The meeting is the first “Workshop on Capacity Building” (Capacity-building Workshop) powered by COSPAR (Committee on Space Research and Space Committee) devoted to Astronomy in the submillimeter-infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum. This meeting presents a unique opportunity to support and pay attention to the development of research in this window of astrophysical observation in Latin America. The workshops are intended to improve the scientific capacity of developing countries. The “Workshop on Herschel and Spitzer data analysis” aims to achieve the following objectives:
1. Conduct a regional meeting in a leading area in astrophysics. It is expected that half of the students who attend the event, come from other countries in the region.
It provides a regional demand because this branch of astrophysics has recently become a line of cutting-edge research, supported by the commissioning of new detectors that analyze regions hardly accessible with other techniques.
2. Facilitate access to satellite technology and data that this technology provides, ensuring high quality training for students to continue their scientific work in areas of research in Argentina and the region that require contact with institutions that can provide such data. The Herschel and Spitzer missions are getting data processed to cover a rich variety of astronomical topics, on all cosmic scales of interest, from objects in the solar system, and in regions of star formation in our Galaxy and distant galaxies, to the study of the earliest stages of star formation in the Universe. All scientific data from Spitzer are now public domain and, by the time this workshop will be carried on, there will be 2.5 years of data collection Herschel public. The data analysis software for both missions is also public and easily accessible. For these reasons, students who participate in this workshop will have in their hands the possibility to be trained to acquire knowledge and skills necessary to manage the tools that enable the development of research data from these missions, not only during the weeks of training, but also later.
3. Strengthen regional activities in projects related to top-level data in the infrared and microwave, and ensure national participation in satellite technologies.