E-ELT goes to Chile April 27, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, politics . 1 comment so far
As expected, ESO Council have accepted the recommendation to build the European Extremely Large Telescope at Cerro Armazones in the Chilean Andes. The decision was announced yesterday with the customary nice words and some cool accompanying imagery, video and a dedicated ESOCast episode, which you can all see here.
Particularly noteworthy is the nod of thanks ESO give to Spain, who were competing with Chile for the chance to to host the telescope. While many European astronomers, especially the Britons who’ve traditionally had the largest foreign presence on the island, have a great big soft spot for La Palma, I think a collective sigh of relief went through the community on hearing the news. La Palma is undoubtedly an excellent observing site, but it’s just not of the same quality as Paranal or Armazones – it’s more humid, has fewer clear nights and is plagued by Saharan sand in its atmosphere.
With this announcement, all three of the ELT-type telescopes – E-ELT, GMT and TMT – now have a home. Now all they need is money to start building!
Image: ESO/S. Brunier
Dutch commit to Open Access March 12, 2010
Posted by sarah in: politics, science . 1 comment so far
The Dutch science research council NWO has set up a 2.5 million euro fund (Dutch) to encourage its scientists to publish their work in open access journals. Under the scheme, any NWO grant holder can apply (English) for up to 5000 euro per project to pay open access publication charges. The incentive programme, which went live at the start of March, is a first step in the council’s broad commitment to open access in science.
In this interview (in Dutch) from November last year, NWO Chairman Jos Engelen, a particle physicist who was Chief Scientific Officer at CERN before taking over at NWO in 2009, indicates that the council may bring in an NIH-type public access policy for its grantholders later on this year. He suggests starting off with what he calls a “Swedish model”, whereby publications have to be made publicly available within 6 months of publication in an academic journal. This could then evolve towards a requirement that results from NWO-funded projects be published directly in open access journals only.
Engelen sounds like an excellent straight-talking Dutchman. He admits that right now there is a trade-off between impact and access, with many high-impact journals still charging for subscriptions – but that a natural consequence of NWO’s support for open access is to mirror this trade-off at the grant proposal level.
I was pleased to read about these developments, which reinforce my experience that the Dutch government has a very sensible and forward-thinking approach to funding science. I can’t find a timeline for implementation and hope these plans all get brought in swiftly.
There’s no deadline for applications to this new fund, money will be allocated to PIs on an ad hoc basis until the money runs out.
The Astronomer’s Mating Call January 28, 2010
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, politics . 1 comment so far
Every winter is the time for an age-old mating ritual that takes place in the astronomy community: a special courtship dance where graduate students and postdocs parade round, flashing their colourful feathers, trying to appear smarter and savvier than their peers in the desperate quest for a new mecenas who will support their addiction to MacBooks and airmiles. It’s jobs season, when the friendships we’ve cherished for the past year become meaningless and it’s each astronomer to their own.
The Lay Scientist: A dark winter for UK physics December 27, 2009
Posted by sarah in: politics . 1 comment so farDespite widespread financial gloom, 2009 has been an excellent vintage for physics and astronomy. The Hubble Space Telescope‘s final servicing mission was declared a resounding success, LHC finally powered up after last year’s false start, several new astronomy satellites were launched and astronomers have tantalisingly reported a possible first-ever detection of dark matter particles. But in the UK, the year was closed on a blue note following an ominous pre-budget report in early December and the subsequent announcement of drastic cuts to the particle physics and astronomy programmes by the country’s Science and Technology Facilities Council, STFC.
For the sake of spreading the word to a wider community, I wrote a general overview blog post on the Lay Scientist blog about the funding cuts to British physics and astronomy research. Go read it here.
STFC: The morning after December 17, 2009
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, politics, science . 4comments
JIVE Director looking for an STFC representative (Image: M. Garrett)
Yesterday’s announcement from the Science and Technology Facilities Council was everything scientists had feared it to be, Britain has announced its withdrawal from over 20 large projects and is slashing 25% of studentships and fellowships. For astronomy some notable names are Gemini, the facilities on La Palma (including the robotic Liverpool Telescope) and UKIRT. In addition, the Dutch community will not be pleased with the news of Britain’s withdrawal from two of its flagship radio astronomy projects, LOFAR and JIVE. I haven’t seen any official responses from the Netherlands but will keep an eye out for those – although Astron Director Mike Garrett’s reaction on twitter was telling:
