Search the AusGO:
Public Links
Astronomer Links

The 2012 Australian Gemini and Magellan Science Symposium

Monday 22 and Tuesday 23 October 2012
Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne


Symposium Objectives

The Australian Gemini Office and Astronomy Australia Limited are pleased to announce the 2012 Australian Gemini and Magellan Science Symposium. Australian astronomers have had access to the twin Gemini Observatory 8m telescopes for just over a decade, and to the twin Magellan 6.5m telescopes for almost half as long. Australian access to Gemini is now assured through until the end of 2015, and funding has been secured for an extension of Magellan access beyond mid-2013. A suite of new instruments including GSAOI, FLAMINGOS-2, GRACES, GPI, and new CCDs for GMOS will become available on Gemini in 2013. It is therefore timely to reflect on the scientific highlights from Australian usage of these facilities, and to consider new and innovative ways to exploit these facilities technologically and strategically.

The Symposium will feature invited and contributed talks from leading Australian users of the Gemini and Magellan telescopes. The Gemini Science and Technology Advisory Committee is helping the Gemini Observatory and the new Director with developing a Long Range Plan for future capabilities. To assist the STAC in this process there will also be symposium sessions devoted to presenting and discussing new instrument concepts for Gemini and their science cases.

The Symposium is open to everyone, and not just to current Gemini and Magellan users. Students and early-career researchers in particular are encouraged to attend.

There will be no registration fee, and lunch, morning and afternoon teas will be provided.

To register, please email Stuart Ryder (ausgo -@- aao.gov.au) by 5 October 2012. If you would like to present either Gemini or Magellan science results or an instrumentation concept, please include a title and abstract and indicate if you would prefer to present in a talk or as a poster.

Scientific Program

Monday 22 October 2012
Time Speaker Title
10:00 Stuart Ryder Welcome & Introduction
10:15 Catherine Kennedy A High-Resolution Study of Carbon-Enhanced Metal-Poor Stars
10:30 Joss Bland-Hawthorn Where do the disks of spiral galaxies end?
10:45 Warrick Couch Spectroscopic dissection of E+A galaxies with Gemini
11:00 Chris Tinney A new Y dwarf found by Magellan
11:15 Juan Madrid The Rosetta Stone of Compact Stellar Systems
11:30 David Floyd The Heart of the Quasar
11:45 Nick Bate PAndAS puppies:spectroscopy of Andromeda dwarfs
12:00 Lunch
13:30 Stuart Wyithe The next 3 years
13:45 Karl Glazebrook Gemini's Long Range Plan
14:30 Chris Tinney Options for 8m access
15:00 Coffee
15:30 Dougal Mackey The accreted outer halo globular cluster system of M31
15:45 Jeremy Bailey Studying Titan's Atmosphere using NIFS
16:00 Francois Rigaut GeMS first on-sky results
16:15 Lee Spitler First results from FourStar on Magellan: the discovery of the most distant galaxy cluster
16:30 John Norris The First Stars
16:45 Martin Asplund Heavy metal: Rocks & stars
17:00 End
19:00 Workshop dinner
Tuesday 23 October 2012
9:30 Stuart Ryder Seeing Supernovae with Lasers
9:45 Pierluigi Cerulo The Build-up of the Red Sequence in High Redshift Galaxy Clusters
10:00 Francesco Di Mille The Giant Jet of the Sanduleak's star
10:15 Graeme Salter Observations of long period AAPS companions with NICI
10:30 Simon Ellis GNOSIS
10:45 Michael Ireland GHOST
11:00 Coffee
11:30 Tamara Davis ATAC forum
12:15 Daniel Bayliss Spectroscopic Follow-up of Transiting Exoplanets
12:30 Lunch
14:00 Peter McGregor Outflows and Infall - Everywhere
14:15 Rachel Webster Dissecting a Quasar: imaging and modelling a quasar core
14:30 Michael Murphy Quasar absorption-line surveys with Gemini and Magellan
14:45 Loren Bruns A three-dimensional high-redshift Ly-alpha emitter search using the Maryland-Magellan Tunable Filter
15:00 Rob Basset Stellar Kinematics of z~0.1 Star Forming Galaxies
15:15 Stefan Keller GMOS imaging: probing the formation of massive stellar clusters
15:30 Robert Barone-Nugent Type Ia supernovae observed in the near-infrared: The best known standard candle for cosmology
15:45 Chris Lidman Constraining dark energy with the rest-frame near-IR Type Ia supernovae Hubble diagram
16:00 Workshop close

Location

The symposium will be hosted at Swinburne University, Melbourne, in the Virtual Reality Theatre of the Hawthorn Campus. The Hawthorn Campus of Swinburne University is located about 6 km east of the Melbourne city centre, and is is well serviced by public transport with trains and trams.

For information about using Melbourne public transit and to plan your trip, visit Public Transport Victoria. Note that Melbourne transport is switching to a new ticketing system called myki throughout 2012, but visitors to Melbourne can still use 2-hour or daily Metcards.

Accommodation

Should you be requiring local accommodation while in Melbourne, we suggest the following:

There are numerous good hotels in the CBD near Flinders St train station, with a typical train journey Flinders St - Glenferrie ~10mins. For a good selection of options and rates try wotif.com.

Workshop Dinner

The workshop dinner will take place at The Geebung Polo Club, 85 Auburn Road, Hawthorn East at 7pm on Monday 22 October. Thanks to the generous sponsorship of AAL, there is no cost for registrants to attend this set-menu dinner, but you will need to pay for your own drinks at the bar. Should you have any dietary restrictions, please e-mail these to ausgo -@- aao.gov.au by Wednesday 17 October.

Participants

Group photo

The Organising Committee is:

The symposium is supported by the following institutions:

Australian Gemini Office, ausgo -@- aao.gov.au