With the sliding door over its 17-ton infrared telescope wide open, NASA's Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy – or SOFIA – soars over California's snow-covered Southern Sierras on a test flight.
Magnetic field streamlines detected by SOFIA are shown over an image of the Keyhole Nebula, part of the larger Carina Nebula, imaged with the ESO 3.6-metre telescope on La Silla.
We are pleased to confirm that the SOFIA/ALMA sponsored conference “Our Galactic Ecosystem: Opportunities and Diagnostics in the Infrared and Beyond” at the UCLA Lake Arrowhead Lodge is going ahead, as planned, as an in-person event, with a late registration deadline on Feb 14.
While virtual meetings can be very valuable – as exemplified by the three well-attended SOFIA virtual workshops held over 2021 - we feel that they cannot fully replace in-person events. We are therefore, after significant consultation within the SOFIA Science Center, with the USRA and ALMA sponsors and with NASA, proceeding with the Lake Arrowhead meeting.
However, in consideration of the Covid-19 situation, we have adjusted both our meeting protocol and the timeline for registration and abstract submission.
We are reassured that the California caseload (as tracked by the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center) is, as of Jan 18, coming down significantly, indicating that the situation will be significantly improved by late February.
We have defined a comprehensive Covid protocol which in addition to vaccination and masking requirements also now includes a requirement of a negative Covid-19 test before the participants leave their home. We will also have Covid tests available at the meeting site to test any participant showing potential symptoms of the disease. Our complete Covid-19 protocol can be found here. U.S. residents can order free test kits here.
Because of the uncertainty in these last few weeks, we are leaving the registration and abstract submission open for the meeting until the late registration deadline on Feb 14. The SOC is finalizing the conference program, and after this schedule has been filled all new abstracts will be assigned to posters.
We thank you (invited speakers, registered participants and potential attendees) for your patience and we look forward to seeing you in the beautiful San Bernardino mountains.
By Youngmin Seo and Joan Schmelz
Paper: Probing Polarization and the Role of Magnetic Fields in Cloud Destruction in the Keyhole Nebula
Seo, Young Min, et al., 2021/08, ApJ, 917, 57.
The SOFIA project is pleased to invite proposals for a "Flash Call", for Director's Discretionary Time (DDT) observations with the FIFI-LS instrument in a celestial region, to be observed in the March 2022 Suitcase Deployment to Chile. The available sky area is approximately spanned by: RA=11h - 15h and Dec= -5˚ - +25˚.
A total of ~14h of observing time is available.
The region available corresponds to extended "dead legs" late in the flight plans focused on observations of the 30 Doradus Legacy program, and will thus generally correspond to high flight altitudes.
All advertised modes of FIFI-LS are available for these observations.
Scientific observations with the FPI+ guide camera are also possible.
Proposals should be submitted through the USPOT tool to "Cycle 75", using the proposal process for Director's Discretionary Time observations. The Observers Handbook details properties of FIFI-LS.
Please note that the ingest of Cycle 10 proposals is active during this period. Proposers are therefore urged to verify that these proposals are submitted to Cycle 75 and not to Cycle 10.
Proposals are due on Jan 21, 2022, 9 pm PST. The proposals will be evaluated though an abbreviated, dual anonymous, review process. Proposers are therefore reminded to anonymize their texts accordingly. Selections are expected to be announced by the week of January 31.
Questions about the call or proposals can be addressed to the SOFIA Help desk: sofia_help@sofia.usra.edu.
Flight series information to come.
Flight series information to come.
Flight series information to come.