The First ASO-S International Workshop Held in Nanjing

The First ASO-S International Workshop was held in Nanjing from 15 to 18 January 2019. The workshop has more than 100 attendees, including scientists from France, Italy, United States, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, Austria, Japan, Russia and India, as well as ASO-S team members, solar physicists and graduate students from China. At the opening ceremony, Dr. Weiqun Gan (the principle investigator of ASO-S mission) begins with an introduction on the meeting background, and Drs. Jin Chang (deputy director of Purple Mountain Observatory, Chinese Academy of Sciences) and Jijun Cui (the Chief ASO-S Satellite Engineer) deliver welcome speeches.

ASO-S is the first Chinese mission dedicated to solar physics, which was formally approved and supported by the Strategic Priority Research Program on Space Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The main scientific objectives of ASO-S mission are observing and studying the formation of solar magnetic fields, solar flares and coronal mass ejections as well as their relationship. The motivations for holding this workshop at this important moment are to consult the ASO-S scientific committee for ASO-S science and technology as well as to establish and enhance relevant international collaborations.

The workshop is divided into four sessions. The first session focuses on the design and data of the three ASO-S payloads, and consultations as well; the second session includes introduction and possible collaborations with ASO-S of various solar space projects including Solar Orbiter, Parker Solar Probe (PSP), Solar-C EUVST, Aditya-L1, Solar H-alpha Imaging Spectrometer (SHIS), Arke and Kortes; in the third session, possible coordinated observations with ground telescopes in optical and radio wavelengths are discussed; sixteen related talks involving solar magnetic fields, non-thermal emission of solar flares, science and observational technologies of coronal mass ejections are given in the fourth session, with emphasis on the importance of coordinated observations and collaborations.

The success of the workshop will certainly benefit the ASO-S mission in the future, including the design, development, operation and data analysis.