Notes of the 11th teleconference of the IACHEC Working Group Chairs Participants: C.Grant (CG), M.Guainazzi (MG), H.Marshall (HM), J.Nevalainen (JN), P.Plucinsky (PP), S.Sembay (SS), Y.Terada (YT) Excuses: F.Haberl (FH), A.Pollock (AP) The 8th IACHEC meeting will be held at Hothorpe Hall (http://www.hothorpe.co.uk) - Monday morning (25/3) to Thursday morning (28/3). Participants are assumed to arrive on Sunday evening. It is possible for individual participants to extend their stay. The baseline cost of the whole package (full board and lodging, meeting rooms) during the meeting is 97 pounds/day. One evening a more formal dinner will be organized, at the additional cost of about 30 pounds/person. It is agreed that prospective participants will be offered the possibility of paying the full 4-day package, or a series of separated single-day packages (the additional cost of the banquet will be spread through this overall "fee"). The venue offers a wide range of meeting rooms and facilities, including plenty of rooms for informal gatherings in the evening. It is a couple of miles away from the closest train station, along a line connecting to London. No rental cart or shuttle bus is needed. The event centre does not want to be paid directly. Payments will be made through the Leicester University (LUX) via bank transfer prior to the meeting. SS is preparing the corresponding form with full instructions for the participants. The meeting announcement will follow the following schedule: - SS will send MG via e-mail the detail of the cost for all packages (full 4-days package, single day package, additional days before/after the meeting, cost for accompanying partner) - MG will prepare by the end of next week a pre-registration web page, with a general description of the meeting structure, and a simple ASCII pre-registration form. This form will include the request of a presentation. The forms shall be cut-and-sent-back to MG and SS. Deadline for pre-registration is 31/12/2012 - The meeting page shall remind that the structure of the next meeting implements a consensus emerged during the last meeting: devoting more of the meeting time to interactive working group sessions. As it has also been agreed not to change the overall duration of the meeting, this necessarily implies reducing the time devoted to formal presentations on the calibration status of current, and future mission. IACHEC participants are encouraged to take advantage of the plentiful opportunities to present details of the new calibration results during the WG meetings. - once the pre-registration web page is public, an announcement will be sent to the IACHEC mailing list - when the system for the formal registration is ready, a link to the corresponding form will be added to the meeting web page. This is likely to happen by December 1. Deadline for registration shall be March 1, 2013. While there are 37 pre-booked rooms, and some more can be booked if the need arises, it is in principle possible that some participants need to be hosted elsewhere in case of a massive turnaround. The web page should specify that accommodation at the meeting venue will be allocated on a strict "first-ask-first-serve" basis. 2. Meeting structure -------------------- The agreed meeting structure is: - 1st day morning I: calibration status of operational missions - 1st day morning II: preparation status of future missions - 1st day afternoon: WGs meet - 2nd day morning: Special session I - 2nd day afternoon: WGs meet - 3rd day morning: WGs meet (or Special session II) - 3rd day afternoon: WGs meet - 4th day morning: WGs reports It is agreed that "Special session I" will deal with cross-calibration above 10 keV. Special steps will be undertaken to make sure that a sizable delegation from the NuSTAR calibration team attends the meeting: * MG will send F.Harrison a "formal" invitation on behalf of the WG Chairs, asking for the agreement by the NuSTAR project to explicitly mention NuSTAR in the title of the special session * SS will talk with K.Foster during his forthcoming visit to LUX * HM will contact NuSTAR colleagues in the US, in particular during the forthcoming AAS meeting next January Other contacts will be sought after once the pre-registration meeting page is public: - JN will contact three groups, who have done recent calibration-related work on galaxy clusters - HM will contact the organizers of the cross-calibration conference, he attended last year - HM will contact a group at "NIST, the National Inst. of Standards & Technology in Gaithersburg, MD. NIST runs a UV-EUV synchrotron source (SURF III), used for calibration. The person I was thinking of contacting is Claire Cramer (http://www.nist.gov/pml/div685/grp06/cramer.cfm). She gave a talk at the Fermilab meeting on SI-based photometric standards. While her particular sub-field might not directly relate to high energy calibration, she could likely find a colleague who has such interest. Interestingly, at the FermiLab meeting, Pancino of the Gaia project made a plea for a space-based optical calibrator. Of course, X-ray sources usually produce significant optical light as well, so there may be some additional interest there. Claire might be able to talk to that possibility. Steve Kent (FermiLab) gave a nice general talk on the science of calibration at the meeting and he might also be someone to contact." - MG will contact colleagues at IUCAA, who recently expressed interest in attending the next IACHEC meeting on behalf of the Astrosat Project (if eventually nobody can come, somebody from LUX can give an Astrosat status talk) - MG will contact the HXMT colleagues, inviting them to specify as soon as possible their visa requirements - MG will contact the GAIA Project Scientist, to remind his commitment to send a SOC member to the next IACHEC meeting It is decided to organize an informal "calibration satellite" evening discussion during the meeting. AOB --- * the meeting will take place during the last week of the Japanese fiscal week. Although the Japanese colleagues plan to send at least two scientists to the IACHEC, there are funding issues to be tackled. SS mentions the possibility to delay the payment of the meeting fee in a few individual case, if this may help more Japanese colleagues to attend. These efforts are welcome. * next meetings: - a (probably short) teleconference in the second half of December to track the status of the (per-)registrations - the usual pre-meeting review of WG activities in the second half of January