The Senior Review report urged NOAO to ensure that community access to facilities remains scientifically balanced over all apertures. To accomplish this, NOAO has charged this committee, ReSTAR (Renewing Small Telescopes for Astronomical Research), to develop a prioritized, quantitative, science-justified list of capabilities appropriate to telescopes with apertures less than 6 meters, together with estimates of the number of nights needed. The committee must both address current needs and uses of such telescopes and attempt to predict how these needs will evolve over the next ten years — into the era of Pan-STARRS, LSST, JWST, ALMA, GSMT, and the NVO.
NOAO will respond to the recommendations of this committee in several ways. Modernization of the existing national facilities is already under way. The development of new capabilities and the goal of establishing a real system involving federal and non-federal facilities will be guided by the report from this committee. The NSF has stated their support for this process and their interest in finding resources to address these community needs.
LIST OF MEMBERS
- Charles Bailyn, Yale University, bailyn@astro.yale.edu
- Michael Briley, U. of Wisc/Oshkosh (NSF Observer), mbriley@nsf.gov
- Chris Clemens, University of North Carolina, clemens@physics.unc.edu
- Deidre Hunter, Lowell Observatory, dah@lowell.edu
- Jennifer Johnson, Ohio State University, jaj@astronomy.ohio-state.edu
- Robert Joseph, University of Hawaii, joseph@ifa.hawaii.edu
- Steve Kawaler, Iowa State University, sdk@iastate.edu
- Lucas Macri, NOAO, lmacri@noao.edu
- Randy Phelps, Cal. State University, Sacramento, phelps@csus.edu
- Caty Pilachowski, Indiana University (chair), catyp@astro.indiana.edu
- John Salzer, Wesleyan University, slaz@astro.wesleyan.edu
- Michele Thornley, Bucknell University, mthornle@bucknell.edu
- David Weintraub, Vanderbilt University, david.a.weintraub@vanderbilt.edu
CHARGE TO COMMITTEE
Draft Charge to the Small and Mid-Sized Telescope System Science Committee
- Over the next 6-12 months, develop a report on the instrumental capabilities needed by the U.S. community on ground-based O/IR telescopes less than 6.5 meter aperture, based on the recommendations of the Senior Review (section 5.2.2.2). The list of capabilities should flow from community scientific aspirations and should represent all areas of astronomical research and wavelength and types of observation, though the committee should roughly prioritize and/or establish a sequence to keep the size of the total suite and the program realistic.
- For each capability, the report of the committee should comment on (and justify):
- a description of the science enabled by each capability
- the telescope aperture range
- the site characteristics, including whether north or south or both
- the instrumental characteristics
- the number of nights needed
- the desired modes of access (including, for example, queue, remote, service, classical, TOO)
- the minimum operational support requirements to achieve the scientific goals
- With support from a NOAO technical group, establish a rough costing for the capabilities that do not currently exist. This may require some iteration in order to arrive at a consistent view of capability and cost.
- Present the report in enough detail that it can be used as input to a subsequent discussion with the NSF and among the operators of small and mid-sized telescopes. The goal of this discussion is to develop a national program that creates the optimized suite of capabilities in the report, provides appropriate access to them by the entire community, and supports them at an adequate level.
ReSTAR at the AAS
- Download the ReSTAR handout that was available at the January, 2008 AAS meeting in Austin, TX [512 KB pdf].
- Download the ReSTAR handout that was available at the May, 2007 AAS meeting in Hawaii [802 KB pdf].
MEETING SCHEDULE
- May 14-15 Tucson, AZ
- July Washington DC
- September Chicago, IL
- December Tucson