2007 Users' Meeting First Announcement

Please take note that the 2007 CFHT Users' Meeting will take place on May 9 to 11 in Marseille, France. Details on the exact location will be communicated at a later date.

CFHT is currently operating three highly competitive instruments:
- two wide field cameras (MegaCam and WIRCam), still the largest cameras in operation on a telescope and complementing each other to offer wide-field imaging from the u band in the near UV to the K band in the near IR.
- a unique spectro-polarimeter, ESPaDOnS, offering a 70000 spectral resolution over the whole visible spectrum.

The 2007 Users' Meeting will offer the opportunity to present and discuss a few "hot topics" on three main themes:

A review of the ongoing science

- The latest news on the scientific results of the CFHT Legacy Survey, which represents a huge investment of observing time on CFHT.
- A highlight on other ongoing scientific programs, including the spectacular results from the first two years of operation with ESPaDOnS, with ample space for posters and enough time for key oral presentations.

What to do once the CFHTLS is completed?

In the [2008-2010] period, the 100-night a year currently used by the CFHTLS will be available to the CFHT communities for large programs on either (or all) of the three main instruments CFHT will offer, for another Legacy Survey, or for PI programs. What would you like to see happening:
- A follow-up of the CFHTLS? (continuation of current topics with MegaCam and WIRCam)
- A CFHTLS-2? (new topics, eg a joint MegaCam/WIRCam survey for stellar physics)
- Observing campaigns on ESPaDOnS?
- Other ideas?

2011 and beyond

The current "Golden Age Plan" calls for the CFHT Corporation to be in good shape staff- and operation-wise by the end of 2010. A few questions remain to be answered in a relatively near future to see what happens next.
- What level of accessibility to the observatory do the current CFHT communities want to maintain beyond 2011?
- Which instruments in addition to the current ones should be made available?
- Back to high angular resolution with VASAO or other AO development, and for which instrumentation?
- `OHANA
- Spectro-polarimetry in the IR?
- Very high accuracy radial velocity observations?
- A bigger WIRCam?
- ...?

In order to prepare this important 2007 Users' Meeting, a web/email based forum is set up. It will be visible by all, but posting will be restricted to those who registered and were authorized to participate by CFHT in order to keep the forum clean of any spam.

Whichever way you wish for CFHT to evolve into, you will have to make it known in order to make it happen.

So, look at the information on these web pages, register and participate! Thanks in advance for your involvement, which is going to be essential to draw the future of your access to CFHT.