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KPNO Users Committee Report (1Mar95)
(from Director's Office, NOAO Newsletter No. 41, 1 March 1995)

                          Introduction

The KPNO Users Committee met in Tucson on 10-11 November 1994.
Committee members present were William Keel ( Alabama), David Koo (UC
Santa Cruz), Elizabeth Lada (U. Maryland), Gus Oemler (Yale), John Salzer
(Wesleyan), Verne Smith (Texas), and Rosemary Wyse (Johns Hopkins).
Seth Tuttle (NSF - NOAO Program manager) and Jim Hesser (DAO and
Chair of the AURA Observatories Visiting Committee) also attended the
sessions.

The format of this years' meeting represented a modest break in tradition
relative to recent meetings. To facilitate better communications between the
committee and observatory staff, formal presentation of reports was kept to a
minimum. The KPNO staff had prepared written summaries of their reports
which were distributed to the committee one week before the meeting, which
freed up time for direct discussion of the important issues facing KPNO. In
addition, a much larger fraction of the meeting was spent in joint sessions
with the CTIO Users Committee than has been the case in previous years.
The chairs of both committees had felt that there were a number of important
topics that were of mutual interest to both observatories. A separate report
presenting the suggestions made by the joint CTIO/KPNO committees is
appended to this report.

The committee read reports from Caty Pilachowski (KPNO Interim Director)
on the state of KPNO; from Richard Green on the overall NOAO
instrumentation program; from George Jacoby on IRAF; from Todd Boroson
on the US Gemini program; from Bruce Bohannan on mountain operations;
from Taft Armandroff on optical instrumentation progress and plans; from
Ian Gatley on IR instrumentation progress and plans; and from Sidney Wolff
on the status of the Gemini program and the budget picture for FY 1995. All
of these staff members lead discussions of their reports during the meeting
sessions. Other members of the observatory staff participating in the group
discussions included Sam Barden, Dave DeYoung, Tom Kinman, Mike Merrill,
Ron Probst and Richard Wolff.

It should be noted that the committee had not seen the report written by the
McCray Committee on its deliberations regarding the role of NOAO in the
future of ground-based optical and IR astronomy at the time of our meeting.
This report will therefore not include any discussion of the McCray report.

                  NOAO 2000 -  A Plan for the Future

The committee gives general endorsement to the plan for the future of
KPNO as presented by Caty Pilachowski and contained in the NOAO 2000
planning document. We are impressed with the forward thinking presented in
this plan, as well as the optimistic but still realistic view of the future. We
encourage the observatory to move forward with vigor in putting the plan
into action and securing a future for ground-based optical-IR astronomy that
is available to all US scientists.

Some of the aspects of the plan that the committee found most appealing:

The plan for KPNO stresses "capabilities" rather than specific instruments or
telescopes. The staff has prioritized the capabilities that they see as being
vital for the scientific integrity of the national observatory (i.e., what US
astronomers need most to carry out forefront research), and have focused on
preserving these capabilities rather than on saving specific instruments or
telescopes.

The future of KPNO takes into account the existence of the Gemini
telescopes. It is recognized that the NOAO-wide capabilities must be
considered, and not simply those of KPNO. The future of KPNO is better
ensured if it is operated in a way that complements rather than competes
with Gemini.

A unified NOAO instrumentation program rather than separate programs at
the various nighttime facilities makes sense and is long overdue. The pooling
of engineering and instrument building resources within NOAO is more cost
effective and will eventually lead to better instrumentation being available at
CTIO as well as KPNO.

The instrumentation program is vital to the mission of NOAO in general and
KPNO specifically. It is the state-of-the-art instruments and detectors that
make KPNO telescopes so much in demand.

The telescopes at KPNO are aging, and not necessarily gracefully. The
committee is enthused by the current initiatives to build new modern
telescopes at KPNO to replace the capabilities of the aging smaller ones.
We view the continued access to telescopes and state-of-the-art
instrumentation for the US astronomical community to be the single most
important job of KPNO. Replacing the many small telescopes, which are
prone to breakdowns, with one or two modern telescopes will maintain the
current high level of capabilities at KPNO while hopefully reducing
operations costs. We endorse the current plan to build a replica of the
3.5-meter WIYN telescope to enhance and replace some of the capabilities of
the Coude feed, 2.1-meter, and 0.9-meter telescopes.

The first step into the future for KPNO already looks bright due to the
success of the WIYN telescope. The addition of WIYN to the existing
KPNO telescopes will be a major enhancement in the science capability for
the US community.

A number of points about the NOAO 2000 plan raised concerns with the
committee. We summarize them here:

The plan as it is currently presented appears to place too much emphasis on
KPNO as a support facility for Gemini, while playing down its important
role of continuing to providing access to telescopes and modern
instrumentation to the US astronomy community. We can not make the point
too strongly that 50% of Gemini North can not come even close to replacing
the capabilities of the existing KPNO telescopes, particularly with the
first-light instrumentation currently planned. Although we strongly support
the concept of KPNO working in tandem with Gemini to enhance the
scientific capabilities of the latter, we stress that NOAO must also remain
committed to maintaining access to northern hemisphere telescopes for the
general community. Future plans for NOAO must provide a good balance
between Gemini support and the traditional KPNO user.

All of the capabilities provided by the existing suite of small telescopes at
KPNO are not replaced under the current plan, which is to replace all of the
small telescopes (0.9 m, 1.3 m, 2.1 m, coude feed, schmidt) with a single
WIYN clone. First of all, this plan only preserves capabilities IF the WIYN
Twin is built AND is instrumented properly (e.g., high throughput low
dispersion spectrograph, high dispersion echelle spectrograph, wide-field
imaging). Second, this plan does not replace the capability of the Schmidt,
which with its wide-field CCD and fast optics is a unique instrument for
survey work (including potential Gemini support observations). Third, many
projects would be difficult or impossible to carry out if all of the small
telescope observing were taken up by a single, multi-purpose telescope
(which would presumably be operated in a queue-scheduled mode much of
the time). These include a large class of variability monitoring programs,
photometric calibration studies, and projects with special calibration needs.
Fourth, the closing of the smaller telescopes would likely have a negative
impact on the training of graduate students. KPNO must carefully investigate
these issues before committing to any plan that would ultimately close
telescopes. Ideally, a second new telescope (2 meter class) should be built as
well to maintain some of these current capabilities, particularly student
access, monitoring programs and wide-field IR imaging that was lost with
the closure of the 1.3-meter telescope.

                      Getting the Most from KPNO

The current budget situation offers little hope that the financial climate will
improve significantly in the near future. NOAO continues to suffer budget
shortfalls which can only be made up for by reducing staff and,
consequently, closing telescopes. The situation for the current fiscal year has
in fact reached this crisis state, with the outcome being the planned closure
of the 1.3-meter telescope (see article in December 1994 Newsletter).
Although the committee recognizes the extreme situation facing the
observatory, and appreciates the efforts made to minimize the impact of the
loss of this telescope, we are very upset to see yet another KPNO telescope
get closed. This closure will curtail or eliminate the over 40 scientific
programs scheduled there each year, including a number of graduate thesis
projects. It also eliminates important observational capabilities, including
wide-field IR imaging and photoelectric photometry. Given the available
options imposed by the gloomy budget situation, the majority of the
committee agrees with the decision by KPNO management to close the
1.3-meter telescope. However, we stress that this is not to be taken as an
endorsement for future telescope closings. With the current budget picture,
the pessimistic viewpoint would see another small telescope closing in each
of the next three years. In our view, this scenario would be nothing short of
disaster for KPNO and the US astronomical community it serves.

The NOAO 2000 plan recognizes that the aging smaller telescopes need to
be replaced with modern, more efficient (and hopefully cheaper to operate)
telescopes. However, it will be several years before any new telescopes will
be in service at KPNO, even taking the optimistic view that it will be
possible to build them in the first place. In the mean time, we feel that
KPNO must give top priority to continuing to operate the remaining small
telescopes.

It appears safe to assume that budget shortfalls will be part of the landscape
for the foreseeable future. This will mean additional staff reductions.
However, KPNO needs to divorce itself from the idea that fewer staff means
fewer telescopes. The observatory should look into ways to reorganize the
mountain support staff away from its traditional mode of operation and into a
more "bare bones" operation (it's already "lean"). Although these suggestions
are obviously not desirable, if the alternative is to close more telescopes, we
feel the choice is clear. Specific ideas raised at the meeting:

Since reductions in the support staff appear inevitable, PLAN for them now
rather than dealing with them on a crisis-by-crisis basis.

Run the 2.1-meter telescope with no operator in the future (this was already
planned).

Operate the small telescopes with less start-up assistance. Many of the small
telescopes are used by an experienced base of KPNO users who could get by
with a minimum of support (e.g., the Coude‚ Feed). KPNO should give more
responsibility to the visiting observers to help themselves. The support
provided by KPNO staff is both excellent and much appreciated, but perhaps
it is a luxury that can no longer be maintained?

One specific mode of providing support would be to operate all the small
telescopes (2.1-meter and smaller) in a fashion similar to MDM or Steward:
have a very small staff for day-to-day operations, with a maximum of two on
duty at any one time. Provide no night time technical support. This small
group of staff members would perform both instrument changes (which are
minimal on these telescopes except for the 2.1-meter) as well as any
necessary start-up support.

Consider reducing or removing many of the other mountaintop "necessities."
This might include closing the cafeteria, operating with reduced
housekeeping, and doing without some of the on-site blue collar staff. We
feel that KPNO users would rather change their own sheets and eat
microwave dinners than lose access to more telescopes.

At the same time that KPNO is striving to preserve its scientific capabilities
while reducing operations costs, it must continue to experiment with ways to
improve itself by providing enhanced services and opportunities to the
community. Ways in which this is already happening include the highly
successful save-the-bits program and the pioneering experiments with queue
scheduling. The next phase of experimentation with queue scheduling, when
the WIYN telescope becomes operational in the Spring 1995 semester, will
be an important test of this promising and efficient observing mode. The
initiation of the key projects program offers improved capabilities for
large-scope projects to be carried out. The committee gives high marks to the
staff for all of these programs.

KPNO should continue to see itself as playing an important role in the
training of young astronomers. Efforts should be made to ensure that access
to telescopes by graduate students is not curtailed, and new ways to allow
students access should be considered. Two ideas discussed by the committee:
(1) Give larger than normal blocks of time on selected smaller telescopes
(e.g., 0.9 meter) to thesis students; (2) institute a graduate internship
program where students could come for 3-6 month periods to work at the
observatory (perhaps participating in queue observing programs by assisting
with the data acquisition) in return for time to carry out their own thesis
observations (not to mention gaining valuable experience).

                             Instrumentation

As mentioned above, the committee approves of the plan to consolidate the
nighttime instrumentation program for all NOAO facilities into a single,
Tucson-based operation. A prioritization of future optical instruments for the
combined CTIO/KPNO program is given in the statement issued by the joint
Users Committee. We applaud the efforts of the group leaders (Taft
Armandroff for O/UV and Ian Gatley for IR) as well as the scientific and
instrumentation staffs at both observatories for pulling together to make the
joint program a possibility. We hope that this spirit of cooperation will
continue and spread to other areas of NOAO operations.

                          O/UV Instrumentation

The work on the conversion of HYDRA from the 4-meter to WIYN was
well along at the time of our meeting, and appears to be heading for a
successful conclusion early in the first semester of 1995. This has been a
major effort of the O/UV group. Other ongoing projects are the CCD
development program (in collaboration with Steward Observatory) and work
on the large 8192 X 8192 mosaic camera. The committee continues to
endorse these projects, although it expresses serious concern over the lack of
return from the CCD foundry run which was aimed at populating the
mini-mosaic with science-grade chips. The prognosis for the full mosaic
CCDs is more positive.

The committee continues to place high priority on the design and
construction of new camera optics for the GoldCam spectrograph. This
project has been given top priority by the committee for the past two years
and we were less than enthused by the lack of progress in the past year. We
would like to see the O/UV group make a commitment to having this new
camera ready for installation by the fall 1995 semester.

Another small project that should be given priority is the procurement of a
low dispersion blue grating for WIYN. The lack of an efficient blue grating
for this powerful instrument is a significant limitation that should be
corrected as soon as possible. We are encouraged by the current efforts to
acquire such a grating.

                          IR Instrumentation

The overall instrumentation development plan for the IR group is well
thought out and promises to keep NOAO in a leadership position in this area
for years to come. The details of the plan are given in the September 1994
NOAO Newsletter. The committee gives strong endorsement to this plan,
which includes the completion of the Phoenix high-resolution spectrometer in
1995, and the design and construction of the GRASP multichannel
imager/spectrometer to commence immediately after the completion of
Phoenix. We are also excited about the progress of the ALADDIN Array
project and the recently demonstrated capabilities of COB for doing
diffraction limited imaging. We give high priority to the design and
construction of GRASP in order to replace and enhance the capabilities lost
when SQIID is sent to CTIO.

The committee did not endorse the plan to decommission IRIM and give it
on loan to the Starfire Optical Range. We feel that this move would be
premature, and deprive KPNO users of the workhorse IR imager. We hope
that KPNO will continue to support IRIM as an observatory instrument in
the fall 1995 semester and beyond, at least until GRASP has been
commissioned.

                              The Future:
                     Replacements and Retirements

NOAO should look to the community and attempt to develop collaborative
instrumentation projects with university and private groups to expand their
local range of expertise. In the same way that collaborative effort brought
about the successful construction of the WIYN telescope, so too could joint
efforts result in the timely development of new instruments. An example of
this type of effort is the CCD development program with Steward
Observatory.

The committee feels that a particularly pressing need at both KPNO and
CTIO is a new, high throughput moderate-to-low dispersion spectrograph for
the 4-meter telescopes (or the WIYN Twin at KPNO if it gets built). The
O/UV group has already started to explore designs for such an instrument;
we encourage them to continue and perhaps seek collaborative participation
from interested groups outside of NOAO.

The committee gave consideration to the proposed instrument retirements and
in most cases agreed with the list drawn up by the observatory staff.
However we stress that the observatory must continue to strive to make these
retirements as painless as possible to the user groups affected. Whenever
possible, they should attempt to give plenty of advanced notice and get
sufficient user input (from both the Users Committee and a cross section of
affected users) earlier in the decision-making process. Of particular concern
to the committee was the proposed loss of 4-meter prime-focus photography,
which would jeopardize a number of programs requiring multi-epoch plates.
We applaud the efforts of the observatory to allow these ongoing programs
the opportunity to complete their observations before discontinuing the
service, perhaps by having one or more of the groups take over responsibility
for maintaining the equipment.

We note with some sadness the departure of photoelectric photometry from
KPNO. Although the future directions of photometric observations have
clearly been moving away from PEP for some time, it is hard to witness the
end of an era that included KPNO as a major player in the development of
this important subfield over the past 35+ years. As proponents of
photoelectric photometry rightly point out, the departure of PEP from KPNO
carries with it some modest loss in capabilities, particularly U-band
photometry and some calibration work.

Finally as KPNO looks to the future, the committee would encourage the
staff to stay abreast with the advances in adaptive optics, and be prepared to
acquire "off-the-shelf" systems and implement them in existing telescopes
(e.g. WIYN and the 4-meter) when appropriate.

                          Directorship of KPNO

The committee would like to thank Caty Pilachowski for her excellent work
as Interim Director of KPNO. She has taken over the reigns of the
observatory during a particularly active and generally difficult period, and
served the community in her usual unselfish and professional manner.
Likewise, many members of the KPNO staff are to be commended for taking
on new roles during this period. It is only through the dedicated efforts of
the staff that KPNO remains a truly world class facility.

We are pleased that there is currently a search underway for a full time
director for KPNO. The committee feels that such an appointment is
overdue. We encourage the search committee to seek an individual who will
serve as a strong advocate of KPNO specifically and NOAO in general. It is
assumed that the next director of KPNO will be both well known and well
respected by both the outside user community and by the KPNO/NOAO
staff. The observatory needs someone who can build bridges between KPNO
and the rest of the community, someone who can listen to the constituents of
KPNO as well as speak forcefully for it in the broader scientific community.
We consider this appointment to be extremely important for KPNO, and
encourage the entire user community to contribute input to the search
committee (chaired by Robert O'Connell).

                          Concluding Remarks

Regardless of the outcome of the McCray Committee report, the next few
years will bring major changes to KPNO. We are especially pleased by the
major self-examination by the entire NOAO staff that has resulted in the
NOAO 2000 planning document. To include the overall community in its
planning efforts in a meaningful way, NOAO management should be
encouraged to continue to find ways to reach out and listen to the needs of
their constituents. Especially important are decisions concerning major
changes in observatory operations, such as the closing of the 1.3-meter
telescope. These decisions should be made with maximum feedback from the
observers. Involving the Users Committee is only one way to accomplish
this; a better, more consistent dialog needs to exist between the observatories
and the community they serve. With improved efforts for community
feedback and public relations, NOAO should enjoy much needed support
during these difficult times.

Likewise, the users of NOAO need to redouble their efforts to speak out,
both as advocates for their facilities and as a source of suggestions or
improvements to NOAO. As always, the Users Committee members
encourage your input. We represent a direct link between the individual
NOAO users and the management of the observatories. Your input is always
welcomed. The names and e-mail addresses of continuing members of the
committee are listed below.

                       KPNO Users Committee:

David Koo (UC, Santa Cruz)
         koo@lick.ucsc.edu

Elizabeth Lada (Maryland)
          lada@astro.umd.edu

Gus Oemler (Yale)
          oemler@sparx.astro.yale.edu

John Salzer (Wesleyan)
         slaz@parcha.astro.wesleyan.edu

Verne Smith (Texas)
         verne@astro.as.utexas.edu

John Salzer, Chair

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