Educational activities

We have been extensively involved with organizing the NOT/OSO Nordforsk summer school, see

http://www.chalmers.se/nordic-baltic-school ,

that will be held June 14-23 at Onsala Space Observatory in Sweden. During this school the NOT will be used in remote mode and preparations were made for the use of the remote observing system. The system will be largely the same as used during the NOT/OSO Nordforsk summer school at Tuorla observatory in Finland last year, but one thing we are looking at is to improve access for the remote observers to the observing system computers.

Beyond the NOT/OSO Nordforsk summer school we also will have the regular on-site observing courses for the Stockholm University (5 nights in May) and the master school in CUO/NBI guaranteed time (3 nights in August).

As part of International Year of Astronomy 2009 (IYA2009) an essay competition was organized in the different Nordic countries. The participants had to write an essay on an astronomical topic and the winners, elected by national expert-panels, were invited to visit the NOT in December 2009 where in collaboration with the staff astronomers they planned and carried out an observational programme.

As the result of initiatives taken in the operational sub-committee (OSC) of the CCI a specific committee (LPIYA) coordinating the activities from the different telescopes on La Palma as part of the IYA2009 was set-up. Through this committee we were involved in the organisation of an exhibition called ``Mira qué Luna'' in Santa Cruz de La Palma, see

http://www.lpiya.org/miraqueluna/

where we assisted in setting-up the exhibition, provided some hardware and we contributed with a poster of an IR image of the Moon taken with the NOT. The activities of the LPIYA has been very successful and it was agreed to continue coordinating outreach activities of the telescopes on La Palma through this committee. In name of the whole group and all telescopes at the ORM a poster (including logos from all telescopes) was presented about the work of the group by Emilio Molinari (TNG) at the CAP2010 meeting (March 2010, Cape Town) on communication in astronomy as an example of a multinational collaboration started during IYA2009.

A very specific outreach activity that was also started in the OSC is an initiative to create closer ties between the observatory and the people of La Palma by targeting secondary school kids and giving them some feeling of what is being done at the observatory. This project `Nuestros Alumnos y el Roque de Los Muchachos' includes both an introduction to astronomy, but also the practical side of running the observatory (optics, mechanics, electronics of telescopes), and consist of giving talks on astronomy at the school and receiving groups of high-school kids at the observatory for workshops and guided telescope tours. We aim for one specific age age-group ($\sim$15 years), where the intention is to reach all the kids of this age over the whole of the island. Currently we are in the early stages of the project. This has included meetings with representatives of the teacher on La Palma to define what is being offered, and a schedule was defined for visits during the period March-May plus a couple of dates in September. Several presentations (including by NOT staff) have been given at a few schools and subsequent visits were made to the ORM. Things seem to be function properly and the project is well on its way. A general web-page with information about the project can be found at

http://www.lpiya.org/nuestrosalumnos/ .

As part of the support and training of the NOT students on La Palma, regular meetings have been held with the Nordforsk post-doc and lectures by the staff where held about the basics of the IRAF astronomical data reduction package, and about the reduction of echelle spectroscopy in particular using FIEStool. Lectures about data reduction of NIR (NOTCam) data and long-slit spectroscopic (ALFOSC) data are planned for the near future.