sci23004 — Announcement

New Hubble and Webb Working Groups

24 July 2023

-Chris Evans-

Two Working Groups (WGs) were recently convened by the Interim Director at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), to provide advice and recommendations on the future use of Hubble and Webb in the key areas of long-term variability monitoring and exoplanet initiatives. 

The charters for the WGs are available at Strategic Exoplanet Initiatives and Long-term variability monitoring strategies, and their membership includes representatives from the ESA Member States. The WGs have been tasked for their respective topics to seek input from the user community, to identify science themes to prioritise for future programmes, to advise on optimal timing of follow-up observations, and to develop concepts for potentially large-scale Director’s Discretionary programmes. Both WGs have had their initial meetings and begun their work, and are now seeking community input.

• Strategic Exoplanet Initiatives: The WG has invited community input via a short online survey and/or short white papers (no more than one page of text and one page of figures). Further details of the WG activities are available here, including a list of FAQs on the white papers and next steps. There is a town hall on the WG activities for early-career researchers at 3 pm CEST on 31 July 2023.

• Long-term variability monitoring strategies: The WG has invited community input via a short online survey and/or in the form of short contributions (ideally limited to one page of text, plus figures/references). Short contributions should be sent as a pdf file to wg-longterm@stsci.edu. Two particular areas where the WG is looking for input are long time baseline science opportunities and a concept for a Director’s Discretionary Time programme to probe high-redshift transients.

The deadline for submissions to both WGs is 8 September 2023. Informed by these community inputs, the WGs will develop preliminary recommendations in late 2023, with final recommendations in early 2024.

Contacts

Chris Evans
ESA/HST & ESA/JWST Project Scientist
ESA Office, STScI Baltimore, USA
Email: hubblenewseurope@stsci.edu