The SOAR consortium has set up two working groups on Science and Operations for which NOAO, as a partner, is seeking user input. The Science Working Group has the following charge:
1) Develop the scientific requirements for SOAR in a quantitative fashion, particularly in the delivered image quality.
2) Undertake engineering studies with the goal of completion by January, 1997, including the initial project plan, model and costs.
3) Within these engineering studies, explore in particular the scientific and engineering benefits and associated savings or additional costs of a thinner (10cm) primary mirror and of an off-axis design.
4) On the basis of the engineering studies and external impartial review, formulate a recommendation for the technical approach to the telescope to present to the partnership.
The members of this committee are Gerald Cecil (UNC, Chair), Jack Baldwin (CTIO/NOAO), Jeff Kuhn (MSU), and Joao Steiner (Brazil).
We plan to discuss the status of the SOAR project and NOAO user requirements at the NOAO Users' committee on 13-14 December. The members of the NOAO Users' Committee are:
*Suzanne Hawley (MSU) Chair, slh@pillan.pa.msu.edu
Bob Mathieu, (Wisconsin), Chair, KPNO subcommittee, mathieu@madraf.astro.wisc.edu
*Michael Strauss (Princeton), strauss@astro.princeton.edu
*Charles Bailyn (Yale), bailyn@astro.yale.edu
*Stephen Schechtman (Carnegie), shec@ociw.edu
*Kristen Sellgren (OSU), sellgren@cannon.mps.ohio-state.edu
*Patricio Ortiz (U. de Chile), ortiz@das.uchile.cl
Martha Haynes (Cornell), haynes@astrosun.TN.CORNELL.EDU
Verne Smith (Texas), verne@astro.as.utexas.edu
John Bally (Colorado), bally@janos.colorado.edu
Mark Dickinson (STScI), med@stsci.edu
David Koo (UCSC), koo@lick.UCSC.EDU
*Member of CTIO subcommittee
Please contact Suzanne Hawley and me immediately if you wish to participate in formulating the NOAO user science requirements for the SOAR telescope. Fairly irrevocable decisions will be taken early in the new year. NOAO's opening position is to attempt to make the telescope and instrument package for SOAR complementary with the telescope and instrumentation capabilities of Gemini and the Blanco 4-m. The goal is to, whenever appropriate, share instrumentation, access and infrastructure between these three powerful telescopes to increase the power of each and to avoid expensive duplication of instrumentation. To achieve these aims, we put considerable weight on SOAR for excellent image quality in the optical and near IR, goals which are shared by the partnership. We expect to specialize the Blanco 4-m towards wider-field applications and to exchange telescope time between the SOAR and Blanco telescopes on a science-demand basis, where 1 night on SOAR = 1 night on the Blanco. This will allow our user community to have access to even more time on SOAR, provided users from the other SOAR partners apply to make corresponding use of the capabilities of the Blanco 4-m and its instrumentation (e.g. a large mosaic CCD camera and a multifiber spectrograph).
The Operations Working Group consists of Sergio Oliveira Kepler (Brazil), Malcolm Smith (CTIO), Sue Simkin (MSU) and Chuck Evans (UNC). Its charge is to:
1) Explore and recommend the level of operational costs and support for (a) commissioning; and (b) operational phases of the project.
2) Define the anticipated operating period and costs and methods by which we may compensate for inflation as it affects all partners.
3) Explore the cost/benefit trades of queue scheduling, the optimum number of simultaneously active instruments during a night and during a year, the mix of support for facility class and non-facility class instruments, the data bandwidth that will be adequate for remote observing, and the compatibility of SOAR instruments and equipment with Gemini/CTIO protocols.
4) Study the costs and benefits of building SOAR atop Cerro Pachon vs. Cerro Tololo and make a recommendation.
NOAO users who wish to be involved in addressing these operational concerns should, again, contact Suzanne Hawley and myself immediately. A decision on siting the telescope has to be made by the next meeting of the SOAR consortium, early in the new year.
Malcolm Smith