Outlook: Transitions and Opportunities

David Silva, Director, National Optical Astronomy Observatory

Transitions are a challenge: new housing, new places, and new social networks. Transitions are stressful and energy intensive. Why do we do this to ourselves? But transitions also mean new starts, interesting challenges, and exciting opportunities for growth and success. As it is for me, so it is for NOAO.

As I see it, the mission of NOAO is to provide open access to world-class observing capabilities across a broad range of telescope apertures, to accomplish this within a national (and perhaps international) system of observatories, and to catalyze the development of key technologies for the benefit of all observatories in that system. In other words, our goal is to provide a broad and diverse platform for scientific excellence. Defining that platform requires constant engagement with the community at large and the National Science Foundation, the ultimate source of our strategic direction.

There’s a lot going on at NOAO. What am I excited about?

I am excited about the Dark Energy Survey. Not only will DES attack one of the most fundamental science questions of our time, it will provide the community with a new, 4-m class, state-of-the-art, wide-field, optical imaging system, complete with a data processing pipeline. But DES also presents NOAO with the opportunity to learn (from scientific, technical, and sociological perspectives) how to collaborate with the DOE, the NSF, and a broad university consortium. These lessons will serve us well in the future.

I am excited about our plan to achieve access to new, high-efficiency optical and infrared spectrographs on 4- to 5-m class telescopes. Given a high priority by the ReSTAR committee, such instruments will complement existing state-of-the-art imagers. Our plan involves both building copies of recent instruments for NOAO facilities and buying time on other facilities. The outgoing interim NOAO Director, Todd Boroson, has been developing the plan with the NSF over the last 6 months. The plan will hopefully be available for public discussion by the end of the year.

I am excited by the ALTAIR process. Just as the ReSTAR recommendations have lead to a compelling, new roadmap for science capabilities on 2- to 4-m aperture facilities, the ALTAIR committee will provide a roadmap for federally supported observing capabilities and open access at the 6.5- to 10-m aperture level (see the related article in this issue).

I am excited about LSST and the involvement of NOAO as a strong and active partner. For me, LSST is a fascinating combination of well-defined science missions (e.g., finding all potentially harmful asteroids down to 140-m in size) and the exploration of astrophysical terra incognita. I’ve joined the LSST stellar populations collaboration. I hope many of you will apply to join one of the LSST science collaborations as well (see the related article in this issue).

And of course, I am excited about GSMT. It was wonderful to see the US community engage with NOAO and the two US-led projects, GMT and TMT, at the Science with Giant Telescopes meeting (see the related article in this issue). Both projects seek federal participation and the NSF has requested that AURA and NOAO enable community discussion about the merits, desirability, and conditions of such participation. This workshop was a good first step. I look forward to further open, broad, and frank discussion as we all head toward the next Decadal Survey.

I’m excited and I hope you are too. It’s a great time to be back at NOAO. It’s a great time to be NOAO Director. I am looking forward to meeting all of you soon.