Notes of the 23th teleconference of the IACHEC Working Group Chairs Skype 17 September 2015 Participants: V.Burwitz (VB), C.Grant (CG), M.Guainazzi (MG), V.Kashyap (VP), D.Bhattacharya (DB), E.Miller (EM), H.Marshall (HM), J.Nevalainen (JN), P.Plucinsky (PP), S.Sembay (SS) 1. 11th IACHEC meeting logistics -------------------------------- No major issues so far. The rooms to be used during the meeting have been booked. Arrangements with the nearby hotels are well under-way. The payment of the meeting fee will be possible via bank transfer. An agreement for payment via credit card is being worked out. A draft of the pre-registration web page is available. It is very good, easy to browse through and complete. Kudos for Dipankar and the IUCAA team! A few changes have been suggested before we advertise it to the IACHEC mailing list (we aim at sending the second announcement by the end of September). - it is agreed that we do not need a two-step procedure (pre-registration and registration) beyond the bureaucratic requirements vis-a-vis the visa clearance rules. We will therefore include as much information as possible in the current "pre-registration" pages - a section on the visa procedure should be added and linked from the left side column. It should clarify the reason for the December 1 deadline - in the registration web page "arrival"/"leave" fields should be added, for those prospective participants who may wish to attend only part of the meeting - a field should be added for those requiring to book a taxi in advance (e.g. from the Mumbai Airport) at arrival - a field should be added asking if the prospective participant is interested in the accommodation at IUCAA - a free-format field for comments should be added - the registration web page should also include the title and abstract of the talk(s) that the prospective participant wish to give in the plenary sessions (as usual the detailed scientific program of the WG meeting is left to the Chairs) 2. Scientific program of the 11th IACHEC meeting ------------------------------------------------ ACTION 150817/1 on PP: propose T.Kallman and R.Smith to give a talk on their work to enhance spectral analysis software for ASTRO-H high-resolution data Both expressed interest in giving a talk, but they ruled out joining the meeting in person due to the overlap with the probable date of the ASTRO-H launch. They offer giving a talk via Skype, and this is supported by the meeting venue ACTION 150817/2 on MG: ask R.Petre if he would be willing to give a review talk on ASTRO-H ground-based calibrations R.Petre mentioned that it may be difficult for him to join the meeting (reason: see above). If he cannot come, MG can probably cover this talk. JN is trying to organize a special session of the cluster working group on cluster cosmology and cross-calibration. He will keep us updated. PP suggests that it may be interesting for the IACHEC community to know the plans for the calibration of the ATHENA mirrors. MG will ask if somebody from ESA could come: ACTION 150917/1 on MG: contact Dave Lumb to check if he or some of the ESA ATHENA Project members could join the IACHEC and give a talk on the calibration plans for the ATHENA mirrors Deadline: 1 week after the 2nd announcement HM suggests that we may have one or more evening sessions. One possibility is to have a session on PyBlocks. We will investigate if there is sufficient critical mass for that: ACTION 150917/2 on MG: ask K.Madsen (NuSTAR) if she plans to join the next IACHEC meeting and give a talk on PyBlocks with NuSTAR ACTION 150917/3 on SS: contact the Chair of the ATHENA simulator WG to check if s/he is interested in joining a session on calibration uncertainties at the next IACHEC ACTION 150917/4 on MG: evaluate if a presentation on PyBlocks for ASTRO-H would be sufficiently mature and interesting Deadlines: 1 week after the 2nd announcement 3. Next meeting --------------- The next meeting will be held around the second half of November. The main goal will be verifying the status of the meeting registration