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A Brazilian bump in the road for E-ELT

January 22, 2012 By Leave a Comment

In recent years the E-ELT project, Europe’s flagship next-generation optical observatory, seems to have gone from strength to strength: in 2010-2011, ESO Council officially gave the green light to the baseline technical design of the telescope (with the primary mirror slightly reduced in size), several member countries pledged their support for the project, others announced substantial investments into the development of hardware and instrumentation, and crucially, membership fees from giant new member state Brazil looked set to provide a major boost to the project’s financial coffers.

But apparently the E-ELT has hit a snag. This article in Brazilian publication Veja talks about Brazil’s failure to ratify the accession to ESO and support for the E-ELT project because of financial difficulties in 2011. Although an agreement was signed between ESO and the then science minister of Brazil in December 2010, Brazil’s parliament has yet to give its approval. Since then, Brazil’s been through general elections, and the new science minister hasn’t been forthcoming in continuing this approval process.

As Brazil’s contribution to ESO is crucial for the project to go ahead as long as no other new members join, the European members’ governments cannot now commit until Brazil formally comes into the club, and the project has been put on hold. ESO Director-General Tim De Zeeuw made some strong statements to the press about Brazil dragging its feet on the ratification, saying that the current accession conditions cannot be guaranteed beyond mid-2012, and new countries are lines up to join ESO if Brazil drop out. The article lists Australia, Israel, Russia, Poland and Estonia as potential new members.

An awkward point is that following the initial agreement in late 2010, Brazilian astronomers were already given full access to ESO telescope time. If Brazil now fail to ratify their accession, that privilege may be revoked again. That would be a big shame for their observers, who may have already planned multi-semester projects on ESO’s telescopes.

I can imagine that ESO really (really!) don’t want to start having negotiations with new member states at this point, as that’s likely to set the project back even further. Meanwhile the instrumentation community in Europe is working hard to keep the instrumentation projects for the new telescope alive, funded and staffed before getting the go ahead for the next phase of development.  I hope it happens soon!

Thanks to friendly Portuguese colleague Elisabete da Cunha for translating the article.

Image: Swinburne Astronomy Productions/ESO

 

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JWST in The Guardian

July 12, 2011 By 1 Comment

I wrote a little something for the Guardian’s science blogs section on the JWST issues, here it is. I really appreciate all the retweets, facebook posts, emails and comments, and it’s been a nice experience to work with the Guardian Science team.

I’m excited that I’ve been able to help with making James Webb something of a talking point here in Europe as well, although I wish the circumstances were different.

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Honey, I Shrunk The Telescope!

June 16, 2011 By 3 Comments

Rumours had been going round for a while that the European Extremely Large Telescope, ESO‘s next generation optical telescope, might get a bit of a trim in size. This week we finally saw that confirmed: first there was this article by Govert Schilling in ScienceInsider ahead of this week’s meeting of ESO Council, and today ESO itself issued a press release about Council’s endorsement of the new plans.

Instead of 42 metres, the E-ELT primary mirror will now measure 39.3 m. That’s a pretty random number, right? I haven’t seen the plans so I’m not sure exactly what is planned – I hope to see some more details soon. It sounds like the overall optical design will also be tweaked to give a smaller (=faster) f-ratio, which gives a compacter overall design. So the telescope enclosure, which is about the size of a football stadium, can also be reduced in size. With these relatively small modifications, ESO can save quite a bit of the community’s cash – around 200 million euro according to the ScienceInsider piece.

Some additional contributions will however still be required in the years to come from the member states.

I think ESO made a smart decision. It must have been disappointing for many involved to come down from the now iconic 42-m design that huge amounts of work have gone into, both within ESO and in the rest of the community. It will certainly be burned forever into a corner of my brain, after my years of working on METIS. But in the current economic climate it would be hard to get big increases in contributions from its members – I imagine the UK in particular would have entirely incapable of that.

Clever new members Brazil, whose accession to ESO essentially provided the required funds to go ahead with the E-ELT, secured an exemption from these increases. Their involvement signals a pretty exciting time for South American astronomy as well.

The slight but not insignificant reduction in science performance is a reasonable price to pay for keeping the telescope within a realistic budget and timeline – with first light planned for 2022. It’s unclear which of the US-based ELT projects, the Giant Magellan Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope (such snazzy looking websites!), will see the light and on what timescales, but it’s fair to assume that whatever happens there, ESO will not want the E-ELT to be far behind its US competitor(s).

And, speaking of budgets and timelines, the delay to the launch of James Webb now interestingly means that the ELT’s are likely to be its direct contemporaries, rather than coming online towards the end of JWST’s lifetime. This gives us the mouthwatering prospect of tackling our research questions over a huge parameter space in spatial and spectral resolution and sensitivity – simultaneously!

Construction on the new telescope will start next January. Exciting stuff.

Image: ESO

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Astronomy Snippets: Good news for UNAWE; Sackett resigns

February 22, 2011 By 1 Comment

Too many interesting things going on, not enough time to keep track and write. Here are a few items of note.

  • The Leiden-based international Universe Awareness project (UNAWE), which brings the awesomeness of astronomy to children in developing countries, has received a giant nod of support for its European activities from the European Union. The EU has awarded 1.9 million euros to EUNAWE to continue in its mission to help introduce underprivileged kids around Europe to science and engineering. That’s pretty amazing news. Until recently, UNAWE was led by my fellow dotAstronomy organiser and buddy Carolina Ödman Govender. Last year Carolina switched jobs and hemispheres, but I know that she spent loads of time and effort nabbing this grant and she deserves a warm congratulations. Published just days before Carolina’s wedding, the timing of the announcement could hardly have been better.[NB. UNAWE now has a new international project manager in Leiden, Pedro Russo, who co-ordinated the International Year of Astronomy and is the editor in chief of the Communicating Astronomy with the Public journal - i.e. the project is in excellent hands!]

    [NB2. The good news for UNAWE is also good news for my new home team Heidelberg, who are involved with UNAWE's work and will also benefit from the EU's support.]

  • On a very different note, I was disappointed to learn that Penny Sackett, the astronomy professor who in 2008 became Chief Scientist in Australia, has resigned from the post mid-way through  her term. I don’t know Prof. Sackett personally or professionally (beyond seeing some conference talks by her when I was a PhD student) and I’m far away from Australia in every sense, so I can’t comment on any circumstances. I was impressed with Australia for appointing a great astronomer to such a senior position, and it’s a shame this hasn’t worked out. There are some fairly opaque statements about her resignation, and a bit of media speculation – maybe more details will emerge in weeks to come.
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South Africa, Astronomy and Development

May 28, 2010 By

SALT

SALT

South Africa’s rising star in astronomy is continuing its ascendancy after the announcement that the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) is to host for the brand new International Astronomical Union‘ Development Office. The decision was announced at an IAU meeting in Baltimore earlier this month.

At  last year’s General Assembly in Rio de Janeiro, the International Astronomical Union  approved a decadal strategic plan for Astronomy and the Developing World (pdf), to up the profile of astronomy in countries with few ongoing amateur and/or professional astronomy acivities. While unlocking the mysteries of the Universe in its most literal sense may not (should not?) be  a top priority in the world’s poorest countries, investing in astronomy education is a valuable initiative.

[Read more...]

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