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A Letter from the New Director (1Mar94) (from CTIO, NOAO Newsletter No. 37, 1 March 1994) The Current State of CTIO In the years since I left Chile in 1976, CTIO has continued its marvelous reputation for a standard of visitor service second to none. Scientific productivity in terms of astronomical discovery, published papers and reliability of operation of its telescopes has been excellent. CTIO has used relatively limited technical development resources to outstanding effect. A recent example has been the development of the ARCON CCD systems, which are as good as any in the world. A key to the success of CTIO has undoubtedly been the strong voice that active scientists have in the running of the observatory. That strong influence will continue. On the other hand, I can hardly tell the difference between photographs of Cerro Tololo taken in 1976 and the appearance of the summit today. In contrast, Mauna Kea - which in 1976 had no telescopes bigger than the University of Hawaii 88-inch - is vastly and fundamentally changed. It has many large telescopes in routine operation with excellent image quality. The Need for Change I see that part of the challenge of the future will be to produce positive change while maintaining the traditions of scientific vitality and strong commitment to support of our visiting observers - the trademarks of Tololo's operations over the last 30 years. Change is essential now. Why is it that while new telescopes have been appearing on mountains all over the globe - including in Chile - no large new telescopes have come to an observatory as successful as CTIO? A world-class organization can only go so far by tuning up its focal-plane instruments and redoubling its efforts to support visitors when its telescopes are smaller and/or have poorer images than potentially competitive facilities. Current Priorities We will respond to this need for change in a careful manner. The highest priority program in the observatory is to improve the quality of the images at the focal planes of the 4-m telescope. This program is under the leadership of Jack Baldwin. I expect occasionally to have to give this program higher priority even than support of scheduled observing time, as I believe in the longer term this will produce greater scientific benefit for our user community. A recent example of what can happen is that a few scheduled programs on the 4-m telescope have had to be delayed, modified or even cancelled in order to get the refigured f/8 secondary back onto the telescope. In a separate article by Jack Baldwin, you will see that not even this improvement will, by itself, guarantee significantly improved focal-plane imaging. Much more work is required - and will be supported - as an observatory priority. It is important to realize that (i) the scientific and technical staff of CTIO will be taking this top priority seriously and (ii) that the increasing focus of the observatory's scientific and technical resources onto the 4-m upgrades will reduce the level of effort available for maintenance and support of the smaller telescopes at CTIO. 4-m telescope images with a FWHM around 1.3 arcsecs ceased to be really competitive five or six years ago! We are being forced to restrict significantly the range of options we can support on each of the smaller telescopes - and cease significant development activity on those telescopes, at least temporarily - in order to catch up on the 4-m. Our second current priority is to finish off the introduction of ARCON readout and control electronics for our most-used CCD systems. This activity is certain to continue throughout 1994. Our third current priority is to improve the capabilities of our infrared instrumentation offered on the 4-m. Progress will be severely constrained until completion of the f/14 tip-tilt secondary installation at the end of next year. Longer-term Changes We are in discussions with staff and users on how to get as much of the present observatory as possible into a truly modern and highly reliable state (Bahcall priority one) before the ramp-up to Gemini commissioning and operations gets under way in Chile. Given the present budgetary environment that many of us heard about at the recent AAS meeting, it seems unlikely that CTIO will receive any additional resources in Chile, and yet we expect that a large fraction of the available ETS effort will be needed to support Gemini South ramp-up activity for a period of about three years starting around 1998 - during which time the telescopes and instruments on Tololo could receive very little in the way of in-house development support. In order for Tololo to provide what universities want, I believe we must open up more direct forms of cooperation. A university with preferred access to complementary facilities on Tololo and/or Pachon will be able to make optimum use of its (limited) access to Gemini South, and be in a unique position with regard to the traditional advantages of observatories in the Southern hemisphere - access to the southern skies in cooperative work with space-borne observatories such as HST, access to the Magellanic Clouds and the central regions of our galaxy and access to special regions of inhomogeneity in the large-scale flow of extragalactic systems. I therefore intend to do all I can to encourage, visit and work with universities in the US and Latin America with the aim of sharing the ability of CTIO to provide an excellent scientific operations environment for specific cooperative programs. Until very recently, I had hoped we could divert some CTIO resources to collaborative programs with any universities wishing to help upgrade the small telescopes (in return for a few years of preferred access to these telescopes at, say, the 10-15% level). However, the need to speed progress on the 4-m telescope upgrades effort coupled with the likely state of the CTIO budget over the next five years has led the CTIO scientific staff to the view that such small-scale collaborative efforts should not, after all, be encouraged - unless the budget forecasts improve. Large new telescopes can be funded by private or university-based donations, but such funds usually require substantial endowments to cover operations. Tololo would seek the additional support necessary to provide an excellent environment for such operations in return for a fraction of telescope time to be made available to its general users. Other projects will wish to retain a higher degree of independence and provide their own operating endowments. In such cases, Tololo would offer access to the site and suitable business support services in Chile on a full cost recovery basis. Cerro Pachon would, in such cases, function much as Mauna Kea does today. The only tax on telescope time in such cases would be the fraction due to Chilean astronomers. Operations on Tololo - and in the future on Cerro Pachon - provide the only ground-based access to the southern skies at optical and infrared wavelengths for the vast majority of observers from the most energetic community of astronomers in the world. I am therefore certain that the future for this observatory is extremely good and that CTIO will respond well to the current challenges. Tololo stands ready to work in a flexible, imaginative, cooperative, energetic and open manner to improve ground-based access to the southern skies. Malcolm Smith
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