The 15th Consortium Meeting of the MICADO instrument for the Extremely Large Telescope was held from Monday 30 March to Wednesday 1 April. We INAF researchers, as well as other partners (French, German, Dutch, Austrian and Finnish), participated remotely. Everyone connected from their home, preferably enabling and disabling the microphone and video camera to reduce background noise and save transmission bandwidth. In particular, we used Zoom for video chat. Participation was massive (on the first day, we were 97 to be connected simultaneously). Thanks to not very strict respect for netiquette, the meeting took place very efficiently, raising the hand before speaking (actually, it was a virtual paddle).
The crisis triggered by COVID-19 was also discussed: inevitable delays in project development are expected. These currently appear in the order of two months, although tending to increase due to the delay that the companies that collaborate with the consortium could accumulate (supplies or even – hopefully, none – bankruptcies). The atmosphere was positive, all very pragmatic and understanding of the interruptions and noises of children and more or less disturbing neighbours.
We participated in 2 plenary sessions at the beginning and end of the video meeting. In between 2 full days of “splinter” meetings, that is, parallel sessions explicitly focused on the different engineering or purely astronomical activities. We contribute to the consortium participating in the working group that will develop software for the reconstruction of the MICADO PSF from telemetry data. As coordinators, we have also organized a couple of these splinter meetings, just to update the colleagues and to update ourselves on activities related to our goal. Eventually was a success. It was a good demonstration of tenacity against any surrender, which I think has done right to everyone and not just me – the second from the left in the image below -.
regards,
Carmelo Arcidiacono
15th Consortium Meeting di MICADO – Stay at home
