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UK commits to the E-ELT

March 3, 2013 by 1 Comment
Nothing to see yet! The proposed site for the E-LT, Cerro Armazones. (image: ESO/S. Brunier)

Nothing to see yet! The proposed site for the E-LT, Cerro Armazones. (image: ESO/S. Brunier)

A nice boost for UK astronomy today as the government has placed some serious money behind the country’s involvement in the European Extremely Large Telescope. Supporting the project to the tune of £88 million over 10 years, on top of the annual subscription to ESO, the government hopes to secure a prominent role for UK science and industry in this mega-project. £88 million may seem like a modest amount of money when spread over 10 years, especially when quantified in bankers’ bonuses, but for astronomy it’s a large sum of money that will really drive research and development in both science and technology for the new observatory. Great news.

There’s been a steady trickle of press releases in the news in the last year or two, from ESO or from member countries giving their yes votes to the project. It’s good to see so much support. But the cash isn’t all there yet, as ESO still await the final word on Brazil’s accession.

I’ve spent several years working on technology relevant for the E-ELT and on a design study for one of its instruments, so this telescope lies fairly close to my heart. I’ve stepped away from it somewhat in my time in Heidelberg to focus on other projects, such as the GRAVITY instrument for the VLT Interferometer, but if I continue in my current line of work I will in all likelihood return to E-ELT instrumentation in the next few years. With a planned completion date of mid- to late-2020s, it may well dominate my working life for the next decade and a half. It’s quite amazing to be thinking and planning so far ahead – such is the nature of Big Science!

And who knows, maybe we’ll finally have those jetpacks by then.

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Split sites for the Square Kilometer Array

May 26, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Artist's impression of some SKA dishes (SKA Organisation/TDP/DRAO/Swinburne Astronomy Productions)

The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is the next-generation mega-facility for radio astronomers, and for a few years now the decision on where to build the observatory was a tight race between Southern Africa and Australia/New Zealand. Roughly speaking, South Africa had the development angle, Australia the long and successful history in radio astronomy, and scientifically both were excellent candidates.

Yesterday at last the SKA Members announced their heavily anticipated decision: SKA will be built across both continents, integrating the facilities both South Africa and Australia are constructing as pathfinder projects – respectively MeerKAT and ASKAP. The official announcement is here, Jonathan Amos wrote this on BBC, David Smith and Ian Sample for the Guardian here and here.

The dual site solution to me always seemed like a difficult proposition: an observatory spread over such an area seems like a managerial nightmare, and I imagine the infrastructure costs will be increased as roads and buildings will be required both in Australia and Africa. But as I’m no radio expert I don’t know what the scientific implications really are. For that, I will defer to Peter Coles and  Andy Lawrence. Andy argues convincingly that it’s actually a pretty good decision for SKA science. Some good comments on Andy’s blog too.

Overall, people seem pretty happy with the solution – a job well done for SKA.

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A Brazilian bump in the road for E-ELT

January 22, 2012 by

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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NOVA Lives/Utrecht Update

July 7, 2011 by

NOVA, the Dutch School for Research in Astronomy, has had its funding line renewed beyond 2013. The organisation announced the good news in a statement on Monday (in Dutch), with comments from Leiden professors Koen Kuijken, who’s Chair of the NOVA Board, and Ewine van Dishoeck, NOVA’s Scientific Director. The renewal is not unexpected, as NOVA last year received the highest possible rating of ‘Exemplary’ in its review. Only two research schools were awarded this grade in the Netherlands.

You’ll remember of course that Dutch astronomy was thrown into some disarray following Utrecht University’s announcement of the imminent closure of its centuries-old astronomy department. This must have made for a pretty interesting backdrop to any NOVA-related negotiations. Now that the funding renewal is official, NOVA has provided an official comment to Utrecht’s decision, calling it “extremely regrettable”. Unique expertise is in danger of disappearing and the loss of Utrecht’s Masters programme will have consequences for the entire physical sciences education at the University.

[Read more...]

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Crunch Time for NASA? (With updates)

July 6, 2011 by

My twitter timeline is on fire with news that the House Appropriations Committee in the US just released its fiscal year 2012 Commerce, Justice, Science Appropriations bill, which will be voted on by the subcommittee tomorrow (July 7). This bill funds the Department of Commerce, the Department of Justice, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Science Foundation (NSF), and other related agencies. It also proposes to pull  the plug on JWST.

To the best of my knowledge, despite lots of rumours flying around, there never was any serious discussion over cancelling JWST. It was a scenario that had to be considered given the criticism over bad management and cost overruns – but as far as I was aware, this was an academic exercise. The Decadal Survey and every other similar roadmap placed the highest priority on JWST, and everyone, scientists as well as politicians, work under the assumption that JWST will fly.

So…. I don’t really have anything to say on this. I’m writing this to ask for information. Who knows more? Is this some political hard-balling hoop-jumpery?

Update:

An email from our European PI for MIRI gave little extra factual information over what’s being talked and written online, but urged us to support our US colleagues who will have to mobilize and fight to keep JWST alive. Also something about the “international collaboration” card ESA will “almost certainly” play if and when it’s called for. Meanwhile within the project it’s business as usual. Remember we’re in the middle of our final all-important flight test campaign at the Rutherford Labs In Didcot before we deliver MIRI to NASA later this year – lovely data are pouring in, lots to do.

Links (no longer a complete list but I’ll try to post anything official or particularly interesting or relevant):

Reaction from AURA

Official reaction from the American Astronomical Society (AAS) – very strong words of support for the mission

NY Times piece by Dennis Overbye with reactions from Matt Mountain, Tod Lauer

Nice by Jonathan Amos on the Beeb, words from NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver

Blog post by Andy Lawrence

Brief blog post on Cosmic Variance

Skymania story

Space News story Nature news story

Science news story

Stein Sigurdsson

astropixie

Well informed piece on Space Policy Online

Risa Wechsler on Cosmic Variance

Here’s a Save the James Webb Space Telescope facebook page you can like, and a twitter feed to follow.

 

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