After the first WorkShop in Marseille we announce the second edition of the WaveFront Sensing in the VLT/ELT era. The Workshop will take place in Padova, Italy, at the local Botanical Garden, from 2 to 4 October 2017.

WaveFront Sensing is at the heart, and a key component, of an Adaptive Optics system and often it dictates the ultimate capabilities of the latter, especially in the astronomical domain. The new challenges dictated by the development of some science field, like the exoplanets detection and characterization, pushed the development of these devices, along with new opportunities coming from new generation of instrumentations for 8m class telescopes and the construction of a next generation of Extremely Large Telescopes.
In this scenarios new technologies, new developments, new concepts, and new ideas, circulated in the framework of WaveFront Sensing.
The parameter’s space where such devices are requested to push their limits beyond the current one –and sometimes beyond what is believed to be their ultimate limits- become increasingly large and to some extent complex. Wide field, use of artificial references from large apertures, new level of accuracy in the compensated wavefront –just to mention a few examples- are just among the new kind of challenges where detector’s technology, ideas and devices are requested to compete in a race for the ultimate performance in terms of contrast, field of view, sky coverage, to name a few examples.

We invite the community, and especially the youngest generation, to convey in this three days workshop in Padova, in the wonderful premises of the University botanical garden, in order to present and discuss topics among the following (that is not, by any means, to be considered an exhaustive list):

• WFS strategies
• What are the aberrations to be measured, how, where ...
• WFS calibration strategy and online optimisation
• IR vs VIS Wavefront Sensing
• WFS for visible wavelength instrumentation : sensing rate and sampling, vibration measurement and control at milliarcsec level
• Classical/Extreme AO WFS
• First stage WFS (SCAO / XAO) - new concepts, new ideas, new implementations
• Post focal WFS / dark holes
• Dealing with telescope specific defects (residual cophasing, pupil segmentation by telescope spiders / Low Wind Effects etc ...)
• Wide FoV WFS
• LGS WFS
• Open loop specificities
• Low-Order WFS and truth sensing
• From concepts to components : recent advanced in detector technologies (VIS and IR)

The community, and again, especially students in the field, are kindly invited to propose your work for a talk and to attend the whole workshop.

Looking forward to see you in Padova,
                 Roberto Ragazzoni (chair of the SOC)