An established ESA-ESO cooperation

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What is the ST-ECF?

Established at ESO in1984 following an open call-for-proposals

Fourteen staff (7 ESA, 7 ESO)

European point-of-contact for HST users

Evolved from user support -> project support (endorsed by mid-term review in 1996)

New tasks added at end of 90’s as part of the revised ESA/NASA Hubble MoU (-> 2006)

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…additional staff supported by ESA HST contribution (outreach and calibration enhancement) and by EC (AVO)

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Current activities

HST instrument science projects in collaboration with STScI and Hubble instrument teams

JWST NIRSpec procurement support from ESA ST-division in collaboration with ESA project, NASA and European industrial contractors

Archive/VO developments in collaboration with ESO, CADC (Canada) and STScI

Science software development and user support

Public outreach - in an ESA context

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Example science from projects

NICMOS spectra of z ~ 6 quasars

Observations:

at z~6, the Fe II bands are shifted to ~1.5 to 1.9 µm

NICMOS has unique capability to observe spectra in this band

QSOs at H~19 can easily reached with NICMOS grism G141

Technically challenging since pixel-response introduces features similar to such a broad band

Characterisation of this effect and software to correct for it (NICMOSlook) has been developed at ST-ECF

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Results: High Fe II / Mg II ratios

detected in all spectra, no evolution from local QSOs

at z~6, age of universe <900Myrs

implies that Fe was either created in Population III stars or first generation of Population II starsFreudling, Corbin, Korista

2003 ApJ 587, L67

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ACS grism spectraHST GO program to use the ACS WFC grism for spectra of SN identified during the GOODS campaignAim is to confirm the SN1a classification and provide the redshift for SN cosmology studies ( and equation of state of dark energy)A spectacular example is provided by SN2002fw z = 1.3An ACS grism spectrum was obtained in 15Ks and is the spectrum of the highest z SN to date (Riess et al., 2003, astro-ph/0308185)

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Current ESO-ESA cooperation

End-to-end science operationsThe VLT operational paradigm - including the very

successful ‘Service Observing’ mode - derives from Hubble. This was largely mediated by the ST-ECF (from 1989) and strongly endorsed by Giacconi during his time as ESO DG.

Instrument physical modellingConcept developed for HST spectroscopy (notably

echelle modes - STIS) has been used for the creation of the UVES pipeline. This is the most highly regarded of the current VLT instrument pipelines.

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Science data archiveDeveloped originally at the ST-ECF as the 2nd

(complete) copy of the HST archive. Picked up by, and jointly developed with, ESO as the VLT operational archive. Impact on other ESA, missions, eg. ISO and subsequently XMM

Several major conceptual developments, eg. ‘on-the-fly’ calibration, data previews, image ‘associations’ are now fully integrated into both the ECF and the STScI archives. ESO are in the process of introducing on-the-fly calibration

Joint ESO/ECF development of Virtual Observatory concept and scientific drivers. Pathfinding ASTROVIRTEL project now complete.

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Major science programmesFollowing the HDF experiments and the Hubble

‘2nd Decade’ study, there is an increasing trend to use a substantial fraction of observing time on major facilities for cooperative, large, public investigations such as GOODS (HST, VLT, Chandra, Newton, SIRTF etc.)

ST-ECF staff contribute technically and scientifically

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Potential cooperative options

Science-ready data productsST-ECF familiarity with - and participation in -

Hubble end-to-end science operation makes methodologies and components available to ESO and ESA

Modelling/simulationTechniques can be used for comparative studies

of alternative approaches to major scientific questions

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Instrumental synergiesThere are very close parallels between ESA and

ESO instrument developments. Most notably, the JWST NIRSpec instrument and ESO MOS devices (existing and planned) are complex but can share many of the necessary developments in calibration, operation strategy and data product design

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Facility synergiesJust as there are closely complementary

programmes with eg. HST, XMM-Newton and VLT now, there will by scientifically essential synergies between future observatories such as JWST, Herschel and ALMA; OWL and Darwin

These synergies need to be actively rather than passively enabled

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Large, multi-observatory science programmesST-ECF technical contributions, eg. multi-

wavelength image registration and combination for GOODS (radio->X-ray), deconfusion techniques for SIRTF using ACS and groundbased data

Design and organisation of ‘VO-compliant’ data products