Tucson telescope projects win big today
Tom Beal Arizona Daily Star | Friday, August 13, 2010
Scientists from around the country applauded, cheered, exchanged high-fives and sipped champagne this morning as a National Academy of Science panel announced the selection of their project — the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) — as the top priority for ground-based astronomy for the coming decade.
Sidney Wolff, president of the Tucson-based LSST Corporation, said she fully expected a positive recommendation from the Astro 2010 panel, which sets priorities for federal spending on astronomy and astrophysics, but “this is our dream come true as to what we might get out of this panel.”
Project manager Don Sweeney brought a bottle of Scotch to the morning meeting at the Ritz-Carlton Dove Mountain Resort, saying he’d drink it if the LSST was not given a good recommendation. Instead, the scientists working on the LSST were served champagne, after being chosen as the No. 1 priority and being recommended for immediate funding from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy for two-thirds of the project’s $465 million cost.
The scientists had been meeting for a week to plan the next phase of the giant survey telescope at an “all-hands” meeting.
The LSST is one of two large telescope projects with Tucson ties and major components being built at the University of Arizona that got a big boost today from a survey that is used to guide federal funding for astronomy.
Not faring so well in the Astro 2010 Decadal Survey was Kitt Peak, run by the Tucson-based National Optical Astronomy Observatory, whose future role should concentrate on new projects and on larger telescopes in Chile and Hawaii, according to the survey.
The big winner in ground-based astronomy was the LSST, whose corporate headquarters are in Tucson and whose innovative mirror was cast and is currently being polished at the UA’s Steward Observatory Mirror Lab.
The report also recommends that the federal government assume a 25 percent share of one of two proposed giant-segmented telescopes, one of which, the Giant Magellan Telescope, also originated in Tucson.
That recommendation stiffens competition between GMT, whose partners include UA and Tucson-based Research Corp., and the Thirty Meter Telescope proposed by a consortium of California universities. Both projects have international partners. The Giant Magellan Telescope would be built in Chile and the Thirty Meter is slated for the Hawaiian peak of Mauna Kea.
Questions about the history and makeup of the universe and the prevalence of habitable Earth-like planets around near and distant stars can be answered with a combination of space- and earth-based astronomy, the report says, but bigger, more technologically advanced tools are needed.
The team of scientists who wrote the report concluded that Kitt Peak’s relevance will diminish in the coming years and its current level of support cannot be justified, with the exception of its largest telescope, the 4-meter Mayall, whose plans to survey the sky spectroscopically are cited as a “compelling mid-scale innovation” in the report.
“I don’t see that as Kitt Peak going away,” said Jonathan Lunine, a member of the panel that produced the report. Lunine, who is currently on leave from the UA Lunar and Planetary Lab to teach at the University of Rome, said he expects that private money and consortia of universities can be found to keep the smaller telescopes occupied.
Lunine said he didn’t find it difficult to set aside his allegiances with Tucson-based projects while serving on the committee.
“We all feel a certain pressure from colleagues at home but the responsibility of serving on the committee imposes a really large burden to be fair, to be impartial,” he said.
“In the case of Tucson, it’s not all that difficult. The UA and Tucson in general has such a richness of astronomy. Whatever the outcome, Tucson will step up to be a leader.”
Marcia Rieke, a UA astronomy professor who was also a survey committee member, said large telescopes in Southern Arizona, such as Mount Graham’s Large Binocular Telescope and the UA/Smithsonian MMT on Mount Hopkins, could also benefit from a recommended program to fund astronomical instruments in the $10 million to $30 million range.
Rieke said she expects some of her UA colleagues working on the Giant Magellan Telescope will be disappointed that the committee did not pick a winner in the large segmented-telescope competition.
“The country could certainly use two and we didn’t want to do anything to discourage private donors,” Rieke said.
“Choosing between engineering details, that’s not really what the decadal survey is all about.”
Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST)
The big winner in the decadal report on astronomy, the LSST is headquartered in Tucson and slated for construction in Chile. Its unusual 8.4-meter mirror, which contains both primary and tertiary mirror surfaces, was cast at the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab and is currently being readied for grinding and polishing.
Steward’s Imaging Technology Laboratory is one of two vendors competing to build the telescope’s camera — the largest and fastest CCD camera ever built.
Early funding for the project was provided by Bill Gates and the Charles Simonyi Foundation. The decadal survey report recommends that the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy provide most of its estimated $465 million construction costs and two/thirds of its annual operating budget of $42 million for 10 years.
Founding partners are the UA, the University of Washington, the National Optical Astronomy Observatory and Research Corp. Money for the mirrors themselves came from private donations — $10 million from Microsoft owner Bill Gates and $20 million from the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences.
The report says:
“LSST is proposed as an 8.4-meter telescope to be sited in Chile. It is specially designed to produce excellent images over a very wide 3.5-degree field of view. It will image the sky repeatedly in six colors in and near the visible band (0.3 to 1.0 micrometer).
“Over its lifetime of 10 years, it will observe each region of the sky 1000 separate times. The 1000 separate images will be used to make a “cosmic movie” to search for objects that move or whose brightness varies. By adding these images, it will also produce a very deep map of roughly half of the entire sky. LSST will produce a calibrated data set and analysis tools for the astronomy and astrophysics community.”
— New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics, National Research Council
The National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO) and Kitt Peak
The report suggests that NOAO, now based in Tucson, consolidate its operations, focusing on the larger Gemini telescopes in Chile and Hawaii and on its new role with the next generation of very large telescopes, slated for those same locations. Kitt Peak facilities would be closed or privatized under that recommendation.
The report says:
“NOAO’s future is not without controversy. As the world of OIR (optical and infrared) astronomy moves into the 20-40 meter class telescope era, the relevance of the current NOAO facilities will diminish further, along with the level of support that can be justified.
“Any specific direction on how to find economies within the NOAO budget falls outside of the charge of this report and will, presumably, be part of the next Senior Review. However, the committee notes some options including: consolidation of part or all of the staff and management of NOAO and Gemini; closure or privatization of some of the telescopes; closure or privatization of one of the sites; and a gradual transition in the staffing and staff responsibilities towards an operations-focused model.”
— New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics
Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT)
The University of Arizona is a partner in the Giant Magellan Telescope, whose seven mirrors would form a single aperture of 24.5 meters in diameter. Casting and polishing those mirrors would keep the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab busy for the next decade. Its U.S. competition is the Thirty Meter Telescope proposed by a consortium of California universities and its international partners. The European Southern Observatory is planning an even larger, 42-meter telescope. The report suggests that the National Science Foundation pick one of the two U.S. projects for 25 percent funding.
The report says:
“Astronomers are poised to take the next major step—adaptive optics telescopes with 3 times the diameter, 10 times the optical collecting area, and up to 80 times the near-infrared sensitivity compared to existing telescopes. These Giant Segmented Mirror Telescopes (GSMTs) will be essential to understanding the distant galaxies discovered by JWST (James Webb Space Telescope) and to obtaining spectra of the faint transients found by LSST, and they will be transformative for a broad range of science aimed at understanding targets ranging from stars and exoplanets to black holes … .
“Owing to the highly compelling science case for this class of telescope, the committee recommends immediate selection by NSF of one of the two U.S.-led GSMT projects for a future federal investment that will secure a significant public partnership role in the development, the operation, and telescope access.”
Posted in Local, Science on Friday, August 13, 2010 8:00 am Updated: 1:52 pm. | Tags:
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