Consortium Meeting
May 3 & 4, 2012
The SPIRE consortium meeting will take place in Banff, a resort town located in Banff National Park in the Canadian Rocky Mountains, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. All meetings will be held at the Banff Park Lodge, Banff, Alberta, Canada. You need to register for the consortium meeting (see below) as well as make accommodation arrangements. Note that everybody entering Banff National Park needs to pay an entrance fee ($9.80 per person per day).
| The SPIRE Consortium Meeting 2012 gratefully acknowledges the financial support of the Office of Research and Innovation Services, University of Lethbridge and the Canadian Space Agency. |
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Meeting topics are given below, a more detailed draft agenda, as of April 14, 2012, is available.
- Update on Herschel and SPIRE
- ICC status and plans for the rest of the operations phase
- Post-Operations plan and resources
- SAG reports (science highlights and priorities, publication plans, public release of data and methods, plans for post-operations phase)
- Future of the SPIRE Consortium
- Co-Is' meeting
Remote access for up to nine callers will be available via skype (skype ID is spire.ca.peter, you need to have Skype v5 installed on your system, and be connected to a broad-band internet connection). Note that Banff is in the Mountain Daylight Saving timezone, i.e. Banff is 2/7/8 hours behind EDT/BST/CEST.
The meeting fee is $127 per person attending the meeting. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support by the Canadian Space Agency which covers a portion of the meeting expenses. Please register for the SPIRE Consortium Meeting using the meeting registration form. In addition, please make sure to make arrangements for accommodation, see below.
List of registered participants.
The Banff Park Lodge is the conference hotel. The Bow View Lodge is under the same management and across the street. To make your booking, for a standard room or a suite or deluxe Jacuzzi room, please contact the hotel via phone +1-800-661-9266 option 1 (use +1-403-762-4433 if the toll-free number does not work for you) or send email. A limited number of rooms is held at a special conference rate ($122.30 CAD for the Bow View Lodge and $150.09 CAD for the Banff Park Lodge). Please quote the group ID (and password) that were supplied via email. These rates also apply if you arrive two days earlier or leave two days later.
On Thursday, May 3, 2012, at 6:30 pm, we will take a ride with the Banff Gondola up Sulphur Mountain and, afterwards, at 8 pm, have dinner at the Saltlik, a restaurant not far from the hotel. Please indicate if you are interested in joining the gondola ride and/or dinner when you register for the meeting. The dinner will have a set menu with three meal choices. Please register early for the supper to allow for effective planning of the event. Please indicate your menu choice when you register for the meeting. Use the Comments section if you find that none of the food choices suit you. We gratefully acknowledge the financial support by the Office of Research Services at the University of Lethbridge which will cover the expenses for both, supper and gondola ride.
A 2 hour bus ride connects the Calgary Airport (YYC) to Banff. Please provide the details of your arrival and departure if you are interested in sharing a ride. You will be contacted for further logistics if you want to share a ride. The generic option to get from Calgary Airport to Banff is via the Banff Airporter Bus. It is also possible to rent a car at the Calgary Airport. The Banff Park Lodge will charge parking fees of $9.50 per day. Google Maps gives directions and suggests a travel time of 1 hour and 43 minutes.
The current weather in Banff.
We will go for a hike in the Rocky Mountains, close to Banff, on May 5, 2012. Please indicate if you are interested in joining the hike when you register for the meeting. There will be at least two hike options, one full-day and one half-day hike. As for hiking gear, it is recommended to plan for snow and cold weather conditions, i.e. sturdy boots, warm jacket, layered clothes, hat, mittens/gloves, sun-glasses, gators if available.
Tourist information on Banff, more tourist information on Banff, and about the Columbia Icefield, the closest glacier/icefield from Banff.
For May, the daily maximum temperature in Banff was 14.5 C (58 F) between 1971 and 2000 on average. Bring your coat and an extra sweater. For more details, check out this chart of typical weather conditions in Banff.
Play Hot Spots and test your skills interpreting infrared images.