• List of activities organised during reporting period
  • YERAC 2009 (Porto, Portugal) July 29-31
  • ERIS 2009 (Manchester, UK) September 7-11
  • IRAM Single Dish School 2009 (Pradollano, Spain) September 4-11

• (Meetings attended – both meetings for NA organisation or meetings on behalf of RadioNet) Reports on meetings organised
  • We are very grateful to the insititutes who hosted these events, to the enormous hard work of the LOCs, and to the local institutes and national funding bodies who provided financial and other support. Figures are approximate as not all claims and invoices have yet been received.
  • ERIS was attended by 97 people, comprising 21 lecturers and tutors and 76 'students', ranging from people about to start an MSc to senior astronomers from other domains, from Australia, Belgium, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, UK and USA. The SoC is in the process of gathering feedback but the overall impression is that it was a great success. The total cost was approx GBP 18,200 of which 2000 was contributed by the Oxford Department of Physics and Astronomy in the form of catering. We received a grant of pounds 2500 from the UK Royal Astronomical Society towards the expenses of early-career and non-tenured lecturers and tutors. That leaves about GBP 13705 or Euro 15300 cost to RadioNet.
  • IRAM Single Dish school “From Millimeter to Far-Infrared Astronomy” We are grateful to Carsten Kramer and colleagues for organising the fifth such school, for 42 participants from Austria, Chile, China, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Netherlands, Poland, Spain, Sweden and USA. There were 9 lecturers, including a speaker on Herschel, and 6 local teaching assistants. The school included lectures and hands-on observing sessions. The total cost was approx. 22 000 Euro, of which IRAM paid 12 000. Most participant registration and subsistence was paid by their home institutes or CNRS/INSU, leaving about 3700 Euro to be paid by RadioNet.
  • YERAC We are grateful to Sonia Anton, Dalmiro Maia and colleagues on the LOC/SOC who organised a very successful event. 42 students attended, from France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Spain and UK, and gave oral presentations. There were 4 local chairs and 3 additional organisers. The total cost approx. Euros 9200 of which 2500 was raised by the LOC from the Portuguese National Foundation for Science. The RadioNet contribution is about Euros 6600. The meeting was a great success. The quality of the participants' talks was very high. See below for the organisers' recommendations for future.

• Issues - organisational, administrative or other problems foreseen
  • We intend to keep presentations and other material on-line for extended periods, as a resource to the community. That means that we should remind contributors not to include material which might infringe copyright (for example, illustrations from commercial collections).
  • The delay in receiving funding has caused some extra work for the Manchester financial administrators with respect to ERIS but nothing else has been reported yet for any WP4 activity.
  • All events were underspent with respect to the original budget, by 15300/22320 for ERIS, 3700/6250 for the Single Dish school and 6600/8930 for YERAC (actual/budget). I suggest that we ask next year's organisers of ERIS (mm-wave) and the Solar school to prepare estimates by the end of 2009 and if they are similar to this year, we might be able to offer modest support to other events in 2010. YERAC might be of longer duration, see below.
  • We should avoid clashes. This should be easier now we can use the RadioNet events page to mark dates. Note that in fact, despite clashing, both ERIS and the Single Dish school were oversubscribed.
• Red flags - major problems
  • None to my knowledge

• Plan for next year – 12 month outlook, more detail in first 6 month (including budget for each planned meeting/workshop)
  • CESRA summer school “Radio Physics of the Sun and the Interplanetary Medium” 2010(4-5 days)
    • RadioNet contribution in present budget: Euros 6250
    • RadioNet WP4 contact: K-L Klein.
    • Venue under investigation (e.g. Nancay, France; Sep or Oct 2010)
    • SOC H. Aurass (Potsdam), K.-L. Klein (Meudon & Radionet; chair), A. MacKinnon (Glasgow), V. Melnikov (Nizhnyi Novgorod), A. Nindos (Ioannina), S. Poedts (Leuven ; European Solar Phys Div of EPS), S. Pohjolainen (Turku)
    • The School will cover key subjects in solar radio physics and physics of the Sun-Earth conection such as emission mechanisms, magnetic fields in the corona and their role in energy storage and release. Observing and data processing techniques will encompass a frequency range from sub-mm to m waves and longer, using ground-based and space borne observations.
  • ERIS 2010 - mainly mm-wave interferometry - IRAM and ALMA.
    • RadioNet contribution in present budget: Euros 22320 K
    • RadioNet WP4 contact: P Cox
    • Venue: Grenoble
  • YERAC 2010
    • RadioNet contribution in present budget: Euros 8930
    • RadioNet WP4 contact: A M S Richards
    • Local contact: P Colomer
    • Venue: Alcala de Henares, near Madrid and Yebes, Spain
  • Feedback from YERAC 2009 organisers (with recommendations):
    1. A standard YERAC web page to help organisers, including links to information on the background of YERAC and on RadioNet including funding and refunding information. We should implement this. Already done, thanks to Paco Colomer! See http://www.yerac.org/
    2. A representative from RadioNet should attend. We should implement this to explain the project, TNA etc.
    3. In 3 days it was hard to allocate enough time for discussions to get going properly at the end of each session; future YERACs should be 4 or 5 days so that a more relaxed agenda could allow students to become more confident, and leave more time for informal interaction. This would be good if future organisers can achieve this within the budget.
    4. A session on CASA was planned but had to be dropped for reasons outside the organisers' control. Future YERACs could have a session dedicated to software for radio data analysis. This should probabably be optional, subject to local expertise and student interest in the skills on offer (the host institute might specialise in any kind of single dish or interferometry).
  • 2011 Single Dish school
  • 2011 ERIS provisionally ASTRON or JIVE
  • 2011 YERAC provisionally Manchester
• Expected milestones/deliverables
  • See above list of events.
  • ERIS web site with lectures and tutorials will remain on line.
  • Springer / Lecture Notes in Physics has expressed interest in publication of the CESRA lectures.

— Anita Richards 2009/09/25 13:16