VISTA exploitation: PI support from 2011

The Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) was handed over to ESO for operation on 10 December 2010. Although VISTA is now an ESO telescope the VISTA Principal Investigator and Consortium Director's tasks have not ceased, and T&S is needed to attend various meeting with ESO in their Garching HQ. With VISTA now operating routinely the role of the UK provided VISTA Data Flow System (VDFS - pipeline at Cambridge & science archive at Edinburgh) in processing the vast data volumes from VISTA and turning them into images and catalogues suitable for science use has become prominent. Leading the VDFS, and helping mediate/balance the sometimes confliciting requirements of users, and helping ensure the accuracy of the products, and the contentment of users withtin the resources avialable to VDFS remains an important task. T&S is needed for face-to-face meetings in both Cambridge and Edinburgh. There are six VISTA Public Surveys with 75% of all VISTA time over the five years 2010-2014. T&S is sought to allow the PI to interact face-to-face with the other members of five of these teams (the sixth team is led from QMUL). Attendance at one UK and on non-UK conference a year will allow presentation of the performance of VISTA to the wider community, presentation of results from commissioning, the applicant's own J band varuability survey of the Carina nebula, and of VISTA survey results in general. These will also enable the applicant to keep abreast of competitive work.