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NICMOS and the VLT NICMOS and the VLT A New Era of High Resolution Near Infrared Imaging and Spectroscopy An International Workshop held in Pula, Sardinia, Italy May 26-27, 1998 Edited by Wolfram Freudling and Richard Hook PDF version by Norbert Pirzkal ESO Conference and Workshop Proceedings No.55 EUROPEAN SOUTHERN OBSERVATORY Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, D-85748 Garching, Germany c Copyright 1998 by the European Southern Observatory ISBN 3-923524-58-7 Cover Illustration: The background image used on the cover is taken from a photograph by Bob Fosbury showing the bay in Sardinia close to where the conference took place. It is reproduced at far lower resolution than the original. The upper insert is one of the ESO VLT firstlight images and is a true colour view of the core of the globular cluster Messier 4. It was constructed from 2 minute exposures taken on 22nd May 1998 and reaches a limiting B magnitude of about 24 in 0.53 arcsec seeing. More details of the VLT first light are given on page 2. The lower insert is taken from the paper of Peletier et al. (page 162) and shows multi-colour NICMOS/WFPC2 imaging of the bulges of nearby galaxies. It is used by permission of the authors. Contents iii Contents Preface...................................... vi Conference participants . ............................ vii Conference photograph . ............................ x Part 1. VLT Status and Instruments VLTFirstLight.................................. 2 ESO Representatives Near IR Astronomy with the ESO VLT ...................... 6 A. Moorwood CONICA: The high resolution near-infrared camera for the ESO VLT ..... 10 P. Bizenberger, R. Lenzen, H. Bellemann, C. Storz, A. Tusche, K. Wagner and R. Hofmann Part 2. NICMOS Calibration and Analysis Software The STScI NICMOS Calibration Pipeline . .................. 18 H. Bushouse, C. Skinner, J. MacKenty, D. Axon and E. Stobie StatusandGoalsoftheNICMOSCalibrationPlan................ 28 L. Colina Photometric Performance of NICMOS ...................... 36 L. Colina, S. Holfeltz and C. Ritchie The Photometric Performance of the NICMOS Grisms . ............ 47 W. Freudling and N. Pirzkal ST-ECFGrismSpectrumSoftwareforNICMOSGrismData.......... 54 N. Pirzkal and W. Freudling ImagingPolarimetrywithNICMOS....................... 62 D. C. Hines Some Experiments with the Restoration of NICMOS Camera 2 Images of OMC-1 70 R. N. Hook and S. R. Stolovy NICMOSSoftwareattheUniversityofArizona................. 74 E. Stobie, D. Lytle, I. Barg, and A. Ferro STScI NICMOS Software ............................. 82 H. Bushouse Part 3. NICMOS Science Contents iv NICMOSCoronagraphicSurveys-PreliminaryResults............. 86 G. Schneider A Coronagraphic Search for Substellar Companions to Young Stars ....... 94 P. J. Lowrance, E. E. Becklin, G. Schneider, D. Hines, J. D. Kirkpatrick, D. Koerner, F. Low, D. McCarthy, R. Meier, M. Rieke, B. A. Smith, R. Terrile, R. Thompson, B. Zuckerman The Stellar Population in the NICMOS Parallel Fields . ............ 100 A. Pasquali, G. De Marchi and W. Freudling The Evolution of Stars seen with ISOCAM - the Need for NICMOS and VLT FollowUp................................. 108 R. Siebenmorgen Unusual H2 EmissionnearaCompactSourceinOrion............. 116 M. Lindqvist and J. H. Black HST NICMOS Observations of Circumstellar Matter Around CYG X-3 . 121 W. Schmutz, W. D. Vacca, L. Close, J. Rayner, T. R. Geballe, H. Schild and R. Walder NICMOSObservestheGalacticCenter..................... 131 M. Rieke NICMOS/HST H-band (F160W) Images of the 30 Dor Starburst Cluster . 134 H. Zinnecker and A. Moneti The Formation and Evolution of LMC Rich Star Clusters: NGC 1818 ..... 138 R. A. Johnson, R. A. W. Elson, G. Gilmore, S. Beaulieu and N. R. Tanvir AColorAnalysisofNICMOSParallelObservations.............. 144 M. R. Corbin, R. I. Thompson, E. Stobie and I. Barg The Old Stellar Population of NGC 1569 from NICMOS data . ....... 152 A. Aloisi, L. Origlia, M. Tosi, L. Greggio, M. Clampin, C. Leitherer, A. Nota and M. Sirianni HST-NICMOS Observations of Galactic Bulges: Red Nuclei in Nearby Galaxies 159 R. F. Peletier and M. Balcells HST/NICMOSObservationsoftheInteractingSystemArp299......... 169 A. Alonso-Herrero, M. J. Rieke and G. H. Rieke NICMOS Camera 3 Parallel Imaging Observations: Number Counts, Sizes and RedObjects................................ 178 P. McCarthy, L. Yan, L. Storrie-Lombardi and R. J. Weymann The Structure and Composition of High Redshift Radio Galaxies . ....... 187 R. A. E. Fosbury, J. Vernet, M. Villar-Mart´ın, M. H. Cohen, A. Cimatti, S. di Serego Alighieri, P. J. McCarthy InvestigatingtheEvolutionofQuasarHostGalaxieswithNICMOS...... 195 M. J. Kukula, J. S. Dunlop, D. H. Hughes, L. Miller, C. P. O’Dea and S. A. Baum Contents v < NICMOS Imaging of QSO Host Galaxies at 0.1 < z 4.4........... 203 L. J. Storrie-Lombardi, R. J. Weymann, K. K. McLeod, G. H. Rieke, J. Hill, and V. Kulkarni α α Limits on the Star Formation Rates of z > 2DampedLy Systems from H Spec- troscopy.................................. 204 A. J. Bunker, S. J. Warren, D. L. Clements, G. M. Williger and P. C. Hewett Part 4. Future Technology DesignandStatusoftheNICMOSCryocooler.................. 210 J. W. MacKenty and E. S. Cheng 2048 x 2048 HgCdTe Arrays for Astronomy at Visible and Infrared Wavelengths 218 D. N. B. Hall Authorindex................................... 230 vi Preface On May 26 & 27, 1998, about 50 participants met for the workshop “NICMOS and the VLT” in Pula, Sardinia, Italy. The goal of the workshop was to review what has been achieved with the Near Infrared and Multi Object Spectrograph (NICMOS) on board of HST, what can be achieved in the remaining lifetime of the instrument, and how NICMOS observations can be optimized taking into account the availability of IR imaging and spectroscopy on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in the near future. The workshop took place at a time when the expected remaining lifetime of NICMOS was about 7 months, and the first call for proposals for VLT was about 3 month away. The timeliness of the workshop was underlined by the fact that first light for the VLT occurred in the midst of this meeting, which has not been anticipated at the time the date for the workshop was set. Also at the time of the workshop, the prospects for extending the lifetime of NICMOS through the installation of a cryo-cooler have improved enough to warrant a serious consideration of this possibility. A technical expert presentation on this topic was also given at the workshop and is published here. Considerable NICMOS expertise was present through the participation of a large fraction of the the NICMOS IDT as well as the STScI and ST-ECF NICMOS groups. On the VLT side, the IR instrumentation was presented by the ESO head of IR instru- mentation and news of the VLT first light was brought directly from the ESO head- quarters in Garching. The presence of experts as well as the pleasant atmosphere of the workshop fostered numerous discussions outside the formal program. From the beginning, our plan was to publish proceedings of this workshop very shortly after the workshop. The interesting and timely presentations given during the meeting strengthen the case for distributing them in written form as soon as possible. These proceedings will now be mailed less than two months after the workshop. This achievement was made possible by the cooperation of the authors who contributed to this volume, the hard work of Britt Sjoeberg the workshop secretary, a fast cover design from Ed Janssen and help with the printing arrangements from Kurt Kj¨ar at ESO. The Astronomical Society of the Pacific and Harry Payne at STScI also allowed us to use their LATEX style files and other software to ease the preparation of this volume. Bob Fosbury made available several beautiful high quality photographs of the meeting and its surroundings which appear within this volume and on the cover, although regret- tably in much poorer quality reproductions. Norbert Pirzkal provided invaluable help in reformatting and checking some papers. We would like to thank them all. Garching, June 1998 Wolfram Freudling (Workshop Chair) & Richard Hook (Principal Editor) Participant List vii Participant List Alessandra Aloisi, Osservatorio Astronomico di Bologna, Via Zamboni 33, I-40126 Bologna, Italy ([email protected]) Almudena Alonso-Herrero, University of Arizona, Steward Observatory, 933 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA ([email protected]) Eric Becklin, University of California at Los Angeles, Astronomy and Astrophysics; Dept. of Physics, 405 Hilgard Ave., Los Angeles, CA 90095-1547, USA (becklin@sofia.astro.ucla.edu) Piero Benvenuti, ST-ECF, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str. 2, D-85748 Garching, Germany ([email protected]) Peter Bizenberger, Max-Planck-Institut f¨ur Astronomie, K¨onigstuhl 17, D-69117 Heidelberg, Germany ([email protected]) John Black, Onsala Space Observatory, S-439 92 Onsala, Sweden ([email protected]) Andrew Bunker, University of California at Berkeley, Department of Astronomy, 601 Campbell Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-3411, USA ([email protected]) Howard Bushouse, Space Telescope Science Institute, Science Software Group, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA ([email protected]) Luis Colina, Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Drive, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA ([email protected]) Michael Corbin, University of Arizona, Steward Observatory, 933 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, AZ 85721-0065, USA ([email protected]) Guido De Marchi, European Southern Observatory, Science Office, Karl-Schwarzschild-Str.
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