VLTI / MIDI School for Data Reduction, Analysis and Science

Objective: The objective of the workshop is to enhance the scientific productivity of the VLTI/MIDI instrument. It will provide the knowledge and tools to use MIDI for your own scientific research.

The ESO Very Large Telescope (VLT) is the first observatory with a fully supported optical interferometric facility. By coherent combination of light of up to four 8.2-meter telescopes, the VLT Interferometer (VLTI) provides a unique observing facility to investigate a large range of important astronomical questions. The first VLTI facility instrument is the MID-Interferometer (MIDI). This is a two-way beam-combiner operating in the 8 to 10 micron atmospheric window.

Key science themes for MIDI are disks around young stars, tori around active galactic nuclei, stellar surfaces structures, circumstellar material around evolved stars, and many other astrophysical cases where relative cold material (100 to 300 K) emits at spatial scales of milli-arcseconds.

MIDI was successfully commissioned in 2002 (first light in December 2001), and is now available through the open call for proposals. The workshop will provide the knowledge, insights, and tools to write an observing proposal. Additionally the software tools to reduce and analyse MIDI data will be provided.

Participants: The targeted participants are those who have applied for MIDI observing time and those who would like to apply for MIDI observing time. The workshop is at the level of Ph.D. students, post-docs, and professional junior and senior astronomers who are conducting active research. The workshop will be highly interactive. Small teams will be formed which given access to MIDI data.

Registration: There is no registration fee.

Interest in participation is through the Lorentz Center workshop-page, before the deadline of noon, 1 September 2004. The maximum number of participants is 30. Hence based on the “interest in participation”, 30 applicants will be selected to participate at the school. They will be invited to fill out the registration form at the Lorentz Centre. In exceptional cases, there are possibilities to receive travel funding from the organization of the MIDI school.