Educational activities

During the semester we had a half night remote observing run as part of the Observational Astrophysics course at Uppsala University, Sweden. There were also 2 group visits from Finnish high-schools that were given some telescope time in technical nights.

Preparations have been started for the observing course for the Stockholm University (5 nights in May), which this year will be held remotely. We especially are involved in the preparations for the Nordic-Baltic Research Training Course ``Observational cosmology and the formation and evolution of galaxies'' that will take place at Onsala, Sweden, during the period 11-20 June 2012. The course is organised jointly by the Onsala Space Observatory (OSO, Sweden), the Nordic Optical Telescope (NOT, Spain), the Finnish Centre for Astronomy with ESO (FINCA, Finland), and the Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics (University of Oslo, Norway). As during the previous joint training courses, the NOT will be used in remote mode. See for details about the course

http://www.not.iac.es/Onsala2012/ .

Soon we will start preparation for the NordForsk ``Observational Stellar Astrophysics in the Era of Gaia and Kepler Space Missions'' held at Molétai Observatory in Lithuania in July 2012 which will also use the NOT in remote mode. We also will have the regular on-site master school in CUO/NBI guaranteed time (3 nights in August).

For the students at the NOT a more indepth course was provided about the reduction of NOTCam data and about the functioning of CCDs. Shortly, an introduction course on CCD data reductions using IRAF will be given.