You may be surprised how many astronomical research areas can benefit from ultra-precise astrometry! Do you need fundamental microarcsecond-level dynamical measurements? The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), under development for launch in early 2010, will perform precision astrometry oftargets as faint as 20th magnitude, to an expected accuracy of 4 microarcseconds, and 1 microarcsec in a single measurement over a narrow field. This meeting will highlight the science objectives for SIM, and the many research areas in which SIM will provide key data, and it will explain how the astronomical community can propose for observations with SIM. The next proposal opportunity, planned for late 2005, will be a NASA Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for new Key Projects (major observing programs) and membership on the SIM Science Team. We will also describe plans for the General Observer (GO) program, which is expected to begin in 2007. Featured in the GO call will be 'snapshot observing' - we expect a large community of users who need accurate parallaxes for their research can use this observing mode. 'Snapshots' exploit SIM's ability to deliver precision parallaxes to 10s of microarcseconds for tens of thousands of objects. There will be plenty of time for discussion and questions on proposal opportunities. We expect many people will also wish to attend the TPF meeting which precedes this session, so we plan to cater a light dinner. Details will be provided later.
Information on SIM is available at the following URL: http://sim.jpl.nasa.gov
Organized by Steve Unwin stephen.unwin@jpl.nasa.gov