An established ESAESO cooperation

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• An established ESA-ESO cooperation

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What is the ST-ECF?

• Established at ESO in1984 following an open
  call-for-proposals
• Fourteen staff (7 ESA, 7 ESO)
• European point-of-contact for HST users
• Evolved from user support -gt project support
  (endorsed by mid-term review in 1996)
• New tasks added at end of 90s as part of the
  revised ESA/NASA Hubble MoU (-gt 2006)

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• additional staff supported by ESA HST
  contribution (outreach and calibration
  enhancement) and by EC (AVO)

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Current activities

• HST instrument science projects in collaboration
  with STScI and Hubble instrument teams
• JWST NIRSpec procurement support from ESA
  ST-division in collaboration with ESA project,
  NASA and European industrial contractors
• Archive/VO developments in collaboration with
  ESO, CADC (Canada) and STScI
• Science software development and user support
• Public outreach - in an ESA context

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Example science from projects

• NICMOS spectra of z 6 quasars

• Observations
• at z6, the Fe II bands are shifted to l1.5 to
  1.9 µm
• NICMOS has unique capability to observe spectra
  in this band
• QSOs at H19 can easily reached with NICMOS grism
  G141
• Technically challenging since pixel-response
  introduces features similar to such a broad band
• Characterisation of this effect and software to
  correct for it (NICMOSlook) has been developed at
  ST-ECF

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• Results
• High Fe II / Mg II ratios detected in all
  spectra, no evolution from local QSOs
• at z6, age of universe lt900Myrs
• implies that Fe was either created in Population
  III stars or first generation of Population II
  stars
• Freudling, Corbin, Korista 2003 ApJ 587, L67

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ACS grism spectra

• HST GO program to use the ACS WFC grism for
  spectra of SN identified during the GOODS
  campaign
• Aim is to confirm the SN1a classification and
  provide the redshift for SN cosmology studies (WL
  and equation of state of dark energy)
• A spectacular example is provided by SN2002fw z
  1.3
• An ACS grism spectrum was obtained in 15Ks and is
  the spectrum of the highest z SN to date (Riess
  et al., 2003, astro-ph/0308185)

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STIS dispersion model
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Recent Archive Impact

• Recent improvements in stats due to WFPC2
  enhanced associations, ACS
• http//archive.eso.org/archive/hst/wfpc2_asn/3site
  s/
• 1/3 of WFPC2 archive retrieved from ECF last year
  
• (2/3 of all 2003 dataset retrievals)
• ASTROVIRTEL over after 3 years 14 publications
  plus archive tools (e.g. Querator)
• Future ACS associations enhanced products

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Current ESO-ESA cooperation

• End-to-end science operations
• The VLT operational paradigm - including the very
  successful Service Observing mode - derives
  from Hubble. This was largely mediated by the
  ST-ECF (from 1989) and strongly endorsed by
  Giacconi during his time as ESO DG.
• Instrument physical modelling
• Concept developed for HST spectroscopy (notably
  echelle modes - STIS) has been used for the
  creation of the UVES pipeline. This is the most
  highly regarded of the current VLT instrument
  pipelines.

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• Science data archive
• Developed originally at the ST-ECF as the 2nd
  (complete) copy of the HST archive. Picked up by,
  and jointly developed with, ESO as the VLT
  operational archive. Impact on other ESA,
  missions, eg. ISO and subsequently XMM
• Several major conceptual developments, eg.
  on-the-fly calibration, data previews, image
  associations are now fully integrated into both
  the ECF and the STScI archives. ESO are in the
  process of introducing on-the-fly calibration
• Joint ESO/ECF development of Virtual Observatory
  concept and scientific drivers. Pathfinding
  ASTROVIRTEL project now complete.

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• Major science programmes
• Following the HDF experiments and the Hubble 2nd
  Decade study, there is an increasing trend to
  use a substantial fraction of observing time on
  major facilities for cooperative, large, public
  investigations such as GOODS (HST, VLT, Chandra,
  Newton, SIRTF etc.)
• ST-ECF staff contribute technically and
  scientifically

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Potential cooperative options

• Science-ready data products
• ST-ECF familiarity with - and participation in -
  Hubble end-to-end science operation makes
  methodologies and components available to ESO and
  ESA
• Modelling/simulation
• Techniques can be used for comparative studies of
  alternative approaches to major scientific
  questions

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• Instrumental synergies
• There are very close parallels between ESA and
  ESO instrument developments. Most notably, the
  JWST NIRSpec instrument and ESO MOS devices
  (existing and planned) are complex but can share
  many of the necessary developments in
  calibration, operation strategy and data product
  design

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• Facility synergies
• Just as there are closely complementary
  programmes with eg. HST, XMM-Newton and VLT now,
  there will by scientifically essential synergies
  between future observatories such as JWST,
  Herschel and ALMA OWL and Darwin
• These synergies need to be actively rather than
  passively enabled

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• Large, multi-observatory science programmes
• ST-ECF technical contributions, eg.
  multi-wavelength image registration and
  combination for GOODS (radio-gtX-ray), deconfusion
  techniques for SIRTF using ACS and groundbased
  data
• Design and organisation of VO-compliant data
  products