Fiber optics are essential components of many modern astronomical instruments. The first applications of optical fibers, the pioneering work and the soon following revolution was captured by highly successful conferences and their proceedings (1988, 1993 and 1998). Although the very basics of optical fibers have not changed fundamentally since then, a lot has happened over the past 15 years. Therefore it is very timely to revive what became known as the “Fiber Optics in Astronomy” conference series, and organize a 4th meeting to continue the series.

The goal of this conference is to bring together all the researchers, engineers, scientist and even industrial parties who work on/with fiber optics, and provide a very deep, comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art technologies, methods, applications, instruments.

Where and when?

The “Fiber Optics in Astronomy - IV.” conference will be held at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) between August 19-21, 2014. The symposium will take place in the Phillips Auditorium (see the Maps & Directions page).

We are planning to have a dinner on Wednesday, August 20th. Details will be available later.

Timeline

How can you attend?

This is an open meeting, so any interested parties  are welcome to attend, however admission will be restricted to individuals who pay the registration fee, and due to the limited capacity of the venue we only accept the first 100 registrations for the in-person attendance.

Since the meeting is over the summer, when traveling to the Boston area is not the cheapest, and also being relatively close to the 2014 SPIE meeting some of you might not have the means to attend in person. Although we highly encourage this for a more productive meeting, we will also support a “virtual” participation through webcasting the talks and providing live connection for those who register to participate remotely. This, as we hope, will also widen the audience of this conference and result in a more productive, more influential meeting.

For those who register as “remote participant” we will make the presentation materials (pdf) available a few days before the meeting, so they have the ability to submit questions ahead of time. This is to make sure they can influence the Q&A/discussion sessions even if the live connections (Skype, JoinMe, webcast) would be interrupted/not available for some technical reasons.

We encourage universities/research groups to book a local video-conference-equipped room for the duration of the meeting and have multiple remote participants join together as a group. In this case we ask for a single remote user registration, which can help many ways: minimize the local cost, improve the experience as local discussions can take place, organize the live feedback/discussion, and last but not least help to keep the bandwidth wider for each remote participant.

About the program

Due to the very specific goals and the limited time available during the three days of the meeting all major talks are invited talks, with some limited open slots for presenting ongoing research and instrument development. The Program can be found here. If you like to bring a poster or send in a poster you are welcome to do so.

Proceedings, availability of presentations

The journal PASP agreed to publish a special issue on fiber optics, containing the invited talks of the conference. This provides an opportunity for the presenters to publish in a refereed journal, and it also ensures the highest quality of the presented materials. We specifically ask the invited speakers to include not just their own results but also summarize work done by others in the same field, and thus provide a true overview of the stat-of-the-art.

We intent do make all the presentation materials public a few months after the meeting, by linking PDF documents on the program page.

Accommodation and travel

We are booking block reservations for rooms at the Hotel Tria and at the Courtyard by Marriott. More information about these accommodations, as well as a note on alternative hotels can be found on the Accommodation page, as well as a contact person who can help you with local transportation or hotel issues.

Contact

If you have any questions please contact Gabor Furesz by e-mail:     gfuresz at cfa . harvard . edu

Please include in the subject line “FOiA”.