Research

The Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte (OAC) is one of the 12 Italian Astronomical Observatories and belongs to the National Institute for Astrophysics (Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica or INAF) which, since January 1st 2002, will coordinate the national facilities and the activities of the individual observatories. OAC was the first observatory in Italy to be built directly for the purpose and according to the typical criteria of a modern astronomical research institute. It was erected in the period 1812-1820. The present Director (since 1993) is Massimo Capaccioli, who is full professor (Professore Ordinario) of Astronomy at the University Federico II of Naples. During the last decade, as a result of the generous allocation of funds (special funds for the development of the South) , the growth of the Astronomical Observatory of Naples has continued, with a steady increase in staff, a significant broadening of the scientific interests, and a major impulse given to technological programs.

The key themes of OAC in extragalactic astronomy and observational cosmology may be summarized as follows:

Properties of galaxy clusters. Since some years OAC is involved in the CRONARIO (Caltech ROma NApoli RIO) project, that consisted in the production of the Palomar Norris Catalogue, including information (photometry, morphology, astrometry) on all the object in the Palomar Sky Survey. The data were used to study the properties of low redshift (z < 2) galaxy clusters. Properties of individual clusters are currently studied by means of NTT and VLT data.
Structure and evolution of galaxies. A couple of years ago OAC started a long-term project on intermediate-redshift (z < 1 ) galaxies (both in clusters and in the field) aimed at studying galaxy evolution by means of the scaling laws. This project includes the collection of spectroscopic (MOS) and photometric data with ESO instruments, mainly 2.2m WFI, NTT (EMMI and SOFI), and VLT (FORS2 and ISAAC). Along with the observations, OAC is developing original algorithms for data reduction and analysis.
VIRMOS. OAC participates to the VIRMOS project both for science and for the development of the instruments. The OAC scientific staff is involved in the 'high' spectral resolution survey aimed at studying the evolution of the chemical properties of the galaxies and of the scaling laws and in the U-band deep survey.
VST and OmegaCam (see below).

In October 1997, the Scientific and Technical Committee of ESO approved a proposal by the Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte (OAC) for the construction and installation of a 2.6-m Altazimuth Telescope to be used solely for wide-field imaging at Paranal. The telescope, which is now known as the VLT Survey Telescope or VST, will be fully devoted to survey work with the goals of excellent image quality over a large field-of-view, high operational efficiency, high reliability, and compliance to VLT standards. The VST is now being built by the OAC and will be managed by ESO, with the main purpose of conducting long-term surveys and providing the selection of targets required for VLT science.

Since the OAC proposal did not include plans for the delivery of the wide-field camera for which the VST optical design was optimized, ESO issued in March 1998 an Announcement of Opportunity (AO) for the design, construction and procurement of an optical wide-angle CCD camera to be installed at the Cassegrain focus of the VST.

In response to the call, a European consortium formed and in October 1998 submitted a proposal to ESO to deliver OmegaCam as the wide-field optical imager for the VST. OmegaCAM is an optical 16k x 16k camera, and the ~1 square degree of the sky with a pixel size of 0.22 arcsec. OmegaCAM will be the only instrument for the VST, at least during the first 5 years of operations, which are expected to start during the summer of 2002. OmegaCAM will be used at visual wavelengths with a wide variety of pass-bands and will be offered to the user community allowing the users to conduct their own defined programs.

The design of the instrument is centered around a mosaic of 32 2k x 4k pixels CCDs that will cover the VST's field of view of one square degree and at the same time will adequately sample the best seeing foreseen at Paranal.

The telescope optics has been designed to deliver a pixel scale of about 0.21''/pix assuming a pixel size of 15microns. The goal is to obtain a responsive quantum efficiency better than 80% in the B,V band , still reaching 50% at 350 nm and at 800 nm. Read-out noise should not exceed 5e-. The dewar has a huge entrance window which in itself formspart of the optical corrector train of the VST.

OAC is planning a wide area (200 square degrees) and medium-deep (R=24) multi-band survey to be carried out with VST.

Role in the network

OAC will mainly address the preparation and the realisation of a wide area VST survey and the relative follow-ups. The main scientific drivers of the VST survey will be the study of galaxy evolution in different environments. To this aim follow-ups at ESO telescopes and interaction with VISTA are foreseen.

Key staff

G. Busarello (30%), M. Capaccioli (20%), P. Merluzzi (20%), A. Rifatto (20%), M. Massarotti (20%).

Most relevant recent references

La Barbera F., Busarello G., Merluzzi P., Massarotti M., Capaccioli M., 2002, "Optical and Near-Infrared Structural Properties of Cluster Galaxies at z~0.3", ApJ, in press (astro-ph/0112040)
Merluzzi P., Busarello G., Massarotti M., La Barbera F., 2002, "The Colour-Magnitude Relation and the Age of Galaxies in the Cluster AC118 at z=0.31", To appear in ASP Conference Series: Proceeding of the Workshop "Tracing Cosmic Evolution with Galaxy Clusters" (astro-ph/0110328)
Kudritzki, R.-P., Mindez, R. H., Feldmeier, J. J., Ciardullo, R., Jacoby, G. H., Freeman, K. C., Arnaboldi, M., Capaccioli, M., Gerhard, O., Ford, H. C., 2000, `Discovery of Nine Ly-alpha Emitters at Redshift z~3.1 Using Narrow band Imaging and VLT Spectroscopy', ApJ , 536, 19-30.

Postdoctoral positions - terms and conditions

The successfull applicants will be provided with a full statement detailing all Terms and Conditions of Employement. The salary will be in the Academic scale, depending on experience and qualifications. The post is full-time.

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