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FY84 CTIO KPNO Revisions

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FY84 CTIO KPNO Revisions CERRO TOLOLO INTER-AMERICAN OBSERVATORY AND KITT PEAK NATIONAL OBSERVATORY FY 1984 PROGRAM PLAN Revision 1 November 18, 1983 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introdu&frton ....... 1-1 II. FY1982 Research Highlights II-l III. Scientific Projects and Programs Highlights III-l Scientific Projects - CTIO III-2 - KPNO III-5 Special Programs - KPNO 111-10 IV. Operations & Maintenance, Scientific Staff, and AURA Management Operations & Maintenance - CTIO IV-1 - KPNO IV-4 Scientific Staff - CTIO IV-11 - KPNO IV-11 AURA Management IV-14 V. Construction V-l VI. National New Technology Telescope VI-1 VII. Non-NSF Programs VII-1 VIII. FY-1984 Budgets and Staffing Tables VIII-l APPENDIX 1 - Organization Charts - CTIO 1 - KPNO 2 APPENDIX 2 - Resident Staff and Primary Fields of Interest - CTIO 3 - KPNO 4 APPENDLX 3 - User Data - CTIO 6 - KPNO 9 APPENDIX 4 - Preliminary Proposal for a Large Southern H5fl*sphere (3-5m) Telescope 15 APPENDIX 5 - The NNTT - A Status Report, April 1983 36 I. INTRODUCTION In Fiscal Year 1984 CTIO and KPNO will continue ongoing programs of operation and support of the national optical and infrared telescopes. Both observatories-^ill-continue to maintain and improve instrumentation, upgrade the computing facilities, and in addition, each will move towards a major construction program. At KPNO the time is ripe to prepare to construct the major ground-based optical/infrared telescope of the 20th century. The aim of this project, the National New Technology Telescope project, is to carry on advanced technology development and site assessment activities that can serve as the basis for future design and construction work on new large telescopes. This project, which is being carried out in collaboration with the University of California and the University of Arizona, requires a choice to be made between a segmented mirror telescope (SMT) design and a multiple mirror telescope (MMT) design during FY1984. To do this an extensive program of investigation involving both technical studies and scientific trade-offs together with site testing beyond that already carried out over the last 2 1/2 years will be carried out. Many astronomers, physicists and engineers from KPNO and throughout the community will be involved. This project is discussed in detail in Section VI and Appendix 5. At CTIO plans are being laid to construct the first major telescope built since the 4-meter telescope was completed in 1975. In FY1984 concept studies directed towards the building of a 3-5-meter telescope that will complement the 4-meter and more than double CTIO's light gathering power will be carried out. The new telescope will keep CTIO at the front rank of southern hemisphere observatories, a position which the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has challenged in recent years by telescope and instrumentation projects that have given ESO the lead in light gathering power. This project is closely related to the NNTT program since mirror fabrication at that size is one of the technical developments required to decide between concepts in the NNTT program. A detailed discussion of the project appears in Appendix 4. CTIO's plans for FY1984 are based on the continuation of the Chilean government's current exchange rate policy. This policy, under which the peso was devalued in FY1982 and subsequently pegged to the Chilean inflation so that it would maintain a constant real value against the dollar, allowed CTIO to undertake a rebuilding program in FY1983 to remedy the weaknesses caused by the layoffs of previous years and the postponement of maintenance and instrumention projects. CTIO will continue the rebuilding program in FY1984 by placing major emphasis on new instrumentation and improvement projects for the existing telescopes. Unfortunately, the reduced funding level of Revision 1 will slow these efforts considerably in comparison with what was orignally planned. Although CTIO and KPNO are similar in the number and type of major facilities that are offered for nighttime astronomy there are differences between the two in operation and staffing and consequently in what is emphasized in each observatory's program. Cerro Tololo has seven telescopes, including the 4-meter, the largest in the Southern Hemisphere, and is the principal observatory in the South available to all U.S. astronomers. The summit is at 2200 meters elevation in the foothills of the Chilean Andes and 1-1 Rev. 1, 11/18/83 85 km from La Serena, where the main offices, laboratories, and library of the Observatory are located. La Serena, in turn, is 300 miles north of Santiago and Valparaiso, the main ports of entry for astronomers traveling to CTIO and for supplies being imported from the U.S. Operating a high technology observatory" at a* remote -site in a foreign country thousands of miles from the U.S. influences the style and type of work done. For example, the time and expense involved in travel to Chile results in visiting astronomers making fewer trips than they might to KPNO and receiving more observing nights per session. The distance from high technology centers makes it more difficult to develop and support sophisticated equipment at CTIO than at KPNO. Consequently, CTIO has fewer instruments and concentrates on making them as versatile and serviceable as possible. The CTIO efforts with vidicons, where the same detector can be used in a variety of spectroscopic and direct imaging applications, and the TOLNET network of interconnected computers are examples of this approach. Because of the geographical location of the observatory, CTIO is not an ideal place for developing the very forefront, experimental instruments; rather CTIO's efforts are directed towards acquiring and implementing instrumentation based on concepts that have already been shown to be promising. In view of the foregoing, it is best for CTIO to concentrate on providing excellent equipment in selected areas so that U.S. astronomers can do frontier work on the most important problems in Southern Hemisphere astronomy. Kitt Peak offers 12 telescopes to U.S. astronomers in addition to providing sites and services for 6 telescopes operated by other institutions. The 4 meter telescope is outstandingly well equipped, and the McMath Solar Telescope is the largest solar telescope in the world. KPNO is the leading U.S institution for nighttime astronomy in terms of the facilities offered, visiting astronomers received, and range of programs covered. The Observatory is located 52 miles west of Tucson at an elevation of 2100 meters and has, in addition to the telescopes, extensive facilities including laboratories, workshops, dining rooms, dormitories and auxiliary instruments. The Tucson headquarters contains offices for staff and visiting astronomers, a library, laboratories, and computing facilities. In addition to equipment of the type provided by CTIO, KPNO has developed and installed the best fourier transform spectrometers in the world. A variety of low light detectors are available for work on faint objects and powerful computing facilities and display units for image processing are provided. These computing facilities are heavily used by visiting astronomers. The well- equipped smaller telescopes at KPNO are powerful enough for work on front-line problems. In addition, KPNO has important programs in detector development, optical coatings, and diffraction gratings that are for the benefit of the entire astronomical community. 1-2 Rev. 1, 11/18/83 II. FY1982 RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS CTIO VISITOR RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS A. Extragalactic Astronomy 1. The Magellanic Clouds. Using the SIT vidicon on the 1.5m telescope, P. Massey (Canada) and P. Conti (Colorado) observed faint Wolf-Rayet stars in the LMC. They conclude that spectroscopically similar W-R's span a range of 3 mag in absolute magnitudes, and hence their spectral subtypes cannot be used to infer their distances, as has often been done. A. Cowley (Michigan), D. Crampton and J. Hutchings (Canada), in collaboration with several other groups, are making a complete survey of the stellar X-ray sources in the Magellanic Clouds. The B3V star identified with LMC X-3 was found to have a period of 1.7 days and a velocity curve with K = 235 +/- 11 km/s yielding a mass function of 2.3. The X-ray data was searched for eclipses in this period but none were found. The mass of the unseen companion is thus at least greater than 6 and most probably 10-11 solar masses making it the first extragalactic black hole and only the second well established case at all. A major study of the optical emission line strengths in nearly 100 WN stars in the Galaxy and in the LMC was completed by Conti, Leep and Perry (Colorado). This body of data has been obtained over the last few years from observations on the 4m telescopes at KPNO and CTIO. The nitrogen and helium line ratios in these objects form an ionization sequence, but the strengths themselves are very different, even at similar subtypes. It seems inescapable that real abundance differences exist. 2. QSOs and Seyferts. B. Margon and R. Downes (Washington) obtained 4m spectra of an 18th magnitude blue object, discovered as an X-ray source, and located just north of the distant rich cluster of galaxies 0016 + 16 (z = 0.541). They find this object to be a QSO of redshift z = 0.55 +/- 0.01, essentially identical to that of the cluster. Although many QSOs have previously been found in small associations of galaxies, this is perhaps the best evidence to date for QSO membership in a rich cluster. By now there are a significant number of cases of a quasar being near a galaxy with the same redshift. There is, up to now, only one case (3C 273) where there have been enough galaxies of similar redshift for a velocity dispersion to be reliably estimated so that a mass of the quasar could be estimated.
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