An established ESA-ESO cooperation

15/16 ESOST-ECF2 What is the ST-ECF? Established at ESO in1984 following an open call-for-proposals Fourteen staff (7 ESA, 7 ESO) European point-of-contact for HST users Evolved from user support -> project support (endorsed by mid-term review in 1996) New tasks added at end of 90’s as part of the revised ESA/NASA Hubble MoU (-> 2006)

15/16 ESOST-ECF3 …additional staff supported by ESA HST contribution (outreach and calibration enhancement) and by EC (AVO)

15/16 ESOST-ECF4 Current activities HST instrument science projects in collaboration with STScI and Hubble instrument teams JWST NIRSpec procurement support from ESA ST- division in collaboration with ESA project, NASA and European industrial contractors Archive/VO developments in collaboration with ESO, CADC (Canada) and STScI Science software development and user support Public outreach - in an ESA context

15/16 ESOST-ECF5 Example science from projects NICMOS spectra of z ~ 6 quasars Observations: at z~6, the Fe II bands are shifted to ~1.5 to 1.9 µm NICMOS has unique capability to observe spectra in this band QSOs at H~19 can easily reached with NICMOS grism G141 Technically challenging since pixel-response introduces features similar to such a broad band Characterisation of this effect and software to correct for it (NICMOSlook) has been developed at ST-ECF

15/16 ESOST-ECF6 Results: High Fe II / Mg II ratios detected in all spectra, no evolution from local QSOs at z~6, age of universe <900Myrs implies that Fe was either created in Population III stars or first generation of Population II stars Freudling, Corbin, Korista 2003 ApJ 587, L67

15/16 ESOST-ECF7 ACS grism spectra HST GO program to use the ACS WFC grism for spectra of SN identified during the GOODS campaign Aim is to confirm the SN1a classification and provide the redshift for SN cosmology studies (   and equation of state of dark energy) A spectacular example is provided by SN2002fw z = 1.3 An ACS grism spectrum was obtained in 15Ks and is the spectrum of the highest z SN to date (Riess et al., 2003, astro- ph/ )

15/16 ESOST-ECF8 STIS dispersion model

15/16 ESOST-ECF9 Recent Archive Impact Recent improvements in stats due to WFPC2 enhanced associations, ACS 1/3 of WFPC2 archive retrieved from ECF last year (2/3 of all 2003 dataset retrievals) ASTROVIRTEL over after 3 years: 14+ publications plus archive tools (e.g. Querator) Future: ACS associations + enhanced products

15/16 ESOST-ECF10 Current ESO-ESA cooperation End-to-end science operations The VLT operational paradigm - including the very successful ‘Service Observing’ mode - derives from Hubble. This was largely mediated by the ST-ECF (from 1989) and strongly endorsed by Giacconi during his time as ESO DG. Instrument physical modelling Concept developed for HST spectroscopy (notably echelle modes - STIS) has been used for the creation of the UVES pipeline. This is the most highly regarded of the current VLT instrument pipelines.

15/16 ESOST-ECF11 Science data archive Developed originally at the ST-ECF as the 2nd (complete) copy of the HST archive. Picked up by, and jointly developed with, ESO as the VLT operational archive. Impact on other ESA, missions, eg. ISO and subsequently XMM Several major conceptual developments, eg. ‘on-the-fly’ calibration, data previews, image ‘associations’ are now fully integrated into both the ECF and the STScI archives. ESO are in the process of introducing on-the- fly calibration Joint ESO/ECF development of Virtual Observatory concept and scientific drivers. Pathfinding ASTROVIRTEL project now complete.

15/16 ESOST-ECF12 Major science programmes Following the HDF experiments and the Hubble ‘2nd Decade’ study, there is an increasing trend to use a substantial fraction of observing time on major facilities for cooperative, large, public investigations such as GOODS (HST, VLT, Chandra, Newton, SIRTF etc.) ST-ECF staff contribute technically and scientifically

15/16 ESOST-ECF13 Potential cooperative options Science-ready data products ST-ECF familiarity with - and participation in - Hubble end-to-end science operation makes methodologies and components available to ESO and ESA Modelling/simulation Techniques can be used for comparative studies of alternative approaches to major scientific questions

15/16 ESOST-ECF14 Instrumental synergies There are very close parallels between ESA and ESO instrument developments. Most notably, the JWST NIRSpec instrument and ESO MOS devices (existing and planned) are complex but can share many of the necessary developments in calibration, operation strategy and data product design

15/16 ESOST-ECF15 Facility synergies Just as there are closely complementary programmes with eg. HST, XMM-Newton and VLT now, there will by scientifically essential synergies between future observatories such as JWST, Herschel and ALMA; OWL and Darwin These synergies need to be actively rather than passively enabled

15/16 ESOST-ECF16 Large, multi-observatory science programmes ST-ECF technical contributions, eg. multi- wavelength image registration and combination for GOODS (radio->X-ray), deconfusion techniques for SIRTF using ACS and groundbased data Design and organisation of ‘VO-compliant’ data products