As of 1 October, I resumed my function as NSO Director, with Doug Rabin returning to full-time research. Doug did an outstanding job in his position as Acting NSO Director this year, allowing me to focus all my efforts on the definition study of a large solar telescope. All of us at NSO thank Doug for undertaking this challenging task this year and for carrying it out very well. Doug expects to complete the Near Infrared Magnetograph NIM-2 for the McMath-Pierce Facility this year, making it available as a user facility in 1997, as described later in this Newsletter.
The feasibility study of the large solar telescope (CLEAR) has made substantial progress in this year. Much of the engineering of the telescope has been completed. However, because of competition for the best of NOAO's engineering talent from the Gemini and WIYN projects, the manpower was insufficient to complete the telescope and building design. This design is proceeding, and I expect it to be well enough along in six months to allow a good cost evaluation, followed by the completion of the Phase B study. Simultaneously a 1/6 scale mock-up of CLEAR will be build to test, and hopefully validate, the ideas for seeing and dust control that are critical for the satisfactory functioning of CLEAR. This mock-up will be mounted on the side of the Sac Peak spar. Other mini-studies on the management of super-polished surfaces and on other CLEAR related topics are under way. As of October 1 the full seeing site survey for CLEAR is under way with Seykora seeing monitors running daily at the Mauna Loa, Big Bear, Sac Peak and La Palma solar observatories. Pending final arrangements, it is anticipated that monitors will also be installed on Mauna Kea and Haleakala.
The SOLIS proposal received a very good evaluation by the NSF Site Visit Committee last July. That committee was also charged with reviewing the NOAO renewal proposal to NSF that included, besides SOLIS, two nighttime facilities. As a result, we hope that NSF funding will be made available for its construction in time for its completion by the maximum of solar activity expected in the year 2000. Together with GONG, the RISE/PSPT, and the observing facilities on the SoHO satellite, it will provide the most comprehensive data base ever of the physical properties of the Sun, extending for the first time from the deep solar interior to the distant regions of the outer solar corona and the inner solar wind. Its availability over a solar cycle will doubtless lead to much improved models of the solar activity cycle, including better knowledge of astrophysical dynamo mechanisms and magneto-convection.
Notwithstanding limited available manpower resources, good progress is being made on NIM-2, on the image quality improvement program at the Sac Peak Vacuum Tower Telescope and on the KPVT Telescope Control System. Individual images taken in the 430 nm G-Band at the VTT now approach the diffraction limit of that telescope. Removal of the residual telescope aberrations is expected to improve the isoplanatic patch size, the duration and the frequency of occurrence of the good images.
The AURA Observatory Visiting Committee will be at NSO from 8 to 11 December, visiting first Sac Peak for two days and then the Tucson/Kitt Peak division of NSO. Much of our activities in the coming month will focus on the preparation for this visit. The National Academy, through its Space Studies Board, will start its review of ground-based solar astronomy probably early next year. It is expected to have a major effect on the future of NSO as well as on that of other ground-based solar facilities in the USA that are equally threatened by funding reductions and related deterioration.
Inside NSO, activities have started on preparations for the 1997 NSO/SP workshop. The preliminary topic for this workshop was selected to be "The Sun at all Time Scales." Jack Harvey and K. Balasubramaniam are the organizers of this workshop, with the help of Doug Rabin. Stay tuned for more specifics on the date and with a better definition of the topic of the workshop. The workshop will be held in the conference room of the then newly completed Visitor Center at Sac Peak.
Jacques Beckers