Europe's medium telescopes: status and prospects

Principal contact: J. Davies (jkd@roe.ac.uk )

Organisers: J. Davies

Europe's suite of 2-4m optical telescopes is entering a period of transition. The ASTRONET science vision for European astronomy has been published and the EC-supported ASTRONET and OPTICON projects are working to identify how an optimised and integrated suite of medium sized telescopes can help to deliver this vision. At the same time the European commission, through OPTICON, is providing access to many of these telescopes for astronomers from outside the traditional national users of these facilities. In this session the present status and future plans of many of these telescopes will be outlined. The session will lay out the facilities which are open to European astronomers now and will describe possible future developments at these observatories. OPTICON's plans for continuing trans-national access via a common time allocation process for EU supported users will be presented and discussed.

Scientific Programme

Monday 20th April
14:00	The OPTICON Trans-NAtional Access Programme	John Davies
14:10	Nationally Operated Telescopes: An Obsolete Paradigm?	Johannes Andersen
14:25	ING, La Palma - 2020 Vision	Chris Benn
14:40	The New La Silla Operations Paradigm	Michael Sterzik
15:00	Calar Alto 2.0	Joao Alves
15:15	Medium Sized Telescopes and Training of Young Researchers	Michel Dennefeld
Monday 20th April
16:30	AAO Wide-Field Spectroscopy Facilities	Matthew Colless
16:50	UKIRT: Current Status and Future Plans	Gary Davis
17:00	Canada- France- Hawaii Telescope: Status and Prospects	Christian Veillet
17:15	Recent Results and Future Improvements of OHP 193cm Telescope with SOPHIE	Michel Boër
17:30	The 2 Meter Telescope of the National Astronomical Observatory Rozhen: Status and Prospects	Tanyu Bonev
17:45	Robotic Telescopes: The Liverpool Telescope Experience	Iain Steele
18:00	The Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer (MROI): First Light and Beyond	David Buscher