News: We plan to publish the proceedings of this special session in the "Memorie della Societa Astronomica Italiana"

Thanks to multi-object spectrographs and robotic telescopes, we live in an epoch where large spectroscopic and photometric surveys offer the possibility to infer the 3D structure of the ISM at Galactic scales. Results on this have recently appeared using data from numerous on-going surveys , including SDSS, RAVE, IPHAS, Pan-Starrs, and Gaia-ESO in the optical, as well as 2MASS and APOGEE in the infra-red. The use of absorption/extinction data as a tool to gain insight into the Galactic ISM structure will become more prominent following the launch of Gaia in December 2013 Gaia will provide the astronomical community with accurate positions of about one billion stars, allowing us to build three-dimensional maps of the Galaxy. At the time of the EWASS 2015 meeting, Gaia will have been operating for more than one year. A new and promising tool has also started to be used in recent years: Diffuse Interstellar Bands (DIBs). Even if the nature of their carrier(s) (i.e. the agent that produces these features) remains a mystery, they nonetheless appear to be good tracers of the ISM. The aim of the proposed meeting is to bring together researchers taking part in the main optical and infra-red surveys to discuss how to exploit absorption data as a tool to learn about the 3D structure of the ISM in our Galaxy.

Programme
Topics for discussion include:

• Strategies for extinction determination and mapping
• Relation between different phases of the ISM (DIBs, dust, gas species)
• Strategies for DIB detections
• Synergies between spectroscopic and photometric surveys

Invited speakers
Confirmed:

• Tomaž Zwitter (Ljubljana, Slovenia)
• Annie Robin (Besancon, France)
• Stuart Sale (Oxford, United Kingdom)
• Edward Schlafly (Heidelberg, Germany)
• Gail Zasowski (Baltimore, United States)
• Gregory Green (Cambridge, United States)

Scientific organisers

• Rosine Lallement (GEPI/Observatoire de Paris)
• Ana Monreal Ibero (GEPI/Observatoire de Paris)
• Coryn Bailer-Jones (MPIA Heidelberg)
• Douglas Marshall (AIM/IRFU, Saclay)

Contact
rosine.lallement @ obspm.fr