Optimizing the U.S. Ground-Based Optical and Infrared Astronomy System (2015) / Chapter Skim
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3 The U.S. OIR System
3 The U.S. OIR System
Pages 24-49
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From page 24... ...
Telescopes in the System Within the OIR System, the National Science Foundation's (NSF's) assets are the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO)
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From page 25... ...
NOAO also held several community-wide workshops to plan instrumentation for Gemini and con vened an OIR System Roadmap Committee,4 which examined the demographics and dynamics of the OIR System. The Gemini Observatory is an international OIR observatory comprising two 8.1-meter telescopes, one on Maunakea, Hawaii, and one on Cerro Pachon in Chile.
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, and the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT) , make some or all of their data public after a proprietary period.
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Hopkins, Arizona 6.5 1.00 0.00 Effective fractional number of telescopes 7.97 1.54 Medium Telescopes (3.5-5 meters) Hale Telescope Palomar Observatory, California 5.1 1.00 0.00 Discovery Channel Telescope Happy Jack, Arizona 4.3 1.00 0.00 SOAR Cerro Pachon, Chile 4.2 0.70 0.30 Blanco Telescope Cerro Tololo, Chile 4.0 0.90 0.90b Mayall Telescope Kitt Peak, Arizona 4.0 1.00 1.00 UKIRT Maunakea, Hawaii 3.8 1.00 0.00 CFHT Maunakea, Hawaii 3.6 0.20 0.00 ARC 3.5 m Apache Point, New Mexico 3.5 1.00 0.00 WIYN Kitt Peak, Arizona 3.5 1.00 0.40 Effective fractional number of telescopes 7.80 2.60 Small Telescopes (2-3 meters)
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From page 28... ...
The black line shows the number in the system, including public and private facilities, while the red line shows the number publicly available. coverage, and quality.
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A critical aspect of a System view of the facilities is the extent to which their development is planned and carried out in a way that acknowledges and takes a dvantage of the relationship among them. The past 20 years have seen sev TABLE 3.2 Instrumentation on 6- to 12-meter Telescopes Optical Near-IR Mid-IR AO Telescope Image Spec IFU MOS Image Spec IFU MOS Image Spec AO LBT X X X X X X X X X Keck 1 X X X X X X X X Keck 2 X X X X X X HET X X SALT X X X Subaru X X X X X X X X X Gemini N X X X X X X X X X Gemini S X X X X X X X X Magellan/Baade X X X X X Magellan/Clay X X X X X X X MMT X X X X X X X X X NOTE: Acronyms are defined in Appendix C
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From page 30... ...
6 ACCORD became defunct in 2010 following the release of NWNH and the transition to the current NSF AST director. 7 "A Roadmap for the Development of United States Astronomical Adaptive Optics," 2008, http:// www.aura-astronomy.org/news/AO_Roadmap2008_Final.pdf, accessed February 1, 2015.
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From page 31... ...
, 2012, Advancing Astronomy in the Coming Decade: Opportuni ties and Challenges. Report of the National Science Foundation Division of Astronomical Sciences Portfolio Review Committee, http://www.nsf.gov/mps/ast/portfolioreview/reports/ast_portfolio_review_report.
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From page 32... ...
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From page 33... ...
There are now more papers published based on Hubble Space Telescope (HST) archival data than papers based on the original observations.12 There are many archives in the United States associ ated with different observatories and long-term projects, with different levels of output.
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From page 34... ...
; no catalogs are published. Keck Observatory In collaboration with NASA, Keck makes OIR raw data from DEIMOS, ESI, HIRES, KI, LRIS, MOSFIRE, NIRC, NIRC2, NIRSPEC, and OSIRIS instruments publicly available after a default proprietary period of 18 months via the Keck O bservatory Archive through the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute at IPAC.
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From page 35... ...
The raw data, the pipeline-reduced data, and science-ready cata logs are all made publicly available after a 12-month proprietary period through a web-enabled database hosted at Johns Hopkins University via a 5-year, but possibly renewable, grant. PTF/iPTF The fully automated private Palomar Transient Factory (PTF)
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From page 36... ...
astronomical community on VO standards. 3.3 Future Data Management Needs NWNH recommended that "Proposals for new major ground-based facilities and instruments with significant federal funding should be required as a matter of agency policy to include a plan and if necessary a budget for ensuring appropriate data acquisition, processing, archiving, and public access after a suitable proprietary period."17 This is a worthy goal for all major surveys from both public and private facilities.
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From page 37... ...
nationalacademies.org/BPA/BPA_087934#presentations: David Silva, National Optical Astronomy Observatory, "NOAO Today and Tomorrow"; Richard White, Space Telescope Science Institute, "Data Panel Discussion"; George Helou, California Institute of Technology, "Archiving Ground-Based Data: Perspective from Space"; Mario Juric, Large Synoptic Survey Telescope.
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From page 38... ...
LSST The LSST archive, to be housed at the NCSA for user access, will accumulate approximately 20 TB of ugrizy data per night, generating for the archive 60 PB of raw data and 15 PB of catalog data over the 10-year lifetime.25,26 Level 1 data27 and 24 See K Chambers, 2015, "Pan-STARRS and the Future of Optical/IR Sky Surveys in the Northern Hemisphere," white paper submitted to the committee.
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From page 39... ...
will be available to the community to support additional activities, such as computing and saving additional parameters for a subset of brighter galaxies. Additionally, the LSST data center at NCSA will be colocated with publicly available petascale computing facilities, and it should be possible to apply for time to carry out exten sive analyses that require more than the 10 percent of its resources that LSST will make available.29 This will be important for the community, since downloading 28 Level 2: Yearly processing of all the data taken to date, including de-blending sources and optimal processing of multi-epoch data, resulting in calibrated catalogs of positions, fluxes, and shapes for o bjects of sufficient quality to enable a wide range of science without returning to the pixels.
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From page 40... ...
Where the existing standard is inadequate for LSST needs, LSST will propose extensions and work with the community to reach a common solution" (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, 2013, "LSST Data Products Definition Document," http://ls.st/dpdd)
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From page 41... ...
There are currently 40 departments in 38 institutions in the United States offering a Ph.D. in astronomy, astrophysics, or planetary sci ences.33 Of these, half have instrumentation programs in OIR; radio, millimeter, 32 Training has been discussed in several of the recent reports that consider the OIR System: NSF, 2012, Advancing Astronomy in the Coming Decade: Opportunities and Challenges, report of the ational Science Foundation Division of Astronomical Sciences Portfolio Review Committee, N August 12, http://www.nsf.gov/mps/ast/portfolioreview/reports/ast_portfolio_review_report.pdf; NOAO, 2009, Final Report of the Committee on Access to Large Telescopes for Astronomical Instruction and Research (ALTAIR)
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From page 42... ...
By way of example, the Texas Robotic Optical Transient Search Experiment telescope and the Palomar 60-inch have been used effectively as testbeds for robotic operation. The NSF Portfolio Review Committee warned that "it will be difficult to attract and retain the next generation of instrument builders."36 and NWNH noted "the opportunities for training students in instrumentation have declined precipitously over the past 20 years.
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From page 43... ...
provide products of great value to astronomers, but surveys are not the whole story in astronomy. As practitioners in the field -- at all levels -- are becoming less connected to raw data acquisition and more reliant on data products available in archives, the need for training in observational techniques and associated data uncertainties is less obvious but remains important.
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From page 44... ...
Students therefore have much to learn from active participation in real-time decision making and data acquisition at the telescope for tasks such as the alignment of multi-slit masks and coronagraphs, altering priorities on a target list in response to quick-look analysis of incoming data, deciding after a first observation whether an object warrants a larger investment of telescope time, or changing programs entirely based on seeing or weather conditions. Many premier research telescopes are accessible to Ph.D.
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From page 45... ...
46 Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, "LSST Project and Community Workshop," https://project.lsst. org/meetings/lsst2014/, accessed March 1, 2015; Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, "LSST and NOAO Observing Cadences Workshop," https://project.lsst.org/meetings/ocw/, accessed March 1, 2015.
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From page 46... ...
Gawiser, M Geha, et al., 2014, "Enabling a Diverse User Community to Produce Cutting-Edge Science with LSST," white paper submitted to the committee)
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From page 47... ...
It is worth noting that while there may be fewer academic tenure-track jobs for instrument builders and software experts, these graduates rarely have trouble finding employment outside of astronomy because they have outstanding techni cal training. While producing highly skilled individuals who leave astronomy adds high-level workers to society, that is not the primary motivation for training stu dents in astronomy graduate programs.
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From page 48... ...
Because instrument development on private facilities is more driven by PIs than by agency or national programmatics, there is still an important role for universities and small labs to play, especially with respect to training for later involvement in the larger-scale projects. NSF can have a significant impact through its research grants and instrumentation programs.
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From page 49... ...
52 See the white papers submitted to the committee highlighting the need for instrument develop ment and training as well as funding for transformational instrumentation and technologies: T.E. A rmandroff, 2014, "Input from McDonald Observatory to the Committee on a Strategy to Optimize the U.S.
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