The VLT Survey Telescope workshop

Naples, 20-21 July 2009

We announce a workshop on the usage of the Guaranteed Time of the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), to be held in Naples on July 20-21, 2009.

VST is a 2.6m active optics telescope designed and implemented by INAF as part of a joint venture with the European Southern Observatory. It is equipped with a wide-field camera built by the European consortium OmegaCam, covering a field of view of 1 square degree. Operations of VST + OmegaCam are planned to start on Summer 2010.

On the basis of the MOU with ESO concerning just VST, the return for the Italian community is expected to be 15-20% of the total VST observing time, corresponding to ~50 nights/year for the next 10 years. Part of this time is already allocated to survey projects which have been submitted to

ESO on 2006 and have passed a recent internal critical revision. A significant fraction of the time (~170 nights, i.e. 70% in the first 5 years of the GTO) is still available for survey projects to be proposed by the INAF community. The aim of this workshop is to collect ideas from the Italian national community for the usage of this residual GTO time, also in view of the review by ESO of the VST Public Survey and GTO status that will be held on September 24.

The meeting will be also the occasion to overview the current state-of-the-art of the past and future survey programs which the VST programs will confront with and to present the existing facilities related to the VST observations.