• WGB1ESOSpectroSurvey

WGB1 ESO Spectroscopic Survey

This page collects materials related to the response to the ESO call for letters of intent for public spectroscopic surveys

Preface

WGB1 plans to apply for a public spectroscopic survey of open clusters and young associations with FLAMES on ESO VLT. The survey aims to complement and complete Gaia data. Specifically, from ground based spectroscopy we will gather important information, such as accurate radial velocities, stellar parameters, and abundances, for a large number of clusters and for significant samples of stars within each cluster. This information will allow us to complement and best exploit Gaia data. The science, and thus the targets, which we wish to investigate cover all stages of cluster evolution, with exception of the embedded phase.

Timeline

Current timeline from Bruno Leibundgut presentation at the last GREAT plenary meeting in ESTEC is the following:

• call for letters of intent (LoI): July/August -possible deadline: Oct. 15 2010
• invitation for proposals: end of January 2011
• proposal deadline: 31 March 2011
• start of survey in October 2011

Size of the survey should be at least 300 nights.

LoIs should include: a scientific rationale, observing strategy, estimated observing time, required observing conditions.

Current status

• July 13, 2010.

The Gaia/GREAT community is starting different initiatives to get ground based spectroscopic data to complement Gaia data. One of these initiatives is indeed the public survey with FLAMES. Therefore, during the last few months a discussion has been ongoing on whether the the WGB1/SE3 open cluster community should merge our planned survey with those planned by other groups (in particular GCDS SE1 and SE2) on field stars in the halo, bulge, thin and thick disks. Eventually, at our last telecon held on July 13 (see attached minutes) we decided that we will send a separate LoI, but we will try to coordinate with the other groups and show complementarity.

We can still consider merging with SE2 (SE1) for the final proposal, in case ESO will suggest it.

Since initial plans for an open cluster spectroscopic survey were already made at the meeting held in Padova in October 2009, we started putting together the science case, target list, and technical requirements, thanks also to the contributions of many of WGB1 participants.

A lot still remains to be done, in particular on the survey planning/strategy and target definition. For this reason, we set up three technical working groups:

• August 10, 2010

ESO Call for Public Spectroscopic Surveys: http://www.eso.org/sci/observing/proposals/Call_for_Public_Spectroscopic_Surveys_2010.pdf. Deadline for letters of intent: 15 October 2010 12:00 CEST

LIST OF PARTICIPANTS IN THE FLAMES SPECTROSCOPIC SURVEY ON OPEN CLUSTERS AND YOUNG ASSOCIATIONS

These groups will work in very close collaboration between them and with the coordinators of the science cases.

Minutes of the WGB1/SE3 telecons

• SE3 telecon 4 June 2010 Minutes_SE3_4June2010_v3.txt

• SE3 telecon 13 July 2010 SE3_M02_V3.pdf