Astro-Wise Workshop

Early next year the OmegaCAM instrument will come on-line at the VLT Survey Telescope. With this state change a new era in the AstroWise project starts. This training workshop will introduce potential observers to the complex astronomical data reduction process associated with the preparation of scientific useful information from the wealth of raw images produced by the large imaging camera OmegaCAM. The instrument is available to all European Southern Observatory member states, which makes the number of potential observers large. We will concentrate, however, on the first batches of observers and the groups associated with the OmegaCAM/AstroWise consortia.

In addition to this training the workshop will also be the collaboration moment where all the developers of the AstroWise Software Environment come together to discuss the continued development of the software package and to organize the managerial workload of all project leaders.

During the training part of the workshop participants will be introduced to the data reduction facilities provided by the AstroWise Environment and practice the processing recipes that they can execute for standard data reduction of the scientific data. All processing will be done remote to the Lorentz Center on the GRID computing facilities provided by the associated consortia, in principle by the Kapteyn Institute, Groningen. The workshop also concentrates on the interaction between potential users and software developers. Only through this interaction the development cycle will roll in the right direction for the astronomical users so that they can perform the tasks necessary to answer the astronomical scientific questions.