The recent series of budget cuts at NOAO have inevitably had an impact at Cerro Tololo. The NSF has indicated in a letter to AURA that the NSF embraces the priorities recommended in the McCray report and encourages us to find "other means to keep in operation those productive telescopes NSF can no longer afford to support." Partly due to the lack of money in recent years to upgrade the 1-m telescope at Tololo and to develop and implement new instrumentation for it, that telescope has (with a few individual exceptions) been less productive overall than the others on Cerro Tololo.
Consistent with the AURA statement on the World-Wide Web (http://www.aura.noao.edu/aura/forum/) it is with great regret that the 1-m Yale-Tololo telescope will be withdrawn from service at the end of the current semester (i.e. at the end of January 1997). We realize the significant negative impact this will have on the photoelectic photometry community in particular. As explained in the NOAO electronic forum, our wish is to construct a modern 2.4-m-class telescope to replace the 1-m and possibly one or two of the other small telescopes. We particularly regret this telescope closure, coming as it does before a firm commitment has been secured to fund the 2.4-m. We will continue to support ASCAP photometry on the 1.5-m telescope.
In a separate article, Charles Bailyn (Yale) outlines current plans to find funding from other sources to re-open the 1-m telescope. CTIO will do what it can to assist this privatization process. It makes no sense to close telescopes if alternative funding can be found to re-invigorate them. Those users most affected by this closure may wish to take special note of Charles' article. It is our intention that this will be the last telescope to close on Tololo for at least another three or four years.
Malcolm Smith