Ci-dessous les annonces de deux workshops :

1 - "Gaia Modelling with a Gaia mock catalogue", Barcelone, 29 Février - 2 Mars

2 - "Dynamics of Young Star Clusters and Associations", 42nd Saas-Fee Winter Course of the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy,
March 25-31, 2012, Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland

Transmis par Francesca Figueras et Catherine Turon.

Amitiés,
Misha Haywood

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1 - Workshop "Gaia Modelling with a Gaia mock catalogue"

Web : https://gaia.am.ub.es/Twiki/bin/view/WS2GaiaMock/WebHome
Organizers : GREAT-ESF, Working Group "The Gaia-Model Interface"
Place and dates : Barcelona, from 29 February to 2 March 2012
Participation : limited to about 40 persons
Bourses : http://www.great-esf.eu (deadline, December 5 2011)

Rational :

The Gaia launch day is around the corner. We are excited by the unprecedented
accuracy and amount of the data that Gaia will provide us. Furthermore, the
ground-based chemodynamical spectroscopy survey projects progress strongly and
will add more value to the Gaia data. To extract the maximum useful information
about our Galaxy’s dynamics and formation from the enormous data set, the
generation and elaboration of theoretical models is crucial. A question is : are
we ready ?

Gaia will produce an unprecedentedly large amount of the data for about one
billion stars with many dimensions of information. The accuracy of the
information of each dimension could be fairly inhomogeneous, depending on
distance, population, location in the sky, dust extinction, crowding and so on,
i.e. there will be a complicated observational "selection function". On the
other hand, theoretical models are never like the real Galaxy, and some
simplifications and/or coarse sampling are always applied. To quantitatively
compare such theoretical models with the upcoming Gaia data, we need to be well
prepared and exercises with a Gaia mock catalogue will be crucial for theorists.

The workshop will discuss how we as astronomers would like to access and use
the Gaia catalogue. The discussion will be focused by using a simulated Gaia
catalogue (mock catalogue) for Galaxy modelling. We are inviting 3 types of
participants (some may work for both A and B) ;

A. Modellers who want to generate a Gaia mock catalogue from their simulations,
e.g. N-body simulations, semi-analytic models.

B. Modellers who want to compare their Galaxy model to the Gaia data, i.e.
establish tools to statistically analyse (mock) Gaia data, e.g. dynamical
modelling (torus model, made-to-measure), number-count models.

C. Experts of the contents and accuracies of the Gaia data, the mock catalogue,
dust, stellar populations, e.g. DPAC-CU1, CU2, GAP, Besancon Galaxy model.

The aim of this workshop is to stimulate discussion and establish collaboration
among these participants. The expected outcome of this workshop are :

* establishing a close link between Galaxy modelling community to the
DPAC teams.
* addressing the challenge of generating and using the Gaia catalogue.
* providing input and feedback, including the use cases for the Gaia
(mock) catalogue, from the Gaia modelling community to the DPAC teams.
* setting the tasks for the participants to work on for the next workshop.

SOC :

Teresa Antoja (Groningen), James Binney (Oxford), Anthony Brown (Leiden), Victor
Debattista (UCLan), Francesca Figueras (Barcelona, LOC Chair), Andreea Font
(Cambridge), Amina Helmi (Groningen), Daisuke Kawata (MSSL, UCL), Xavier Luri
(Barcelona, LOC), Ivan Minchev (Potsdam), William O’Mullane (ESAC), Celine Reyle
(Besancon)

Program (subject to change) :

Session 1
Participants A and B will give a very short talk about how they
want to a Gaia Mock Catalogue.

Session 2
Invited participants C will tell us about "what we will see", including a Gaia
mock catalogue, various tools and archives for the Gaia data.

Session 3
Free discussion

Session 4
Presentations and/or suggestion : what we need to be ready for Gaia.

We also encourage PhD student to attend and they do not have to give a
presentation, but can join free discussion actively.

The number of participants is limited to about 40.

We will make further announcements, when we confirmed with all the
invited speakers for Session 2.
All the updated information will be available on the above web site.

All the best,
Daisuke Kawata, Celine Reyle, and Francesca Figueras on behalf of SOC.

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2 - Dynamics of Young Star Clusters and Associations

Dear Colleagues,

We wish to advertise the following Saas-Fee Winter Course. Please distribute to interested colleagues :

42nd Saas-Fee Winter Course of the Swiss Society for Astrophysics and Astronomy (SSAA)

Dynamics of Young Star Clusters and Associations

March 25-31, 2012, Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland

We are pleased to announce the program for the 2012 Saas-Fee Course with a series of lectures concerning the theory and observational constraints on the dynamics of young star clusters and associations. With the proliferation of large area photometric, radial velocity, and astrometric surveys from ground-based telescopes, the launch of Gaia planned for 2013, and the explosive increase in our capacity to simulate the dynamics of these complex systems, the time is right to visit this topic. The school will attempt to address such questions as :

1) How common are star-forming events of varying richness ?
2) What are the dynamical states of these events ?
3) In what sort of star-forming event did the Sun form ?
4) How can we use answers to these questions to constrain predictive theories of star formation ?

These questions will be addressed by the following distinguished international faculty :

Prof. Cathie Clarke, Institute of Astronomy, U. Cambridge
Prof. Robert Mathieu, Dept. of Astronomy, U. Wisconsin
Dr. Neill Reid, Space Telescope Science Institute

These schools, which began over 40 years ago, are intended for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and senior researchers interested in learning more about the topic. Registration is now open with early registration discount deadline 15 January, 2012. The school is limited to 100 participants. Villars-sur-Ollon, Switzerland is located in the heart of the Alpes Vaudoises provides a range of winter sport and other activities. It should provide an excellent setting for this school. Travel grants are available for students who also plan to attend “From Atoms to Pebbles : Herschel’s view of Star and Planet Formation”. More information is available on the website : http://www.astro.phys.ethz.ch/sf2012/

Regards,
Richard Parker and Michael Meyer (on behalf of the LOC)