Celebrating Past, Present and Future of the largest Italian optical telescope.
2026 marks the 30th anniversary of the inauguration of the TNG and provides an opportunity to meet for a Great Celebration and to reflect on the impact of our telescope on the astronomical community under several aspects:
-
the technical and scientific achievements during these 3 decades;
-
the institutional and international collaborations born to exploit its capabilities;
-
the availability to students and researchers of state of the art instrumentation;
-
the legacy of inspiration and values that brought together the Italian community to obtain, maintain and support a national project.
The meeting will allow the key contributors of this 30 years long adventure to get together and highlight the role of the TNG on research and innovation. It will also be the ideal framework where to discuss the options for future direction to follow in order to maintain top level science in the years to come when ELT, Plato, HWO, Einstein Telescope and several other facilities will be available.
The meeting will take three days, beginning with a Celebration with Political and Academic Authorities at Palacio Salazar in S.Cruz de La Palma. Then the Scientific meeting will begin and develop in the afternoon of the first day and in the whole following day, with invited speakers and oral or poster contributions. Finally a round table with INAF governing bodies and scientific experts will discuss on the future of the TNG. On the third day a Visit to the Observatory of Roque de Los Muchachos and a ceremony at the TNG will conclude the meeting.
Contributions
We will be pleased to accept oral or poster contributions on 3 main subjects:
- Origins and first steps, for who has been there before and during the installation of the TNG and its instrumentation and would like to retrace those years and events with anedocts and curiosities;
- Histories of success or lessons learned during these 30 years, either technical, scientifical and humans achievements, with institutional and international collaborations, TNG as test bed for greater telescopes, TNG as a top level INAF installation accessible to the Italian Astronomical Community;
- Proposals for the next future, on scientific and technical improvements or possibilities for the TNG in order to stay within scientific excellence.
Registrations will open soon.
No registration fee will be asked, but due to the available space we could be forced to limit the number of participants.
Participants in presence will have to manage their own reservations for hotels and flights (final destination is SPC). FGG will not provide fundings or assistance in making the reservations. A list of hotels with some reserved rooms will be provided when registration is open. For people staying in Los Cancajos instead of S.Cruz we will provide a Bus service.
The Meeting will be held in hybrid format, and Zoom/Meet link will be sent to registered participants attending online.
