Written by: Jürgen Knödlseder, Chair, CTA Consortium Board

During the week of 6 November, 230 CTA Consortium members gathered on the beautiful island of La Palma (Spain) for its bi-annual, in-person meeting.

Topics covered during the parallel and plenary sessions of the meeting included progress reports on the CTA prototypes, the Science Working Groups and Analysis and Simulations Working Group activities, as well as the preparation work for CTA construction. One of the highlights of the meeting was the presentation of results from the first CTA Data Challenge, which is a Consortium-wide activity that consists of the analysis of simulated CTA data that are similar to those that will later be delivered to Observatory users.

Photo Credit: Elena Mora (IAC)

During the meeting, the CTA Consortium Board, which is the governing body of the CTA Consortium, re-elected Rene Ong (USA) as the Co-Spokesperson of the CTA Consortium for a further period of three years. The Board also elected Emma de Oña Wilhelmi (Spain) as new Deputy Science Coordinator and Abelardo Moralejo (Spain) as Analysis and Simulation Working Group Co-Coordinator, and it appointed Vitor de Souza (Brazil) as Deputy Chair of the Speaker’s and Publication Office. Additionally, the Board voted to admit new institutes from Croatia, Italy, Spain and the USA as members to the Consortium.

Following the meeting, some of the attendees participated in an organised visit to the Roque de los Muchachos Observatory and the site of CTA’s northern hemisphere array. For many, it was the first occasion to visit the site and to witness the construction of the Large-Sized Telescope prototype. The photo below shows Consortium members inspecting the light weight carbon fibre elements of the telescope’s optical support structure that will hold the mirrors of the 23 metre diameter telescope.[/vc_column_text][vc_single_image image=”3852″ onclick=”img_link_large”][vc_column_text]We would like to thank our generous island hosts from the Cabildo de La Palma and the City of Santa Cruz de La Palma and the organizing committee from the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias (IAC) for hosting a very successful event! The next CTA Consortium meeting will be in May 2018 in Orsay, near Paris.

To see more photos and updates from the event, search #CTALaPalma2017 on Facebook and Twitter. Read more about the event on the IAC website (en español).