment of the registration and additional tour fees. Those who are unable to secure a place should not despair, as the San Pedro de Atacama region is widely recognized for offering some of the most amazing tours worldwide (see, e.g., this URL <http://www.lonelyplanet.com/chile/northern-chile/san-pedro-de-atacama/things-to-do/top-things-to-do-in-san-pedro-de-atacama>) – even including astronomical ones (URL <http://www.spaceobs.com/en>)!   
> 
> The web page of the event, with further details regarding registration fees, lodging options and scientific program, will become available soon, and will be circulated in the third announcement. 
> 
> As a special treat to the conference participants, we point out that the meeting will take place under dark sky conditions, thus providing – weather permitting – a breathtaking view of the southern sky. We look forward to the opportunity of sharing this life-changing experience with you!  
> 
> Wolfgang Gieren & Márcio Catelan 
>  
> Scientific Organizing Committee: 
>  
> Wolfgang Gieren (Concepción, Chile – chair) 
> Márcio Catelan (PUC, Chile – co-chair) 
> Leandro Althaus (La Plata, Argentina) 
> Gisella Clementini (Bologna, Italy)
> Licai Deng (NAOC, China)
> Andrew J. Drake (Caltech, USA)
> Frank Grundahl (Aarhus, Denmark) 
> Noriyuki Matsunaga (Tokyo, Japan)
> Karen Pollard (Christchurch, New Zealand) 
> Andrzej Udalski (Warsaw, Poland)
> Lucianne Walkowicz (Princeton, USA)
> Patricia Whitelock (SAAO, South Africa)
>  
> Local Organizing Committee: 
>  
> Jura Borissova (Valparaíso, Chile – chair) 
> Javier Alonso-García (Antofagasta, Chile) 
> Maja Vučković (Valparaíso, Chile)
> Rodrigo Contreras Ramos (PUC, Santiago, Chile) 
> Alexandre Gallenne (ESO, Chile) 
> Andrea Lagarini (ContactoChile, Chile) 
> Soledad Varela (ContactoChile, Chile) 
>  
>  
> 
>  
> Scientific Rationale 
> 
> Astronomy is undergoing a major revolution in the way it approaches its core subject. With the increase in detector efficiency and size and the availability of ever more powerful computers, wide-field surveys, once few in number, have become increasingly common – and indeed, it is clear that the field will be largely dominated by massive wide-field surveys, photometric and spectroscopic alike, in the not-too-distant future. 
>  
> At this special transition moment between “classical” and survey-based astronomy, we are faced with important challenges on how to properly handle, process and analyze the increasingly large datasets that are continuously amassed by these surveys. Astronomers must increasingly work together with computer scientists and statisticians. Entirely new fields, such as the booming but fairly young field of Astrostatistics, are emerging in the process. 
>  
> The challenge is particularly evident in the case of time-domain astronomy, where the databases needed can be larger by orders of magnitude, compared with the case of single-epoch surveys. Microlensing surveys such as MACHO, EROS, and OGLE have revealed to the community the enormous power of time-resolved surveys to study a vast number of different science topics, especially in the more general context of stellar variability. In this sense, pulsating variable stars, which are the main focus of this conference, come high at the top of the list. 
>  
> Perhaps surprisingly, the last meeting that was aimed at discussing the impact of large-scale surveys on pulsating star research was held back in 1999, in Budapest, Hungary (IAU Colloquium 176, which was also the 14th edition of the Los Alamos Stellar Pulsation Conference Series). That meeting did help set the stage for the current state of affairs, but back in those days there were still few such massive surveys that were in operation – and those look rather small, in comparison with current and future surveys. 
>  
> As a case in point, consider the OGLE project. Back in 1999, OGLE-II was taking data using a single 2k ´ 2k CCD. At present, OGLE-IV is scanning the southern skies from Las Campanas Observatory, in northern Chile, using an array of thirty-two 2k ´ 4k CCDs, covering a much wider area of the sky, and with data flows that are higher by orders of magnitude than in the early phases of the OGLE project.  
>  
> In the near infrared, no time-resolved surveys were in operation back in 1999. Massive, wide-field variability surveys in the near-IR covering vast swathes of the sky are now being conducted for the first time in history. This includes the very successful Vista Variables in the Vía Láctea (VVV) survey and the Vista survey of the Magellanic Cloud system (VMC), both of which are ESO Public Surveys running on ESO’s Visible and Infrared Visible Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA), located in Cerro Paranal, northern Chile. Particularly revealing, in terms of the rise of the survey era, is the fact that ESO has built not just one, but actually two, state-of-the-art telescopes in Chile that are entirely dedicated to conducting surveys – the other one being the VLT Survey Telescope (VST). Wide-field spectroscopic survey facilities, such as APOGEE and LAMOST, are also rising in prominence. 
>  
> Back in 1999 space-based astronomy did not count on any instruments devoted to time-resolved astronomical observations even remotely approaching the power of CoRoT and Kepler, which have provided a major recent boost to the field of asteroseismology in particular. In fact, back in 1999, the field of extrasolar planet research (CoRoT and Kepler’s main raison-d’être, to be sure) barely existed, and so the variable star community could not profit much from the constant flow of information that is now coming from wide-field, ground-based surveys whose main goal is to detect extrasolar planets through the transit method. In the late-1990’s, data collected with the Hipparcos satellite provided a fundamental contribution to the field of variable stars, and Gaia was just a distant concept. Now Gaia has become a reality, and first science-grade results can be anticipated in the very near future. By providing accurate astrometric distances to hundreds of thousands of variable stars across the Milky Way (as compared to just a handful, in the case of Hipparcos), Gaia will decidedly revolutionize our knowledge of the intrinsic properties of pulsating variable stars. 
>  
> In like vein, many survey projects (often counting on dedicated telescopes) are now in operation, including several in Chile, whose main aim is to detect transient events, such as novae and (especially) supernovae. Examples include CRTS, PTF, ASAS-SN, HITS, CHASE, and Pan-STARRS. The most important (and largest) of all these projects, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), which is currently being built in Cerro Pachón, northern Chile, is slated to start operations by the end of this decade/beginning of the next. The nightly LSST data flow will dwarf that from even the largest existing surveys. A data tsunami is in the horizon, and its first ripples have just started to hit the shore. A change in paradigm in the way variable star astronomy is pursued is clearly imminent. 
>  
> We thus believe that the time is ripe for a meeting specifically devoted to studying the impact of wide-field variability surveys upon pulsating star research. Just such a meeting will take place in late November – early December 2016, in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, and our team is in charge of its organization. 
>  
> The meeting will be part of the ongoing Los Alamos Stellar Pulsation Conference Series (hereafter LASPCS), which started in the early 1970’s and has been held every two or three years since. As already stated, this will be the 22nd meeting of the series, only the third to be held in the southern hemisphere, and the first ever in Latin America. The proposal to hold the meeting in San Pedro de Atacama was officially approved on occasion of the Granada LASPCS 2011 meeting (20th), and ratified during the latest Wrocław LASPCS 2013 meeting (21st). It was again enthusiastically endorsed by the stellar pulsation community on occasion of the Business Meeting of Commission 27 (Variable Stars) of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), which took place during the recent IAU General Assembly in Honolulu, Hawaii.  
>  
> At the San Pedro LASPCS 2016 meeting, we plan to bring together astronomers who have been involved in the planning and execution of wide-field variability surveys – past, current, and future – in order to share experiences, ponder what we have been able to learn about pulsating variables in this way, and discuss strategies to face the approaching data tsunami. 
>  
> We envisage a meeting where the leaders of some key past variability surveys will also deliver review talks, aimed at highlighting the lasting legacy of their work on the field of pulsating star research. In like vein, leaders of ongoing and planned surveys – ground- and space-based alike – will be invited to discuss the impact of their experiments on this type of science. 
>  
> Major players in the fields of transient and exoplanetary surveys will also be invited to discuss the synergies between their projects and pulsating star science. Distinguished computer scientists and/or statisticians who make astronomy one of their main (if not the main) areas of research will similarly be invited, in order to provide their perspective on how to maximize the scientific return from such huge datasets.
>  
> 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/tda_wg/attachments/20160226/d4dca477/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image002.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 23651 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/tda_wg/attachments/20160226/d4dca477/attachment-0003.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image003.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 23604 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/tda_wg/attachments/20160226/d4dca477/attachment-0004.jpg>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image004.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 23606 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://pairlist10.pair.net/pipermail/tda_wg/attachments/20160226/d4dca477/attachment-0005.jpg>