1-day BINA workshop

Thursday 12 Oct 2017, 09:30 → 17:01 UTC

Meridian Room (Royal Observatory of Belgium)

Joan Vandekerckhove (Royal Observatory of Belgium), Peter De Cat

Three Indian colleagues are visiting the Royal Observatory of Belgium in October:

* Santosh Joshi (ARIES, Nainital)

* Yogesh Joshi (ARIES, Nainital)

* Shashikiran Ganesh (PRL, Ahmedabad)

We are organising a 1-day workshop where they can meet and discuss with colleagues from the Belgian partner institutes of BINA (Belgo-Indian Network for Astronomy and astrophysics). The Indian colleagues will each give a talk about their research and Yogesh Joshi will give another talk about the current status of the available and forthcoming instruments on the 3.6-m Devasthal Optical Telescope.

Belgian colleagues are invited to attend this 1-day workshop to meet our Indian colleagues and are encouraged to talk/discuss about research that can be done in collaboration with Indian colleagues based on data from the 4-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope and/or the 3.6-m Devasthal Optical Telescope within the BINA framework. We offer a free sandwich for lunch and there will be time for round table discussions.

BINA logo logo_BINA-2.jpg

Picture 171012_BINA_meeting_picture.jpg

Program & Participants 171012_ROB_meeting_ScientificProgramme.pdf

Slides

• 171012_BINA_meeting_T0_Welcome.pdf
• 171012_BINA_meeting_T1_JoshiSantosh.pdf
• 171012_BINA_meeting_T2_JoshiYogesh.pdf
• 171012_BINA_meeting_T3_GaneshShashikiran_HESP.pdf
• 171012_BINA_meeting_T3_GaneshShashikiran.pdf
• 171012_BINA_meeting_T4_JoshiYogesh.pdf
• 171012_BINA_meeting_T5_DeCatPeter.pdf
• 171012_BINA_meeting_T6_RaskinGert.pdf
• 171012_BINA_meeting_T7_FrematYves.pdf
• 171012_BINA_meeting_T8_SurdejJean.pdf
• 171012_BINA_meeting_T9_RoundTableDiscussion.pdf

09:30 → 09:50 Meridian room opens

09:50 → 10:00 Welcome

Speaker: Dr Peter De Cat (Royal Observatory of Belgium)

Slides 171012_BINA_meeting_T0_Welcome.pdf

10:00 → 11:20 Talks of Indian colleagues

10:00 The Nainital-Cape Survey: A contribution to Asteroseismology

The Nainital-Cape Survey is a dedicated survey programme initiated in 1999 in the coordination of the astronomers from ARIES Nainital and ISRO Bangalore with aims to search for new roAp stars and pulsating Am stars in the northern and southern hemisphere, and perform asteroseismic studies to understand their internal structure and evolution. The candidate stars were selected on the basis of having Strömgren photometric indices similar to those of known pulsating chemically peculiar (CP) stars, and the survey was conducted using high-speed photometry. Over the last 17 years a total of 337 candidate pulsating CP stars were observed for the Nainital-Cape survey, making it one of the longest ground-based surveys for pulsation in CP stars in terms of time span and sample size. Under this survey, we discovered the rapid pulsation in an Ap star HD12098 while Delta Scuti pulsations were detected in seven Am stars. As a part of establishing the detection limits in the Nainital-Cape survey, we investigated the scintillation noise level at the two observing sites used in this survey, Sutherland and Nainital, by comparing the combined frequency spectra of stars observed from each location. Our analysis shows that both the sites permit the detection of variations of the order of 0.6 milli-magnitude (mmag) in the frequency range 1-4 mHz. Sutherland is on average marginally better. In this talk, I shall present the high-lights of the survey project.

Speaker: Dr Santosh Joshi (ARIES, Nainital)

Slides 171012_BINA_meeting_T1_JoshiSantosh.pdf

10:40 Multi-domain analysis of the microlensing survey data

Long-term microlensing projects with small telescopes have been going on for a long time across the globe. Although these surveys have been successful in detecting many microlensing events, their success lie in the detection of thousands of variable stars from the large data set gathered over a period of time. One such survey has been carried out towards M31 with a 1-m telescope for four years during 1998-2002. Under this survey, we have not only detected microlensing events but a large number of pulsating stars, cataclysmic events and exotic variables in M31. In this talk, I shall summarize our efforts on running such project at Nainital and the results obtained out of this survey. This kind of project has wider implications in the context of upcoming 4-m International Liquid Mirror Telescope at Devasthal which will generate a huge amount of data and is expected to detect a large number of variable stars.

Speaker: Dr Yogesh Joshi (Scientist ARIES)

Slides 171012_BINA_meeting_T2_JoshiYogesh.pdf

11:20 → 11:40 Coffe/Tea/Soft drink break

11:40 → 13:00 Talks of Indian colleagues

11:40 Dust in the Solar System and the Milky Way

A common theme running through our work using facilities at Mount Abu IR Observatory (MIRO) and the IR archival data from surveys such as ISOGAL, DENIS, 2MASS, GLIMPSE etc. is that of 'dust'. We have studied the dust constituting the cometary comae for various comets over the last 2 to 3 decades using an optical photo-polarimeter on telescopes in India (at Mount Abu and earlier at Nainital as well as Kavalur). As far as the archival data is concerned, we have worked on the ISOGAL, DENIS, 2MASS and GLIMPSE datasets to study the Galactic plane - particularly the extinction due to interstellar dust. Some results from both these scales will be discussed in the presentation.

Speaker: Dr Shashikiran Ganesh (Physical Research Laboratory, Navarangpura, Ahmedabad, 380 009, India)

Slides 171012_BINA_meeting_T3_GaneshShashikiran_HESP.pdf 171012_BINA_meeting_T3_GaneshShashikiran.pdf

12:20 Current status of the available and forthcoming instruments on the 3.6-m Devasthal Optical Telescope

The Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT) was activated on 30 March 2016 and released for the science observations to the national and international scientific community in March 2017. Initially two main instruments, one CCD Imager and other infra-red camera TIRCAM2 are made available on the main ports of the 3.6-m telescope and scientific observations are successfully being carried out through these instruments at DOT. However, there are many other instruments proposed for the 3.6-m DOT e.g. near-infrared spectrometer (TANSPEC), Faint object spectrograph (FOSC), high-resolution spectrograph (HRS), Devasthal fast photometer, and some of them are in advance stage of completion. In this talk, I'll brief the evolution of the telescope at the remote site of the Devasthal during last few years as well as present the status of the available as well as future instruments which will be available to scientific community in near future.

Speaker: Dr Yogesh Joshi (Scientist ARIES)

Slides 171012_BINA_meeting_T4_JoshiYogesh.pdf

13:00 → 14:00 Lunch Break

Free baguette lunch served with coffee, tea, and soft drinks.

14:00 → 15:20 Talks of Belgian colleagues

14:00 The BINA collaboration: Science at the Royal Observatory of Belgium (science@ROB)

Speakers: Griet Van de Steene (ROB), Dr Martin Groenewegen (Koninklijke Sterrenwacht van Belgie), Dr Patricia Lampens (Koninklijke Sterrenwacht van België), Dr Peter De Cat (Royal Observatory of Belgium), Thierry Pauwels (Koninklijke Sterrenwacht van Belgie), Dr Yves FREMAT (Royal Observatory of Belgium)

Slides 171012_BINA_meeting_T5_DeCatPeter.pdf

14:30 HERMES: a fibre-fed high-resolution spectrograph at the Mercator telescope

Speaker: Dr Gert Raskin (KU Leuven)

Slides 171012_BINA_meeting_T6_RaskinGert.pdf

14:45 Overview of the HERMES reduction pipeline

Speaker: Dr Yves FREMAT (Royal Observatory of Belgium)

Slides 171012_BINA_meeting_T7_FrematYves.pdf

15:00 ILMT project status: after November 2016

Speaker: Prof. Jean Surdej (Space sciences, Technologies and Astrophysics Research (STAR) Institute, Université de Liège)

Slides 171012_BINA_meeting_T8_SurdejJean.pdf

15:20 → 15:40 Coffee/Tea/Soft drink break

15:40 → 17:00 Round-table discussions

slides 171012_BINA_meeting_T9_RoundTableDiscussion.pdf

17:00 → 17:30 Meridian room closes