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Concept Note Indo-South African Flagship Programme in Astronomy

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Concept Note Indo-South African Flagship Programme in Astronomy Concept Note Indo-South African Flagship Programme in Astronomy Preamble: The Indo-South Africa Flagship Workshop meetings took place at the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore on 15th-16th September 2014, and at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pune on 19th September, 2014 and were sanctioned by the Departments of Science and Technology of both countries. A list of participants is included in the appendix. 1. Introduction India and South Africa share common aspirations for scientific and technological development, and for the growth of human capital resources. The countries are members of the BRICS consortium, and have a current bi-lateral agreement to foster joint progress. Their shared goals are particularly apparent in the area of astronomy and astrophysics. Indo-African astronomy cooperation began with projects in radio astronomy in Nigeria and Mauritius in the 1980s, and the optical Nainital-Cape Survey, started in 1997. The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) joined SALT in 2007, and the National Centre for Radio Astrophysics of the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCRA) has recently joined the SKA. Astronomy captures the imagination of people everywhere, and touches a fundamental human desire to understand the universe that surrounds us and our place in it. It provides an ideal way to attract young learners into scientific and technical studies, developing the human capacity for the knowledge-based economy of the future. Its appeal transcends boundaries of class and race and speaks to all members of our societies. The goal of the Indo-South African Flagship Programme in Astronomy is to exploit these basic strengths for the mutual betterment of our peoples. The projects of this programme will be built on the principles of equity, sharing the costs and sharing the benefits. Supported activities must speak to common interests and must draw upon complimentary strengths of the partners. Proposals will require joint participation from both countries, will be openly solicited from the astronomical communities of the partners, and will be evaluated both on scientific and technical merit and on contribution to human capacity development. 2. Current and future astronomical capabilities Optical observatories for night time astronomy in India are spread across the country. The Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA), Bangalore operates two facilities: the Vainu Bappu Observatory (VBO) located at Kavalur in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, which hosts an indigenously-made 2.3m, a 1.3m, and a 1.0m telescopes, and the Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) at Leh in Jammu and Kashmir with the remotely-operated 2m Himalayan Chandra Telescope. IUCAA operates a 2m optical telescope at the Girawali Observatory. The Physical Research Laboratory, (PRL) Ahmedabad operates a 1.2m telescope at Mt. Abu in the state of Rajasthan. The Aryabhatta Research Institute of Observational Sciences (ARIES) operates a 1m telescope at Nainital and a 1.3m telescope at Devasthal, located in the northern state of Uttarkhand. A 3.6m telescope will be installed soon in Devasthal. NCRA operates the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope (GMRT), the world’s largest radio 1 telescope operating at low radio frequencies, in the 150MHz to 1.4GHz range. Located approximately 80 km north of Pune, it is an open access facility and is used by astronomers across the world. NCRA also operates the Ooty Radio Telescope (ORT), a large cylindrical telescope located near Udhagamandalam. The Raman research institute (RRI), Bangalore in collaboration with IIA operates Gauribidanur Low Frequency Array at 34.5 MHz. IIA and RRI also collaborate with various Indian institutes in the Astrosat space satellite program. All these institutes have active research programs in many areas of astronomy and astrophysics. India is a partner in the Thirty Metre Telescope project where IIA, IUCAA and ARIES are the main institutes constituting TMT-India. IUCAA is a partner in the LIGO gravity wave detector, and NCRA in the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The South African Astronomical Observatory is based in Cape Town, and operates 1.9m and 1.0m optical telescopes at Sutherland, and a new 1.0m telescope is being built there. SAAO manages SALT on behalf of SALT Pty Ltd, and also a number of international small telescopes, e.g. the IRSF Japanese 1.4m, BISON, SuperWasp, Monet, Las Cumbres, KMTNET, etc. A new 4m class telescope is being proposed. HartRAO has 26m and 15m XDM antennas for radio astronomy, and a to-be-installed 12m dish for geodetic VLBI. HartRAO also plays a leading role in the African VLBI Network. SKA-SA has built KAT7 as an engineering test-bed, which is now producing science results. The 1st MeerKAT antenna has been installed. CBASS and PAPER are hosted by SKA-SA. The South African Gamma Ray Astronomy Programme has been set up to facilitate interests in HESS and CTA. The NASSP programme is a pre-doctoral training programme for honours-level and Masters-level training. NASSP has operated at UCT for the past 12 years, and it is proposed that additional new nodes will be set up at UKZN and at NWU. Several universities support astronomy research programmes, including observation, theory, astrophysical simulations, and gravitation and cosmology. 3. Common scientific goals Indian and South African astronomers share many common research interests and active existing collaborations. These include observational, theoretical and computational studies of the Sun and space weather, exo-planets, stellar astrophysics and astro-seismology, star formation, evolution of low and high mass stars, the interstellar medium and astro-chemistry, galactic chemical evolution, transient phenomena, pulsars, neutral hydrogen in galaxies, active galactic nuclei and high-redshift galaxies, and galaxy evolution. Both countries are active in developing virtual observatory facilities, and have fundamental interests in astronomical outreach and education. We identify a few areas of strategic importance in the partnership: ● GMRT-MEERKAT collaboration, leading to significant contributions towards SKA (e.g. MeerKAT Absorption Line Survey­­ MALS) ● promoting human capacity development through expanded student and postdoctoral training ● collaborative instrumentation development programs in both radio and optical technologies ● multi-wavelength investigations of time-variable astrophysical phenomena 2 4. Proposed modalities of engagement Short to medium term Enhanced scientific exchange programme The existing scientific exchange programme should be enhanced in the fields of astrophysical-related science, engineering, technology, computational hardware and software development, and outreach. We should facilitate joint Indo-South Africa supervision of doctoral students, with research studies carried out in either country. At least five new student and two postdoctoral busaries annually should be established by each partner. The enhanced exchange programme should be expanded to include engineers and technical staff of the joint projects. Joint seminar/workshop Scientists on both sides may simultaneously submit proposals to host a joint, focused seminar/workshop. A joint review panel will decide on a maximum of one such event per year, alternating annually between the two countries. Support for the event should include both the travel and subsistence costs of the participants and the costs of running the event. Joint instrumentation development projects Both countries have capacity for instrument development, with significant synergy and complementarity. By combining their strengths in joint instrument development projects, the partners would have world-class capabilities. We recommend establishing a program to support such joint projects, with peer review and oversight to insure that only programs of the highest quality are selected. It must be recognized that even modest instruments cost typically 10M R, and a major instrument for a large telescope will cost 5 to 10 times this amount. Any jointly-developed instrument must also be provided with sufficient funding to support the operations costs, in order to ensure success. In order to keep observatories competitive, a new instrument program should be started every 3 to 4 years. The projects should have a strong human capacity development component, to provide training of future instrumentalists and engineers. We list here typical instrument projects that are of strong interest to astronomers in both countries and that would exploit their complementary strengths: ● optical imaging polarimeter ● multi-object spectrographs with fibre and IFU inputs ● focal plane detector systems for the optical and near infrared ● next generation monitor control systems for radio telescopes ● SKA work packages ● adaptive optics systems Long-term Joint Instrumentation Group Both countries have instrumentation groups with individual strengths, but neither has the full capacity for end-to-end development of astronomical instrumentation, and there is no long-term, stable source of funding to maintain the human resources needed. For example, India has strong expertise 3 in developing the electronics for focal plane array detectors, while the SAAO has state of the art machining capacity and extensive experience with dewar technology; combining these capabilities would allow the production of complete detector systems for optical and infrared instrumentation. We propose forming a joint instrumentation group, drawing on the respective
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