The "Journées radio SKA-LOFAR" (SKA-LOFAR radio days) are organized by the "action spécifique SKA-LOFAR" in association with all National Programmes from CNRS/INSU (PCMI = Interstellar Medium, PNCG = Cosmology and Galaxies, PNHE = High Energies, PNST = Sun-Earth relations, PNP = Planetology, PNPS = Stellar Physics).
The main aim of the AS SKA-LOFAR is to favour the development of the radio "low and mid-frequencies" community in France in order to play an active role in the preparation and exploitation of the new generation large radio instruments (LOFAR, MeerKAT, ASKAP, SKA...).
These new facilities (will) offer vastly improved sensitivities and angular resolutions in broad spetral ranges, from the lowest frequencies observable from the ground (~10 MHz) up to ~10/20 GHz. Corresponding scientific perspectives are broad and bright, as illustrated by the "key science projects" of SKA, including the survey of billions of objects, the study of the epoch of reionization, cosmology, high energy physics, stellar physics, galaxies and clusters, cosmic magnetism, the transient universe, solar and planetary physics, exobiology ...).
French scientists are already active in several domains, but this community need to grow. Data reduction "pipelines" are more and more automatized and standardized, so that these new large instruments become usable, as a rule, by researchers not specialized in radioastronomy techniques.
The purpose of these "radio days" is to present these new large instruments, their scientific programs, their communities and projects, in order to motivate new projects and new users from the french community in all scientific domains, and to have instrument experts and potential users meet.
The organisation will alternate presentations about "instruments and methodes/tools" and scientific presentations in all domains, favouring discussions and interactions. The meeting will include invited and contributed presentations, and will end up with a debate about their outcome and follow-up. The first of these should be the preparation of the CNRS/INSU "prospective" and/through the redaction of a "white paper" gathering the interests of the french community for SKA.
The program will be built around the key scientific themes of LOFAR and SKA: epoch of reionization, fundamental physics with pulsars, HI and galaxy evolution, cosmology, cosmic magnetism, planetology, exobiology, continuum "surveys", transient universe , etc
Interested people are encouraged to register ASAP on the web site to help us organize the logistics. The web site is also to be used for submitting oral contributions. For more information, contact :journees-radio@sciencesconf.org. There will be no registration fee.
The "action spécifique" can partly cover the travel expenses for young scientists participating to the meeting. If this is your case, please send a message with your coordinates and the abstract of the proposed contribution to journees-radio@sciencesconf.org before january 10th, 2014.
A workshop on the science with NenuFAR (LOFAR's super station) will immediately follow the "radio days", at the same location. Informations and program can be found here.
