Mizusawa VLBI Observatory
SKA Science WG(MIZ-SKA-SWG)

Tomoya Hirota

Summary of MIZ-SKA-SWG• Established in May 2015
– Based on previous internal symposia in Mizusawa VLBIObservatory in a past few years– Request cooperation from the Japan SKA Consortium– Discussion about possible SKA sciences as one of future plansof Mizusawa VLBI Observatory– But different point of view from the SKA Science WG in JapanSKA Consortium• Important notice– Mizusawa VLBI Observaory has not yet selected SKA as ourfuture plan; it is one of the possibilities– MIZ-SKA-SWG will not select/decline SKA as our future plan;
we just discuss possible contributions to SKAGoals• Discussion about possible contributions ofMizusawa VLBI Observatory to future SKAsciences– How can we (=Mizusawa VLBI Observatory) develop oursciences (=VLBI, astrometry, Galaxy, AGN, AGB, SFR, etc) with
future SKA observations?
– How can we utilize our technical/engineering methods(=interferometry, VLBI, imaging, calibration, multi-beam,phase-referencing, etc) in the future scientific researches withSKA?
– Is SKA worth devoting our resources compared with otherfuture radio astronomy projects? If so, how should we do?
(If not, we need further discussion about other projects.)

Membership• Core members nominated by director and chair– From various fields of VLBI-related sciences– T. Hirota (NAOJ; Chair)– K. Hada, M. Honma, K. Motogi, N. Sakai (NAOJ)– K. Niinuma (Yamaguchi)– Y. Hagiwara (Toyo)• Call other key persons for detailed information– K. Takahashi (Kumamoto)– H. Imai (Kagoshima)• WG meeting is not closed but open for anyone

Future schedule• WG meeting will be held twice per month• Executive summary will be reported within oneyear (i.e. end of 2016 March or May)
• Interim report will be presented to community(i.e. today!)• WG meeting is not closed but open for anyone

Activities in the last 1 year
• Mizusawa VLBI Observatory internal symposia– 2014/10/21• Discussion about some future plans including currently on-goingprojects (ALMA, SKA, sub-mm VLBI, satellite, etc)

– 2014/12/18• Focusing on SKA as one of the future plans (but not regarded as the
only future plan)– 2015/4/7• Review of the latest status of SKA by Akahori• Continued to MIZ-SKA-SWG

Current activities (1)1. 2015/05/18– Discussion about policy, direction, etc of MIZ-SKA-SWG

2. 2015/06/08– Report on previous discussion in internal symposia (Hirota)– Report on astrometry WG in the Japan SKA Consortium (Imai)

3. 2015/06/26– Review of Pulsar timing array with SKA (Takahashi)

4. 2015/07/16– Review of SKA Science book: Paragi et al., Very Long Baseline
Interferometry with the SKA (Sakai)

Current activities (2)5. 2015/08/04– Review of Pulsar timing array with SKA (Takahashi; continued)– Review of SKA Science book: Hoare et al., The Cradle of Life and the SKA
and Loinard et al., Tomography of Galactic star-forming regions and spiralarms with the Square Kilometre Array (Hirota)

6. 2015/08/10– Review of SKA Science book: Anglada et al., Radio Jets in Young Stellar
Objects with the SKA and Fuller et al., Star and Stellar Cluster Formation:
ALMA-SKA Synergies (Motogi)

7. 2015/08/26– Review of SKA Science book: Agudo et al., Studies of Relativistic Jets in
Active alactic Nuclei with SKA (Hada)

8. 2015/09/07– Report of SKA Key Science Project Workshop 2015 (Takahashi)– Review of Pulsar timing array with SKA (Takahashi; continued)– Review of North American Array (Hirota)Summary• MIZ-SKA-SWG is established to discuss about SKA
sciences as one of future plans of Mizusawa• WG meeting will be held twice per month• Executive summary will be reported within oneyear (i.e. end of 2016 March or May)
• WG meeting is not closed but open for anyone