There have been several happy additions to our scientific staff in the past few months, and a number of departures from the technical staff.
First to arrive was Robert Blum, leaving a Hubble Fellowship at JILA (University of Colorado) to join us as an infrared Assistant Astronomer in May. Bob is no stranger to CTIO, having been a frequent observer here and a collaborator with many former Tololinos during his graduate student days at Ohio State (PhD 1995). His current research activity centers around studies of the stellar population in the inner Galaxy. He will also be collaborating with Brooke Gregory and Ron Probst in our IR instrumentation program. Bob, is accompanied by his wife Denise, son Brian (5 years), daughter Megan (4 months), and their faithful dog Gizmo.
The second arrivals are Patrice Bouchet, wife Terry, and son Antoine (3 years). Patrice began a one year Support Scientist appointment in June. He comes to us from ESO where he has been holding a Senior Staff Astronomer position and heading the Infrared Group at La Silla. Patrice's main interests are supernovae and their remnants. He will join the IR team implementing the tip-tilt facility on the Blanco telescope, assist visiting astronomers using IR instruments, and act as liaison scientist during the 2MASS startup.
Our most recent arrival, in August, is René Méndez Bussard, who is coming to CTIO under a postdoctoral fellowship program aimed at the reinsertion of Chilean scientists working abroad into the national scientific community. René has B.A. and M.S. degrees from the University of Chile, a PhD from Yale (1995), and has most recently held a postdoctoral position with ESO in Garching. His research focuses on the kinematical and dynamical description of stellar populations in the Galaxy as constraints on theories of Galactic formation, using the interplay between large scale astrometric and photometric surveys and sophisticated model codes. René's scientific contacts in the North American, European, and Chilean communities will be put to use in support of CTIO efforts in light pollution, cooperative projects, and public outreach. René's family are wife Rosa Garay Fluhmann, and daughters Manuela (7 years) and Josefina (9 months).
1997 will be remembered as the year that Gemini began to have a direct impact on the technical operations at Cerro Tololo. We have anticipated for some time that Gemini would exert a powerful attraction for some of our technical staff. It would be surprising if it were not so, after talking about Gemini as our future for so many years. At the same time, we expected that Gemini would want to use some of the CTIO technical personnel for staffing the southern Gemini telescope on Cerro Pachon. Over the months from June to August, we will see three members of our permanent staff relocate to Hawaii to participate in the commissioning of the Gemini-North telescope. We expect that they will return to Chile for the commissioning of the Southern telescope and then remain in Chile during the operation phase of Gemini starting in 2001.
Though we see this process as natural and in the long run a healthy one for the southern Observatories, CTIO plus Gemini, the immediate impact is the pain of losing experienced colleagues and good friends. The experience and dedication of these employees will be sorely missed.
The employees who are going to Gemini at this time are: Gustavo Arriagada, TELOPS electronics engineer, who came to Tololo in 1986; Manuel Lazo, electronics engineer in TELOPS and lately in the La Serena Electronics Group, who came to Tololo in 1986; and John Filhaber, Optical Engineer, who came to Tololo in 1995. We wish them well in their work with Gemini and hope to see them back in Chile in a couple of years!
Though not a member of our permanent staff, Luis Godoy, an instrument maker in the La Serena shops, has also been hired by Gemini and will going to Hawaii in August. Luis has been working with us on a temporary basis for several years supported by funding from the MACHO project which is used to improve the small telescopes.
This Newsletter also marks the departure of Gary Webb and his family from CTIO. In the more than 15 years he has been at Tololo, Gary worked in several major areas. He was system manager for the Data General computers both in La Serena and on the mountain. He wrote a significant fraction of the code to control the first incarnation of the IR Spectrometer (used for the observations of SN1987a, for example). Since 1989, he has been associated with various phases of the Arcon software system. All waveforms generated every night for every Arcon controlled instrument are the result of Gary's efforts. Gary is taking a position with Raytheon Corp. in Waco, Texas, to develop software for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). All Tololinos, and their many other Chilean friends, wish the Webbs well in their new life back in the States.
Finally, we are losing another of our experienced mountain support persons. Telescope operator Luis Gonzalez leaves Tololo in August. He is moving to a research position at Cerro Calan Observatory, University of Chile, Santiago. Luis' ability, and his warm and cheerful personality, will be missed on the mountain.
Malcolm Smith, Brooke Gregory, Oscar Saa