Science planning - Overview
From NOAOWiki
This group is no longer active. - The page is kept as notes of the ideas that had been considered.
Chair: Steve Strom
Members: Email Chair plus ALL Members or individually through links below
Harvey Butcher,
Ian Dell'Antonio,
Alan Dressler,
Dave DeYoung,
Jack Harvey,
Suzanne Hawley,
Christoph Keller,
Elizabeth Lada,
Tom Matheson,
Jeremy Mould,
Manuel Peimbert,
Nicholas Suntzeff,
Sidney Wolff,
Chris Smith copied as CTIO Director,
Buell Jannuzi copied as KPNO Director,
Elizabeth Alvarez copied as chair of 50th planning
Description: As a start, we are considering:
- a broad meeting tracing the historical contributions of NOAO and NSO to selected fields coupled with potential future directions in those fields
- one or more smaller specialized meetings focused on individual science topics
- a series of public lectures focusing on key scientific accomplishments
- the award of post-doctoral fellowships and/or distinguished visiting scientist positions in conjunction with the celebration, over the next year and a half, of the anniversary of the creation of the National Observatory. See proposal.
Schedule:
Tasks: Item / Deadline / Status / Responsible person / Comments
- Plan Science Meeting(s) (See minutes: 12/17/08)
- Review suggestions below
Costs:
Remarks:
Issues:
Please add your suggestions for topics this committee might consider.
- "Surveys at KPNO" - "The National Observatory Surveys the Universe"
Invite all the survey teams, ask for talks from 30 year old 'surveys' (e.g. the Butcher-Oemler survey) and talks about future surveys. Include NSO. Sessions could be organized by astrophysical field, with past, current, and proposed (like LSST) surveys having their spot. ... many possible variations on the basic idea.
- ... similar, but more focused meeting -- near-IR surveys
- Build on the recent NEWFIRM surveys, but also include non-NOAO endeavors like VISTA.
- more than one conference
- Build a list of science highlights for the web. Organize by time, by telescope, by observatory ... ? Perhaps 1-2 paragraph individual web pages for each science highlight, plus several "lists" of highlights. So the entree "highlights" page might have
- NOAO Science Highlights -- The First 50 Years
- Highlights of the Mayall 4m
- Highlights of the Blanco 4m
- Highlights of the KPNO 2.1m
- etc...
- NOAO Science Highlights -- The First 50 Years
each of the above being a hyper link to a list of science highlight links (so that the same highlight could appear on more than one list.
- D. Isbell says Dave Monet (USNO) told him about his time at KPNO in the late 1970s working with Roger Lynds on detector array technology and using the 4-m to obtain what he said were the first published milliarcsec-level stellar parallaxes. Published circa 1983. Said he was very happy to elaborate if we were interested for the 50th.
