The Science Opportunities for the Warm Spitzer Mission: Workshop

4-5 June 2007, Westin Hotel, Pasadena, CA

We are now planning for the post-cryogenic operations of the Observatory where only IRAC bands 1 & 2 (3.6 & 4.5 um) will operate at full sensitivity. The other channels of all instruments will not operate at the elevated temperatures (25-30K). A major element of planning for this phase is developing the science operations philosophy for the Warm Spitzer mission. The need to substantially reduce the operations cost for the Warm mission and the much simplified demands of operating a one instrument mission offer the opportunity to execute science projects that are substantially larger in scope than those that can be contemplated in the Cryogenic Spitzer era. During this phase of the Spitzer mission, a vigorous archival research program will be conducted that will exploit the entire Spitzer archival dataset.

This community workshop explored the science drivers for the warm Spitzer mission and help the SSC develop the science operations philosophy to maximize the science return with the reduced resources available, both using (a) the shortest two IRAC channels, and (b) archival research with the rich Spitzer Archive. Please see the charge to the committee.

NEW: All of the white papers from the workshop were published by AIP, in volume 943. The camera-ready versions of the papers have now been posted on the white papers page.

The talks and white papers have been posted! See the agenda for the talks, and the white paper page for the white papers.

White Papers

The steering committee lead groups that wrote white papers, but we also received additional white papers. Please visit the page often; we expect to have final versions of each paper posted no later than June 1.

by help - at - spitzer.caltech.edu