User Survey for US Extremely Large Telescope Program Data Services

The dramatic increases in sensitivity and angular resolution enabled by Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) with apertures > 20 meters will enable transformational discoveries in nearly all areas of astrophysics, from fundamental physics and cosmology to the search for evidence of life on planets around other stars. The US Extremely Large Telescope Program (US-ELTP) is a joint endeavor of NSF’s NOIRLab and the organizations building the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). The US-ELTP will provide all US astronomers the opportunity to use this powerful, bi-hemispheric ELT system and to conduct research using archived data from GMT and TMT.

The success of these observatories, however, can only be as great as the support provided to their users. Now is the time to plan that user support infrastructure, including the archives, data reduction pipelines, and data analysis tools that will help you, as a potential user of GMT and TMT, to successfully achieve your science goals.

The US-ELTP team at NOIRLab invites you to complete a survey to assess your expectations and priorities for post-observing data services, including data reduction pipelines, data analysis tools, and computational services. We will use your answers to align the high-level requirements for US-ELTP data management with the needs of the research community and to set priorities in order to plan future work effectively.

The survey should take less than 10 minutes to complete. All questions besides question 1 are optional and the second page contains demographic questions. The survey will be open for responses until 31 May 2022. Thank you for participating!