AstroGrid-D: Enhancing Astronomic Science with Grid Technology

We present AstroGrid-D, a project bringing together astronomers and experts in Grid technology to enhance astronomic science in many aspects. First, by sharing currently dispersed resources, scientists can calculate their models in more detail. Second, by developing new mechanisms to efficiently access and process existing datasets, scientific problems can be investigated that were until now impossible to solve. Third, by adopting Grid technology large instruments such as robotic telescopes and complex scientific workflows from data aquisition to analysis can be managed in an integrated manner. In this paper, we present prominent astronomic use cases, discuss requirements on a Grid middleware and present our approach to extend/augment existing middleware to facilitate the improvements mentioned above

Infrastructure for Detector Research and Development towards the International Linear Collider

The EUDET-project was launched to create an infrastructure for developing and testing new and advanced detector technologies to be used at a future linear collider. The aim was to make possible experimentation and analysis of data for institutes, which otherwise could not be realized due to lack of resources. The infrastructure comprised an analysis and software network, and instrumentation infrastructures for tracking detectors as well as for calorimetry.Comment: 54 pages, 48 picture

The ESO Spectroscopic facility

We present the concept of a novel facility dedicated to massively-multiplexed spectroscopy. The telescope has a very wide field Cassegrain focus optimised for fibre feeding. With a Field of View (FoV) of 2.5 degrees diameter and a 11.4m pupil, it will be the largest etendue telescope. The large focal plane can easily host up to 16.000 fibres. In addition, a gravity invariant focus for the central 10 arc-minutes is available to host a giant integral field unit (IFU). The 3 lenses corrector includes an ADC, and has good performance in the 360-1300 nm wavelength range. The top level science requirements were developed by a dedicated ESO working group, and one of the primary cases is high resolution spectroscopy of GAIA stars and, in general, how our Galaxy formed and evolves. The facility will therefore be equipped with both, high and low resolution spectrographs. We stress the importance of developing the telescope and instrument designs simultaneously. The most relevant R\&D aspect is also briefly discussed.Comment: 6 pages 4 figures , presented at IAU Symposium 334 "rediscovering our galaxy