PESSTO Policies

This page describes the management structure of the original PESSTO survey. Policies for ePESSTO can be found here: ePESSTO Policies 

As of 26th July 2017, the email lists for PESSTO have transitioned to the new ePESSTO members who are the the co-Is of the proposal and approved new members. Details can be found on the above ePESSTO policy page. The PESSTO membership email list (in the years 2012-2017 is still available for use (for example for publications arising out of PESSTO data). This list can be reached using : 

The alerts email list from the original PESSTO survey has been retired and the membership of that list is the new ePESSTO members. The email address remains the same. 

Here is a PPT file for general PESSTO information for use in talks and presentations : PESSTO-General.pptx  (You can download easily at the bottom of this page)

Science board and operating team

PESSTO has a management structure as outlined above. The PI of the proposal (S. J. Smartt) is the Survey Director and there is a Science Board consisting of members from main partners and leaders of input surveys. M. Sullivan (Southampton) is the Chair of this Board; the chair can rotate each April. The Board have ultimate responsibility for delivery of a successful survey and have the authority to change the leadership and direction of the operating team.

The current science board is:

• 1. Southampton (Sullivan, Chair), 

  2. QUB (Kotak),

  3. MPIA (Hillebrandt), 

  4. Stockholm (Sollerman), 

  5. Padova (Benetti), 

  6. Weizmann (Gal-Yam), 

  7. Paris IN2P3 (R. Pain), 

  8. Chile (Alejandro Clocchiatti), 

  9. LaSilla/QUEST(Baltay),

  10. Paris IAP (Dennefeld).

While the Board will act as the highest level decision making body of the survey, the implementation of PESSTO is carried out by the Survey Director and his operating team.

Operating Team : S. Smartt, plus the leads of the four working teams:

• • Observing Management Team (leader: M. Sullivan). Responsible for ensuring that all NTT runs are staffed.

  • Target and Alert Team (leader: K. Maguire). Responsible for collating the data from the various input surveys and ensuring that the observing teams have access to target information for OB definition and design.

  • Data reduction and Quality Control Team (leader: S. Valenti). Responsible for providing the pipeline reduced data products and ensuring that a quality control system is implemented for data release.

  • Archive Team (leader: D. Young and O. Yaron). Responsible for ingesting the reduced spectra from the survey into a publicly accessible database and making it available to the PESSTO survey team and public.

PESSTO Policies and documents

PESSTO light curves

The NTT should not be used for optical broad-band imaging, unless targets are out of reach of the smaller facilities and there is a science need for deep imaging. In this case, EFOSC2 optical photometry will be permitted  e.g. for >21mag targets.

Note that it is the science PI's responsibility to organise the photometric follow-up and deliver a light curve, and that this light curve is a requirement: the photometric table will be required to be delivered to ESO (not the data, just the LC table)

PESSTO science groups

The PESSTO science groups can be found here: PESSTO science groups v1.14

PESSTO publication policy

The PESSTO publication policy is explained here in the PESSTO Science wiki pages

PESSTO data policy

The PESSTO data release policy is here: PESSTO_datapolicy_v1.0.pdf

PESSTO builders list

The current year 4 builders list (to be used on any paper using year 4 data) is:

C. Inserra (QUB), E. Kankare (QUB), K. Maguire (QUB), S. Smartt (QUB), K. W. Smith (QUB), M. Sullivan (Southampton), S. Valenti (UC Davis), O. Yaron (Weizmann), D. Young (QUB)

The year 3 builders list (to be used on any paper using data from year 3) is the same as year 4:

C. Inserra (QUB), E. Kankare (QUB), K. Maguire (QUB), S. Smartt (QUB), K. W. Smith (QUB), M. Sullivan (Southampton), S. Valenti (UC Davis), O. Yaron (Weizmann), D. Young (QUB)

The year 1 and year 2 builders list (to be used on any paper using data from years 1 or 2) is:

S. Benetti (Padova), M. Fraser (IoA), A. Gal-Yam (Weizmann), C. Inserra (QUB), C. Knapic (Trieste), M. Molinaro (Trieste), A. Pastorello (Padova), R. Smareglia (Trieste), S. Smartt (QUB), K. Smith (QUB), M. Sullivan (Southampton), S. Taubenberger (MPA), S. Valenti (LCOGT), O. Yaron (Weizmann), D. Young (QUB)

The list will be reconstituted each April by the science board.

PESSTO ATELs

PESSTO ATEL guidelines can be found here: ATEL_guidelines

Guidelines for WIFEs + LSQ + PESSTO, data sharing and ATels : ATEL_guidelines_WIFES

PESSTO collaboration membership

The list of PESSTO collaboration members can be found here:

Full_list_of_all_consortium_team_members_on_the_email_exploder

PESSTO and the BLP

For the first three months, PESSTO and the Benetti Large Program (BLP) will run side-by-side. Details of how this will work can be found here: PESSTO_and_BLP

Original PESSTO proposal

PESSTO_original_proposal.pdf

PESSTO Software Versioning

For all PESSTO related software products we shall follow the follow version numbering:

major.minor[ .revision] (e.g. 1.2.1)

• • major : +1 with significant jump in functionality (e.g. 1.2.1 ---> 2.0)

  • minor : +1 with minor feature addition OR major bug fixes (e.g. 1.2.1 ---> 1.3)

  • revision : +1 with minor bug fixes (e.g. 1.2.1 ---> 1.2.2)