The registration is now open for the :

“Gaia Chemo-Dynamical Survey” (GCDS) Survey science

2-4 november 2010 in Nice, France.
http://cassiopee.oca.eu/spip.php?article324/

Important dates :

• Registration opens : 30th august 2010 (on our website)
• Deadline for financial support application : 17th of september (email submission)
• Deadline for abstract submission : 17th of september 2010 (email submission)
• Deadline for registration : 30th of september 2010

Scientific summary :

Gaia will provide an unprecedented map of the positions, kinematics and spectrophotometry of a billion stars in the Milky Way, allow a quantum leap on our knowledge of the Galaxy and its stellar populations. We will be able to dissect the different Galactic components and confront this detailed structure with models of galaxy formation and their cosmological context. The full three dimensional velocity vector of a large number of stars, and their detailed chemical composition will allow to address crucial questions such as the amount and distribution of dark matter in the Galaxy and the formation and evolution of the different Galactic components. Nonetheless, our picture of the Milky Way will be hampered in two ways : the low resolution spectrograph on-board (RVS) will not reach the same limiting magnitude as the rest of the Gaia instruments and its resolution (R=11 500 for stars brighter than about 14 and R=6 500 for fainter stars) and small wavelength coverage, are not well suited for detailed studies of elemental abundances.
Indeed, the radial velocity measurements for faint stars (i.e. distant, but also the much more numerous less evolved stars) do not match the accuracies obtained for the tangential motions (proper motions), and in particular, for very faint stars (V > 17) no radial information will be available. As a consequence, the dynamical map of the Milky Way will be incomplete and restricted to the nearby few kiloparsecs limiting the scientific impact on certain high-priority questions. Furthermore, the metallicity measurements obtained from the low resolution spectra means that the metallicity distribution function will be available from Gaia only within this sphere of influence, leading to a highly incomplete, and biased, view of the Milky Way.
Secondly, to underpin the evolution of the Milky Way requires knowledge of a time variable, which can be provided by detailed elemental abundance studies. This is much needed to understand the star formation, chemical evolution history and the coupling to the dynamics, all processes that have determined the way the Milky Way looks today. Since elemental abundances (α-elements which tell about the supernova type II, iron-peak elements which are related mostly to supernova type Ia, r- and s- process which measure the impact of winds from evolved stars) are either not provided at all by Gaia, or restricted to a small number of elements (Mg, Si, Ca, Ti, and Fe) in a limited sample of the cool stars brighter than about 12.
For all of the above reasons, wide field high resolution spectroscopic surveys from ground based facilities appear as a necessary complement to guarantee the maximum scientific throughput of the Gaia mission. This need has been recognised in a number of reports, and highlighted in the Science Vision report by Astronet : “It is crucial to supplement the Gaia data-set with dedicated ground-based spectroscopic programmes, in order to obtain the radial velocity and detailed chemical abundances for fainter stars.”

The recent efforts by the GREAT network and in particular its GREAT Chemical Tagging Working Group (WGA3), and subsequent discussions with a number of other GREAT WGs (e.g. WGA1) has resulted in the proposal to form an inclusive consortium to undertake an ambitious Gaia Chemo-Dynamical Survey (GCDS) of the Milky Way. The kick-off meeting took place in Paris on the 27th of April 2010, and efforts are ongoing to lay the foundations of this very large collaborative effort. It is now time to open the discussions to a wider community, and the proposed workshop will bring together the galactic archaeology, galactic dynamics, stellar physics communities to lay out and discuss the main science cases for the GCDS, and their best implementation across the various existing and planned instrumentation available to Europeans.
Special emphasis will be given to the forthcoming ESO call for Large Public spectroscopic Survey, for which Letters of Intent will have just been sent to ESO (expected deadline 15th of October).

The workshop will be organised in sessions, following the four Science Experiments (SEs) that have been identified :
• SE1 : Mass Distribution of the Galaxy
• SE2 : How did galaxies form as traced by chemistry
• SE3 : How clusters and stars formed and evolved
• SE4 : Additional Science (includes various science topics that will benefit from the survey, mainly in stellar physics -variable stars, hot stars, …)

Science Organising Committee (SOC) :

Olivier Bienaymé, Piercarlo Bonifacio, Sofia Feltzing, Eva Grebel, Gerry Gilmore, Amina Helmi, Vanessa Hill (Chair), Nami Mowlavi, Sofia Randich, Mathias Steinmetz, Floor Van Leeuwen, Nic Walton

Key speakers / participants include :

Olivier Bienaymé ; Carine Babusiaux ; Piercarlo Bonifacio ; Sofia Feltzing ; Anette Fergusson ; Eva Grebel ; Gerry Gilmore ; Amina Helmi ; Vanessa Hill : Patrick de Laverny ; Nami Mowlavi ; Sofia Randich ; Alejandra Recio-Blanco ; Mathias Steinmetz ; Floor Van Leeuwen ; Nic Walton.

Duration and layout of the meeting :

The meeting will last 3 full days, statrting tuesday 2nd of november early morning until thursday 4th afternoon (no later than 16h00), and will include parallel sessions (1/2 day, devided according to SEs), plenary sessions consisting of short presentations and ample time for discussions and organisation of the GCDS consortium.

Abstract submission :

To apply for a talk, abstracts should be sent to Vanessa.Hill@oca.eu BEFORE September 17th, with the following information :
*****************************
Email object : "GCDS Nice : abstract"
– Name, affiliation, position (student/postdoc/staff)
– Title of talk
– Abstract
******************************

Venue & Registration :

The workshop will be held in “La Maison du Séminaire” in Nice (http://www.maison-seminaire-nice.cote.azur.fr/page_en_1.html), which meeting room can accommodate 50 (and up to 70) participants and is conveniently located close to the Nice harbour.
Registration fees will amount to 120 Euros, covering all lunches and coffee breaks during the meeting, which will be organised at the meeting venue.
Registration is now open on our website (http://cassiopee.oca.eu/spip.php?article324) with a deadline for registration 30th September 2010

Reasonable price accommodation is also provided by the “Maison du Séminaire” ( 65€ single and 70€ double), while there is plenty of other hotels in the harbour vicinity. Please note that november in Nice is still high touristic season, and we strongly advise participants to book their accommodation well in advance. Information on accommodation is available on our website :http://cassiopee.oca.eu/spip.php?article324/

Attendance, and sponsoring :

We expect 50 attendees to the workshop, which is the right size to allow for plenary discussions, as well as split sessions per Science Experiments for part of the workshop.
The workshop is partially supported by the ESF (through GREAT) and this will allow us to sponsor up to 10 participants to attend the workshop, with priority to GREAT-participating countries, young researchers and researchers with low funding resources.

Applications for financial support should be sent to gcds_local_admin@oca.eu and Vanessa.Hill@oca.eu BEFORE September 17th, with the following information :
*****************************
Email object : "GCDS Nice : funding application"
– Name, affiliation, position (student/postdoc/staff)
– I apply for support of :
* registration fees
or/and
* local expenses (per diem of 90Eur/day to cover accommodation + 1 meal) : indicate days of arrival and departure
or/and
* travel expenses : please include a quote for the travel expense
******************************

Important dates :

Registration opens : 30th august 2010
Deadline for financial support application : 17th of september
Deadline for abstract submission : 17th of september 2010
Deadline for registration : 30th of september 2010

For the LOC,

Vanessa Hill

Local Organising Committee (LOC) : Vanessa Hill (chair), Patrick de Laverny,Alejandra Recio-Blanco, Clare Worley, Sophie Rousset, Sylvie Goletto