OIR Long Range Planning Committee
Summary of the Tucson OIR LRPC meeting 11 and 12 November, 2004
Craig Foltz and Jeremy Mould recapped the roadmapping goals and the goals of the individual meetings, the present one being the input of information from the parties developing OIR decadal survey facilities.
Jeremy Mould described the Operations Budget Framework from NOAO’s perspective. The WIYN and SOAR partnerships are NOAO’s model for public-private partnerships.
Ed Stone, Chairman of the TMT Board, together with Richard Ellis, Joe Miller, Gary Sanders, and Jerry Nelson, said that the goal of TMT was a 50/50 public-private partnership. The construction phase is 2008-2014. The Science Advisory Committee has 2 NOAO and 2 community members. The reference design is a 30 meter segmented Gregorian focus telescope. Key points of complimentarity with JWST are optical and high resolution spectroscopy and high angular resolution. TMT is a direct technical step towards a 60-100 meter telescope. Adaptive Optics has come of age (e.g. recent images of Uranus and its rings), and segmentation has no drawbacks (e.g. Keck’s 0.15 arcsec K band images).
| Timeline: | 4/06 | CoDR | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 9/06 | Construction proposal | ||
| 1/07 | Site selection | ||
| 10/07 | PDR | ||
| 7/13 | 1st light (1/4 segments) | ||
| 4/14 | 4/4 segments | ||
| 1/15 | 1st light AO | ||
| 7/16 | 3rd instrument delivered |
Both queue and service mode observing are envisaged. NOAO’s role is to engage the community, contribute to engineering, be responsible for some instrumentation, and contribute to operations.
Wendy Freedman, Chair of the GMT Board, together with Matt Johns and Pat McCarthy, addressed the question: could the GMT do the GSMT SWG’s science case ? Yes, but some parts would take 30-50% longer, others similar times. Some possibly unique capabilities included AO at the secondary, a unique PSF for ExAO, rapid instrument changes, wide field GLAO, and wide field spectroscopy without fibers. GMT would be 20-30% slower in the 3D map of the early Universe, equal in the physics of galaxy formation, and not very disadvantaged for confusion limited stellar populations work, as the resolution of the GMT is closer to that of a 24.5m telescope. For exoplanets high strehl, apodization, adaptive phase modulation, and nulling would allow GMT to reach 10-7 to 10-8 rejection.
NOAO could be a construction partner, an instrument provider, a source of operations funds. To raise operating funds, Magellan and Carnegie have internal plans too. NSF would play a critical role in avoiding duplication of effort, leveraging funding, and not prematurely downselecting between GSMT projects.
| Timeline: | Phase B | 2005-09 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Construction | 2009-15 | ||
| 1st light (4/7) | 2013 | ||
| Last segment | 2015 | ||
| Full op (7/7) | 2016 |
Alan Dressler presented a discussion of the Brinkman committee criteria as they applied to LSST and GSMT. The science and technology criteria are “most scientific merit in the field”, technological readiness, quality of the proposers, and their project management capabilities. The agency strategic criteria are influence on related fields, multidisciplinary impact, other agency and international appeal, educational value, and timeliness. The national criteria are transformative character, US leadership, number of researchers, urgency, impact, community support, and balance.
Large Survey Telescope (LST) discussions (day 2) were conducted in full open session.
Chris Stubbs said that LSST data would have no proprietary period, and that the data products would be images, catalogs, and real time alerts. If any resource (e.g. bandwidth) limits the delivery process, peer review should be used to manage the bottleneck. LSST will comply with VO metadata protocols. Science teams are being formed for specific projects, but LSST will serve many users. We should not be concerned about the multiplicity of sequenced LST projects, as we are on the steep part of the science(input $) curve.
Steve Kahn indicated the budget big picture (120M NSF, 100M DOE, 50M private) including contingency. It is essential to probe dark energy on multiple fronts. It is timely because, with LHC being done in Europe, there is a hiatus in US physics until LC comes on line. International interest includes a clone (Korea) and Japanese participation from HEP. NOAO’s role is the telescope/site group, part of Data Management, leading telescope operations, and participation in EPO. Operations will be divided into mountaintop and data management, and costs should be shared by MPS (site, data), DOE (data acquisition), and CISE (data). LSST member universities will continue to seek private funds for operations and may choose to retire some facilities. Mountaintop and data management support staff would be drawn from a range of institutions. Synergies with other projects include PS1 (testbed for pipelines), PS4 (all sky coverage, if LSST goes South, filters), KAOS (spectroscopic followup), JDEM (complimentarity), GLAST (launch 2008), EXIST, SKA, LISA.
Don Sweeney indicated the timeline: submit construction proposal to NSF (March 06), start construction (Dec 07), and first light (2012). The Operations phase is estimated at $20M/year equally split between the observatory and data management. Joint oversight by DOE, NSF, and LSSTC is envisaged, in a manner which is common in HEP. There is one project office, however, with an experienced management team.
Garth Illingworth noted that the Joint Dark Energy Taskforce was expected to report in June and will seek input on LST.
Nick Kaiser presented the answers to the committee’s questions of PanStarrs. A previous science presentation by PS was received at the Honolulu meeting.
PS is funded by USAF for construction, with anticipated first light for the prototype PS1 system in 1/2006 and for the full PS4 system in early 2008. It is anticipated that the productive life of the full facility will be approximately one decade beyond commissioning. PS4 will be able to address all of the science goals identified in the LSST SWG document. PS has A-Omega ~50, as compared to ~250 assumed in parts of that document, so limiting depths are correspondingly ~0.5 mag shallower at a given integration time.
Distribution of PS data is contingent on source of operations funding. PS scientists recognize that the quid pro quo for public sources of ops funds is that the data will be openly distributed. It is anticipated that transient discoveries will be made available immediately. Static sky data (images and catalogs) may be subject to a proprietary period to be negotiated with funding agencies. Basic data products are: cumulative static sky images in 6 passbands; static sky catalogs (with time history of magnitudes for variability studies); difference images; transient/moving/variable detection stream. The database for these science products is being designed in such a way as to be compatible with VO standards. In addition, PS will support a moving object pipeline that will process moving object detections to generate a catalog of orbits of minor planets.
A natural and potentially important role for NOAO in PS is in the archiving/mirroring/distribution of PS published data and providing support for the general user community. In a broader context, NOAO can provide a lead in laying out a road map for the design and development the major components (detectors, telescopes, data systems) of future, more powerful, systems, and participating actively in such developments. A science case for multiple LST facilities could be considered. Coverage of both N and S hemispheres is desirable for goals such as asteroid collision hazard (summer colliders are harder to detect) and also for goals that use overlap of optical/near IR imaging data with other surveys (e.g. ALMA in the south). N and S facilities would provide useful parallax information for solar system studies. Distribution of facilities in longitude would improve temporal coverage for variability. History has shown that parallel projects lead to healthy competition that drives rapid progress and provides critical independent confirmation of scientific results.
Major PS project milestones are:
- establishment of project management staff, process, and hiring of engineering staff (complete)
- successful delivery of first lot of test devices and demonstration of high yield via array design (complete)
- successful development of prototype high bandwidth/low noise detector control system using COTS A/D conversion devices (done)
- deployment of PS1 prototype telescope and detector system (1/06)
- verification of major data systems (6/07)
- deployment of PS4 observatory system (1/08)
Joe Mohr described the Dark Energy Survey, which will focus on galaxy clusters, the angular power spectrum, weak lensing and supernovae. Participants are Fermilab, U.Illinois, U.Chicago, LBNL, and CTIO. The South Pole Telescope is planned for November 2006 deployment. From its Sunyeav-Zeldovich clusters, the DES will constrain w to 5%. Jeremy Mould was asked whether operations could be supported from CTIO. He said, yes, DES would end before GSMT commenced operations. Julianne Dalcanton asked whether there could be any sharing between DES and LSST.
Tod Lauer described the NOAO Data Products Program and presented its roadmap.
In its final session the committee proceeded to outline its report.
Upcoming meeting schedule
- At the AAS, Tuesday 11 January, 1pm.
- At DTM, Washington DC, Thursday February 17
