Venue.

The workshop will be held at the Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas (IAG) of the Universidade de São Paulo (USP). The USP campus is on the west side of São Paulo, in the Butantã neighbourhood. IAG is located at Rua do Matão, 1226 - Butantã, São Paulo. Here IAG/USP on Google Maps.

São Paulo (also known as "sampa") is the largest city in Brazil and also in the Southern Hemisphere. Get to know sampa in this 10-min video "São Paulo: The Most Underrated City in the World", or explore the city in this 7-min video "São Paulo in 48 hours". São Paulo has a lot of activities to offer. Many museums have a free day, or the entrance fee is small. For example the Pinacoteca has an entry fee of only 6 reais (about 1,7 euros), or is free on Saturdays. Check the top things to do in Sampa by Trip Advisor

Weather. It is hard to predict the weather but temperatures at daytime should be ~20-25 C and at night ~12-16 C. Here a plot with average min & max temperatures in São Paulo in August. Good chances of clear sky and low chances of rain. 

Local Organising Committee.

Leonardo dos Santos (chair)

Jhon Yana Galarza

Henrique Reggiani

Transportation from the International Guarulhos (GRU) Airport.

Different options are available at a range of prices. Taxi is more convenient but more expensive (cost equivalent to about 40-50 euros). There are shuttle buses (Airport Bus Service) to the Av. Paulista and other regions of São Paulo; cost equivalent to about 12 euros. There are also cheaper buses (about 1.5 euros) to Metro Tatuapé, but this optionis not recommended if you are not familiar with local transportation in São Paulo, and specially if you have heavy luggage (as different transfers are needed). Further information will be provided.

Local Transportation.

The campus is near the Butantã metro station. There are frequent buses (Circular 1 and 2) from metro Butantã to the campus, and there are other bus lines that run inside the campus. The fare is R$3.5 (about 1 euro). It is convenient to get a "bilhete unico" card at a metro station. With the card you pay only one fare and can use up to four buses within 3 hours. Also, with the card you pay a combined fare ("integração") of R$5.45 (about 1.6 euros) for the use of metro + bus (or vice versa). 

Accommodation

There is a range of different accommodation options located around Av. Paulista. We are organising hotel room sharing. We recommend you stay near station "Consolação" of the green (verde) metro line. You can find several convenient options around this area in booking.com. Find below a map showing some suggestions for shared accommodation (1: The Landmark Residence, 2: La Residence Paulista, 3: Fortune Residence, 4: Pousada Jardins, 5: Lobo Urban Stay).

Food

There is a large variety from different Brazilian regions and from different countries (Japanese, Italian, Mexican, etc). Brazil is blessed with an enormous variety of vegetables and fruits (some with exotic flavors). You should try fresh juice, from familiar or exotic fruits. Try the mix of pineapple with fresh mint (refreshing!). For lunch, many places offer a buffet ("comida por quilo"), with many different options of cold (salads) and hot buffets, where you pay by the weight. Also, some places offer the dish of the day ("prato do dia"), and convenient options such as "prato feito" or "prato executivo".

About Astronomy in São Paulo

The University of São Paulo (USP) has the largest astronomy group in Brazil. The Astronomy Department is part of the Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica and Ciências Atmosféricas (IAG). There are more than 30 professors working at the Astronomy department in many different areas such as Astrobiology, Exoplanets, Stellar Astrophysics, Gaseous Nebulae, Galactic Astronomy, Galaxies, and Cosmology.

At IAG/USP we have a strong group in stellar spectroscopy, including 4 professors and more than a dozen people working on stellar spectroscopy (undergrads, grad students, postdocs). Prof. Beatriz Barbuy works on high resolution spectroscopy of field (metal-poor and metal-rich) and globular cluster stars, mainly from the halo and bulge populations. She also study stellar populations using low resolution spectroscopy. Prof. Jorge Meléndez applies high resolution spectroscopy to study signatures of planets, stellar evolution, and galactic chemical evolution. Prof. Silvia Rossi uses low resolution spectroscopy to study the Galactic halo, specially using Carbon Enhanced Metal-Poor Stars. Prof. Jane Gregorio Hetem uses X-ray data and low resolution optical spectroscopy, to study young stars. 

The high resolution spectroscopic work at IAG/USP is performed using spectrographs on 4-8 meter telescopes at different facilities (La Silla/ESO, Paranal/ESO, CFHT, Gemini, Subaru -through exchange time with Gemini). In the near future we will have access to an efficient high resolution spectrograph at the 4m SOAR telescope. The local 1,6m telescope is also used for high resolution work. In the future we plan to use the 24m GMT (São Paulo is a partner) and the 39m ELT (Brazil has recently confirmed its entry to ESO).

All graduate students are funded by research fellowships provided by CAPES, CNPq and FAPESP. Funding for our projects is provided mainly by the federal agency CNPq, and by Sao Paulo's funding agency, FAPESP.