This award will provide partial support for the workshop "An International Workshop to Develop the SONG Global Telescope Workshop, which takes place in Charleston, SC in September 2011.
This conference brings together about 100 researchers (including students and new researchers) to discuss the establishment of U.S. partners for the Stellar Observations Network Group (SONG). SONG is an existing international collaboration that will build and use a global network of eight one-meter sized telescopes distributed all over the world with two main science goals of studying the internal structure of stars in unprecedented detail, and searching for Earth-sized exoplanets in habitable zones. The main purpose of this conference is to address development of the U.S. contribution to the project.
The Stellar Oscillations Network Group (SONG) is an international consortium of astronomers working to determine the ages and interior structures of bright, nearby stars, as well as seeking to find planets orbiting these stars. Learning about stellar interior structures will help us to better understand the how stars change as they age and how the Milky Way galaxy is structured and how it has changed as it has aged. Identifying extrasolar planets will help us to better estimate the chances of finding life elsewhere. These ambitious goals can be met from ground-based telescopes without the need of orbital satellites such as NASA’s Kepler mission. Instead, the consortium needs only to build a whole-Earth telescope composed of several one-meter aperture telescopes widely dispersed in longitude. This telescope is designed to continuously monitor selected bright stars for periods of up to six months at a time. Currently, two of the four planned northern-hemisphere one-meter nodes of this telescope are being constructed; one by Danish astronomers in the Spanish Canary Islands and another by astronomers in central China. One or two U.S. nodes are needed to complete the network. In order to unite U.S. interest and support for the SONG project, the College of Charleston hosted the Fourth SONG Workshop in Charleston, South Carolina, in September 2011. The workshop brought together scientists from a number of U.S. astronomical institutions, along with their international counterparts. The workshop addressed the status of the existing telescope construction, SONG science, the interactions between SONG and other observatories, the plan for U.S. SONG nodes, and a Chinese proposal for a mini-SONG telescope network. The workshop concluded with a brainstorming session on how to secure funding and find institutional support for a U.S. node, as well as plans on how to incorporate U.S. nodes into the SONG network.
