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NOAO 2000 (1Jun94)
(from the Director's Office, NOAO Newsletter No. 38, 1 June 1994)

Over the past year, NOAO has undertaken a re-examination of its
mission and priorities.  Several factors make such a re-examination
timely.  In the next 18 months, the GONG observing stations will be
deployed.  Questions arise about how to take advantage of this new
facility; how long to operate the GONG network; what kinds of
observations might be combined with helioseismology to build models of
the entire convection zone in an effort to understand the nature and
origin of solar variability.  Another question for solar astronomy is
what should be done to renew the solar facilities.  Apart from GONG, no
new facilities have been built within NSO in 25 years.

The advent of the Gemini project requires a similar re-examination of
the nighttime program, both north and south.  Gemini is an
international - not an NOAO - project.  However, Gemini relies on
national project offices, which are located in the national
observatories, to serve as an extension of the project team with
specific responsibility for serving as an interface between Gemini and
the national communities; to represent national positions concerning
the science requirements for the Gemini facilities; and to participate
in design reviews and assist with technical oversight.  In addition,
the southern Gemini telescope will be operated on a site that is owned
by AURA, the Gemini and CTIO staffs will occupy shared space both in La
Serena and on the mountain, and some staff may be shared between the
two operations.

Even in the absence of new programs, a re-examination of NOAO
priorities would be required by the budget climate (see previous
Newsletter).  In terms of purchasing power, the budget for NOAO
operations is now 30 percent below what it would have been had it
simply kept pace with inflation since 1984.  The baseline plan for
domestic discretionary spending by the federal government for the next
five years is level dollar funding.  With allowance for further
inflation, that means an additional cut of perhaps 20 percent for most
discretionary programs.  Astronomy cannot grow, or even keep pace with
inflation, unless other programs shrink.

In fact, astronomy has a good case to make for expanding its support.
Over the next decade, half a billion dollars in capital will be
invested in large new telescopes.  This is the first major investment
in ground based facilities in 25 years and represents a watershed in
astronomy.  A relatively modest amount of additional NSF support - 12
to 15 million dollars per year - would ensure the effective use of
these telescopes.  The funds are needed for instrumentation of the
independent observatories (Keck, Magellan, LBT, and the MMT upgrade)
and for operations of Gemini.  Innovative instrumentation is essential
for all these telescopes.  A poorly-instrumented 8-m telescope is
likely to be less effective than a well-instrumented 4-m telescope, and
the latter is less expensive to build and operate.

As part of the effort to define what NOAO should look like in the year
2000 and beyond, astronomers from both the solar and nighttime programs
discussed mission statements.  While some people may regard such
statements as unimportant, the attempt to arrive at a mission statement
can serve to clarify the goals and shared values of the organization
and can provide an important guide in determining priorities.  The
goals that are shared throughout the observatory are:

o  To enable excellent scientific research by the US astronomical
   community.

o  To support diverse and innovative approaches to scientific problems.

o  To provide access to forefront facilities through open competition.

Paul Schechter, who chairs AURA's Observatories Advisory Committee,
characterizes these goals as the four E's:  enabling excellence without
exclusivity or entitlement.

The challenge, of course, is to translate this statement into a
program.  In the next several Newsletters, we will outline the program
that NOAO will propose for both solar and nighttime astronomy.  This
program will address issues on all time scales from what we do after
GONG and after Gemini to what instruments and telescope upgrades will
be completed in the next two years.  We will indicate our priorities
for various budget levels.  And we want your feedback.  NOAO does not
formulate programs in a vacuum but rather works closely with the
community that it serves; AURA and NSF approval are also required
before specific programs can go forward.

In an upcoming Newsletter, Jacques Beckers will outline the program
that he is developing with the NSO staff.  The other divisional
directors will also comment on the priorities for their portions of the
NOAO program in this and future Newsletters.

In this Newsletter, however, I want to make some general statements
that indicate the kinds of changes that will occur in the NOAO
nighttime program in response to Gemini, which dominates future
planning.  The priorities will be:

1) Support for Gemini - whatever the international Gemini project
   requires the National Observatories to do to support the Gemini
   program will have the highest priority;

2) Telescopes and instruments that support Gemini observations - in
   order to use the Gemini telescopes effectively and to mount a
   broad attack on astrophysical problems, observations, such as
   wide-field imaging to select objects for spectroscopy with Gemini,
   will be required;

3) Capabilities not provided by Gemini - as one example, Gemini will
   not provide a wide field for fiber spectroscopy for several years
   after first light.

Consistent with these priorities, we plan to re-orient the programs of
both KPNO and CTIO.  In the future, the emphasis at CTIO will be on
operations.  The near term goal is to improve the delivered image
quality of the CTIO 4-m telescope.  The planned program is extensive,
involving changes in the structure of the dome, refiguring of the
secondary, cooling the oil and primary mirror, modifying the mirror
support system, and adding a secondary with tip/tilt capability.  Other
telescopes will be upgraded and repaired in order to lower long term
maintenance costs as resources permit.  The goal is to complete this
program before installation of the southern Gemini telescope begins.
While Gemini has the option of hiring its own personnel, we believe
that the CTIO staff can and should contribute to the commissioning of
the southern Gemini telescope, and that on the basis of their
experience over the next few years, they will be well positioned to
compete for Gemini positions.

The staff representatives from both CTIO and KPNO who attended the NOAO
2000 meeting agreed that a goal of NOAO should be to provide
instrumentation of comparable (but not necessarily identical)
capability at both sites.  Estimates show that essentially all of the
engineering effort at CTIO, which has been steadily eroded by budget
cuts over the past few years, will be required for the program of
telescope upgrades.  Both KPNO and CTIO also agree that there is a
threshold size required in an engineering group if it is to be
effective in building complex modern instrumentation.  NOAO can no
longer support such an instrumentation group at more than one of its
nighttime sites.  Therefore, CTIO and KPNO have agreed that in the
future all major instruments for both sites will be built in Tucson.
The IR and O/UV instrumentation groups formerly responsible for
providing instruments to KPNO will become an NOAO instrumentation
group.  Since no new resources are being provided to this group from
within NOAO, it is likely that the rate of installation of new
instruments at KPNO will be reduced by as much as a factor of two.  The
NOAO instrument program will compete to build some of the Gemini
instruments assigned to the US and will work with the international
Gemini project in planning and evaluating the entire instrumentation
program.  Priorities for the NOAO instrument group will ultimately be
determined by the NOAO Director on the basis of a program developed
jointly by KPNO, CTIO, and where appropriate, the US Gemini Program.
Because we believe that instrumentation is key to keeping the NOAO and
Gemini telescopes competitive and that the instrumentation resources
are at the minimum viable level for serving the telescopes of both KPNO
and CTIO, this program will not be preferentially cut in order to keep
telescopes in operation.  Any proposed cuts will be reviewed on an
NOAO-wide basis.

A joint IR program has been worked out and will be described in a
future Newsletter and discussed with the users' committees at their
next meetings.  A program in O/UV instrumentation is under discussion.

In setting priorities for the instrumentation program, NOAO will
emphasize its strengths, which include optical and IR detectors,
infrared instruments, optical imaging, and optical spectroscopy,
including multi-object fiber spectroscopy.  In other areas, including
adaptive optics, NOAO will attempt either to purchase systems or to
make them available to the community in return for observing time.
Plans for adaptive optics will be described in a future Newsletter.

With respect to telescope operations, the plan is to retain the current
balance of resources north and south, solar and nighttime.  Resources
will not be shifted from one site to another.  It is possible to make a
strong scientific case for each of the telescopes that we operate, and
so the scientific arguments for shifting resources are not compelling.
We  believe that fixing the resource allocations will stimulate each
site to devise creative approaches to cutting costs since each site
will benefit from whatever cost savings it achieves.

As I prepared this year's program plan, I was impressed once again with
the significance and diversity of the science pursued on telescopes
other than the two 4-m telescopes.  Astronomy requires access to
facilities with a range of apertures and a diverse set of instruments.
As indicated by the mission statement, we are committed to supporting a
broad community.  That said, there are two threats to the continued
operation of the telescopes other than the two 4-m class telescopes and
WIYN.  One is the continuing decline in the budget.  Both KPNO and CTIO
are finding it increasingly difficult to continue operations at the
level of reliability that the user community has come to expect.

The second threat is even greater.  The telescopes are aging, are
becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, and several may have to be
retired sometime in the next decade independent of budget levels.  What
is needed is a systematic plan for replacing these telescopes.  Both
KPNO and CTIO would like to have one additional 4-m class telescope.
For both sites, the telescopes should be alt-az with a Cassegrain
focus, so that they can be used to commission Gemini instrumentation.
At least one of them should be designed for infrared astronomy.  Both
sites would benefit from modern 2-m class telescopes capable of
wide-field imaging.  If two new telescopes were built at each site,
then we could retire the existing telescopes, with the possible
exception of the 2.1-m and the 1.5-m telescopes, lower maintenance
costs, and have more powerful facilities for the community.  The most
likely model for obtaining such new telescopes appears to be the WIYN
model, where much of the capital for construction is provided by
partners and NOAO assumes much of the responsibility for operations.

A theme that will pervade future planning in NOAO is that we are
committed to working flexibly and in new ways with university and other
groups.  We expect to acquire some portion of our instrumentation from
outside groups either by purchasing it or by exchanging telescope time
for it.  We are prepared to share our sites with people who wish to
build and operate their own facilities.  And we are interested in
exploring partnerships that would follow the WIYN model in order to
replace our aging facilities.  Such cooperative efforts are one
approach to making the most effective use of the resources available to
ground-based astronomy.  If you have ideas for partnerships that would
aid your own scientific program while adding to the observing
opportunities that we can provide to the community that we serve,
please do contact me or one of the other directors of NOAO.

Sidney Wolff

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