Preparing the open call for second-generation surveys with the JST250 at the OAJ

  Starting Date: 02/06/2026

Venue: Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA) / Virtual
Organizer: Centro de Estudios de Física del Cosmos de Aragón (CEFCA) / RIA
Abstract contribution submission deadline: 15 May 2026
Registration deadline: 24 May 2026
Registration and Abstract Submission Form: Here
Confirmed List of Participants: Link when available
Program: Link when available
JPCam Observing Tools: Here

Following integration, commissioning and beginning of scientific operation of JPCam, the wide-field 1.2Gpix camera integrated at the Cassegrain focus of the JST250 telescope, the ICTS Observatorio Astrofísico de Javalambre (OAJ) announced its first competitive open call for observing time with this new facility in the first half of 2025. The OAJ is now preparing a competitive open call for long-term surveys with JPCam at the JST250. The call for proposals is expected in the second half of 2026.

The JST250 is a Ritchey-Chrétien telescope with a 2.55m primary mirror and an altazimuth mount. The focal plane corresponds to a Cassegrain design. The M1 and M2 mirrors have a hyperbolic aspheric surface. The telescope is equipped with a field corrector behind the central hole of M1, consisting of 3 fused silica lenses with 4 aspheric surfaces and diameters between 500–600mm. The two mirrors and the three lenses are designed to optimize the quality of the polychromatic image and maintain low distortion across the entire field of view, which has a diameter of 3 degrees (476mm).

JPCam is the main scientific instrument of the JST250 telescope and has been designed to perform the Javalambre-Physics of the Accelerating Universe Astrophysical Survey (J-PAS, https://www.j-pas.org/), a photometric survey of the northern sky. The camera is equipped with a mosaic of 14 state-of-the-art detectors. These are large-format, low noise CCD detectors with 9,216×9,232 pixels of 10μm developed by Teledyne-e2V. JPCam is installed at the Cassegrain focus of the JST250 telescope and provides a large effective field of view of about 3.4 square degrees with a pixel scale of 0.2267 “/pixel.

JPCam is equipped with the J-PAS filter system, a set of 54 narrowband filters (~14.5nm FWHM) that are contiguous and equally spaced between 370 and 920nm, plus 2 broadband filters in both extremes of the optical wavelength range. These filters, designed to allow for panoramic spectrophotometric observations, are distributed across 4 filter trays, 14 filters per tray, so that each detector observes through one of them. Three additional filter trays, each one equipped with 14 identical copies of Sloan g, r and i, respectively, are also available. Therefore, the observation strategy requires a prior understanding of the distribution of the filters in the instrument as well as the use of tools created for defining observational strategies with JPCam.

With the coming open call, the OAJ intends to offer the JST250-JPCam tandem to the community for long-term surveys that will coexist with J-PAS. These so-called second-generation surveys of JST250 may make use of JPCam and the available filters, require the definition of new optical filters, or demand the development of new instrumentation.

The objective of this meeting is to present to the scientific community the upcoming public call for second-generation surveys with JPCam installed on the JST250 telescope. The meeting will present the details of the call, as well as the operation and modes of the JPCam instrument and the set of specific tools created to support users in preparing their observation proposals. At the same time, the community is encouraged to present the scientific projects envisaged with this large field of view multifilter OAJ facility that is going to be offered, to trigger discussion on the technical aspects that will help in the definition of the potential proposed programs. We therefore welcome contributions from the entire community, from all fields, of current examples or concrete ideas of scientific projects to be conducted as surveys with JPCam.

Scientific Organizing Committee (SOC):

• Javier Zaragoza Cardiel (CEFCA)
• Antonio Marín Franch (CEFCA)
• Carlos López San-Juan (CEFCA)
• Héctor Vázquez Ramió (CEFCA)
• Mireia Montes Quiles (ICE-CSIC)
• Rosa González Delgado (IAA)
• Adriano Campo Bagatin (UA)
• Aurora Sicilia Aguilar (University of Dundee)

Local Organizing Committee (LOC):

• Javier Zaragoza Cardiel
• Juan Antonio Fernández Ontiveros
• Luisa Valdivielso Casas
• Tamara Civera Lorenzo
• Ana López Colás
• Nischal Acharya
• Adrián Hidalgo

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