Director's Message

We have just passed our six-month mark as the new national laboratory for ground-based OIR astronomy. Although we all knew this would be a time of rapid change and evolution, it has turned out to be an unusual six months indeed. We have witnessed unrest in Chile on a scale not seen in decades, and we are now navigating a global pandemic the likes of which has not been experienced in a century.

Adversity and Service. These events have challenged our ability to support you, the science community, through open access to world-leading observational facilities and by hosting major experiments on our telescopes. While our telescopes remain closed at the present time, and we are unable to host astronomers at our facilities, we can and do continue to support your science by serving data archives, high-level data products, and tools for analysis and data science. As announced in this issue of Currents, our new science data archive is now online. Please check it out!

We appreciate that our community is now facing unique challenges as they transition to teaching on-line, balance work and family, and adjust to new modes of work. We are here to help with your science—let us hear from you if we can help in any way.

Delivering on Our Mission. Despite these unusual times, we have continued to deliver on our mission in other ways as well. At the end of 2019, the Mid-Scale Observatories and Community Science Data Center passed an NSF review of our plans for the next five years of operations, while in March and April the Rubin Observatory Operations team passed two rigorous reviews of their plan for the transition to operations and the first years of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time. As international travel ground to a halt and borders were closed, the AURA logistics team safely delivered the Gemini Observatory’s next-generation high-resolution spectrograph (GHOST) and the Rubin Observatory’s commissioning camera (ComCam) to the AURA facilities in La Serena, Chile. Over the last several months, the international collaboration led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the KPNO 4m Mayall operations team successfully deployed DESI on the Mayall telescope, while the Penn State/KPNO team installed the NEID precision radial velocity spectrograph on the 3.5m WIYN telescope. Both of these instruments are now safely in hibernation. When we are able to restart operations, these instruments will be woken from their slumber and readied to go on sky.

In more recent news, I am happy to report that we had a strong response to the recent observing proposal deadline; I hope that the small extension we were able to provide relieved the pressure just a bit. Similarly, our TAC members have agreed to hold remote meetings on the original calendar, so we will be ready to schedule programs selected for 2020B without delay. We thank the TAC members for their flexibility and continued support.

Looking Ahead. As we navigate these new and uncertain times, we ask for your continued support and feedback. Again, if there are ways we can assist with your science under the current circumstances, please let us know.

We all look forward to getting back on sky and to greater interaction with our friends and colleagues in the community. We will get there, and we are committed to getting there with everyone healthy and ready to move ahead together. Until then, I wish you all the best and hope that you and your families are healthy and safe.