ESO Annual Report 2004

set by the Council/STC/ESO Working
Group on the Scientific Strategy Planning,
and found that the overall balance among
the major items of the LRP reflected such
priorities well. The STC recommended
that the “in kind” contributions by new
ESO member states should be submitted
for scientific evaluation also in comparison
with those items that could not be implemented
in the LRP at this stage. Still in the
frame of the discussion on the LRP, the
STC asked to be informed on the ESO-
ESA agreement on the future of ST-ECF,
and on the ESO-ESA collaboration on
issues such as archiving, the Virtual Observatory,
and Public Outreach.
Coming to the longer-term future ESO activities,
STC endorsed a scenario in
which ESO will lead an ambitious ELT project
to full completion by 2020. The necessary
resources could come from a moderate
increase of the member state
contributions (10 %) or from other European
sources which would allow ESO
to built an ELT of intermediate ambition. A
more ambitious ELT may instead require
the involvement of a major partner sharing
nearly half of the cost. The STC agreed
that the OWL Phase B study included in
the LRP should put ESO in a strong position
to negotiate with possible partners,
along with the principles already experimented
for ALMA. The STC will look
forward to the OWL Phase B to be presented
at its Autumn 2005 meeting.
Finally, the STC recognized the urgency of
expanding the ESO premises in Garching,
but was reluctant to recommend prceeding
if such expansion was to be achieved
within the ordinary ESO budget with
the risk of having considerable negative
impact on science. Indeed, descoping
or postponing adaptive optics projects
(such as the development of an Adaptive
Secondary) would impact critical items
for the future of optical and near-infrared
astronomy at ESO. At a time when ESO
is building ALMA and preparing for an ELT,
STC felt that the concentration of the
European segment of ESO in one country
has certain advantages, but could not be
considered an obligation.
The Users’ Committee
The Users’ Committee 2004
Belgium Hans van Winckel (Chairman)
Denmark Uffe Gråe Jørgensen
Finland Heikki Salo
France Pascale Jablonka
Germany Sabine Moehler
Italy Enrico Cappellaro
The Netherlands Lex Kaper (Vice-Chairman)
Portugal João Lin Yun
Sweden Sofia Feltzing
Switzerland Pierre North
United Kingdom Malcom Bremer
Chile Mónica Rubio
The Users’ Committee (UC) acts as a direct
link between the “users at large”
and the ESO officials, and focuses on
the broad range of interactions of the current
users with the ESO observatories.
The aim of the committee is to streamline
requests from users and advise the Director
General and the ESO staff, with the
aim of making the entire process from
writing applications for observation time to
reduction of the data as efficient and
transparent as possible.
In recent years, the ESO observatories
and the users’ interaction with ESO
has changed considerably. The most dramatic
change for the general user is no
doubt the success of the service observing
possibilities. The original goal of reaching
an even share between Visitor and
Service Mode observations turned out to
be untenable and today more than 70 percent
of the requested time is in Service
Mode. The streamlined rigid data gathering
procedures offer the user, even in
Service Mode, very efficient tools for their
observing strategies. The Data Management
Division and the Users’ support division
are now the main interaction channels
for many of the users, more than the
staff of the observatories.
Overall, both Paranal and La Silla observatories
receive good to excellent satisfaction
rates by the users. The evaluation of
ESO’s telescope and instrument performances
by the user is monitored on a daily
basis by night reports (for visitors); on a
run-basis by end-of-mission reports
(visitors) and finally yearly by the UC meeting.
It is in the UC meeting that a series
of action items (AI) and recommendations
are formulated, which are filtered from
the general users’ requests. Most of these
AI and recommendations materialize in
concrete results by the next UC meeting,
illustrating that the users’ requests have
significant weight to trigger action by ESO.
During this annual spring meeting, the
UC handles a full agenda: short briefings
on the instrument-telescope performances
and proposal handling process; presenting
problem reports from the users; discussing
new reports on the future of ESO,
and a half-a-day focus on a special topic,
related to the use of ESO’s facilities, and
which is covered in much more detail. The
special topic of the 2004 UC meeting
was the Very Large Telescope Interferometer.
Several action items from last year’s
meeting have resulted in concrete actions
already. Others recommendations take
longer and will be monitored in the following
UC meeting.
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