Self-Study Report External Review of the Institute for Astronomy

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Self-Study Report

prepared for the External Review of the Institute for Astronomy University of Hawaii

http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/

June 2012

SELF-STUDY COMMITTEE

Executive Summary

The Institute for Astronomy (IfA) of the University of Hawaii is one of the premier astronomy institutes in the world, and it is looking forward to a great future. In particular it is well positioned to assume a leading role in several upcoming major telescope projects on the Hawaiian islands. However, it is also facing severe challenges. This document is the result of a faculty retreat process that started in 2011 after the new IfA director took office. Working groups produced a number of white papers which were discussed at a retreat at the end of September. The results of the retreat have been melded into this self-study report. The overarching vision for the future of IfA is still very much in line with the overall goals set out in the executive summary of our 2001 self-study report: (a) play a leadership role in the next generation of the world’s most powerful ground-based telescopes, most notably the TMT, ATST and Pan-STARRS projects; (b) strengthen the activities on the neighbor islands of Hawaii and Maui, in particular building up a TMT instrument center of excellence in Hilo and enabling ATST technology development in Maui; (c) maintain and strengthen a first-rate research program, mainly by attracting excellent new faculty members in a highly competitive environment; (d) improve the visibility and efficiency of the IfA teaching and education program in a University systems approach; and (e) strengthen public outreach with a focus on fundraising activities. The major conclusions of this self-study are as follows: (1) For several years, IfA has been significantly underfunded, with the result that the flexible funds necessary for a healthy first-rank research program have been needed to pay salary increases, and vacant faculty positions could not be filled. IfA has been granted a moderate increase in its annual budget allocation and some other support measures to help alleviate these deficiencies. However, the outlook for extramural federal funding is challenging. (2) We have to fill a significant number of new faculty positions in the next few years, most importantly to focus a vigorous research program towards the powerful new facilities (Pan- STARRS, ATST and TMT) and to remain competitive on the international scene. To this end the IfA director has negotiated a number of incentives. IfA will be provided with three new faculty position numbers. For a period of five years all retirements within the IfA will be returned to IfA for subsequent rehires, and there will be a 50:50 split of reasonable start-up costs between UH and IfA for the next four faculty hires. Several retirements are expected in the next few years. We are in the process of filling two junior faculty positions in a broad and open search. Further targeted hires supporting ATST on Maui and instrumentation in Hilo should follow as soon as possible. (3) To optimize the cooperation between IfA and UH Hilo and to fully utilize the capabilities of the IfA Hilo building, an instrument center of excellence should be formed there. This center will play an important role in the institutionalized partnership in the TMT project (see below), and also for all telescopes on Mauna Kea. This will require extra funding for operations, investment and personnel, i.e., technicians, engineers and most importantly new faculty members with strong instrumentation backgrounds. In view of the significant development possibilities in the UH Hilo Physics & Astronomy department and the plans to create an instrument specialization for the UH Hilo astronomy undergraduate program, this activity should ideally be funded through a joint Program Change Request between IfA and UH Hilo. In the long run this center of excellence should radiate out into the Hilo community and economy, by teaching the important skills required for all telescopes on the neighbor islands. It should also be the nucleus of high-tech optical/mechanical engineering spin-off companies.

ii (4) The highest priority for future development of IfA is to enable the State of Hawaii to become a full partner in the TMT project, ideally with a role comparable to the other US universities (Caltech, UC) involved in the project. This would require a project share of about 5%, in addition to the currently discussed UH fraction of observing time, and would give UH a seat on the TMT board and the important scientific advisory bodies. The necessary funding would require proportional contributions to both capital and operations. Part of this could be financed through in-kind contributions to the telescope infrastructure, and also by the Hilo instrument center, which could serve as the central facility for integrating, testing, calibrating and servicing TMT instruments. (5) Obviously, the ATST as the largest ground-based telescope project currently funded by NSF, will enable tremendous new possibilities for solar research and technology development. Night observing capabilities on ATST may help to strengthen the solar-stellar research area. To this end it will also be important to strengthen the existing IfA solar group and to focus it towards the ATST. (6) Pan-STARRS, a unique facility under IfA leadership and control, will have relevance for many different science areas, from asteroids to cosmology: thus it will be important to bring PS into the scientific focus of IfA. Funding of PS1+2 plus ultimately PS4 will be a major issue. In the baseline, PS4 will replace the UH 2.2 m telescope on Mauna Kea. However, the 2.2 m telescope needs to be maintained as a lively scientific facility at least over the next five years. (7) Members of the IfA faculty, although hired mainly as research staff, are providing a substantial teaching contribution to the UH system. They are responsible for the full astronomy PhD graduate program and a significant fraction of the undergraduate teaching in physics and astronomy. However, these teaching activities are still not well enough recognized within the UH system. Together with the planned new specialization in Hilo and new synergies with the Physics and Astronomy department in Manoa, IfA is aiming for a better integrated, UH systemwide approach to physics and astronomy teaching. To this end we have started to plan a new undergraduate program in Astronomy and Astrophysics in Manoa, in cooperation with UH Hilo, as well as a reorganization of the graduate program into a “School of Astronomy and Astrophysics.” (8) Astronomy provides an excellent basis for public outreach and in particular fundraising activities. Outreach and friend-raising activities have been significantly increased in size and quality over the last decade, but need better, institutionalized coordination. Fundraising and development is required for several of the high-priority goals described above and will therefore be a priority for the future.

iii Table of Contents

Executive Summary ...... ii List of Figures ...... vi List of Tables ...... vii Web Links to Appendix Materials ...... viii

1. Overview: The Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii ...... 1 2. A Brief History of the Haleakala and Mauna Kea Observatories ...... 5 A. Haleakala Development ...... 5 B. Mauna Kea Development ...... 6 3. The Organizational Structure of the IfA ...... 9 4. The Multi-Island IfA ...... 13 A. IfA Operations on the Island of Oahu ...... 13 B. IfA Operations on the Island of Maui ...... 15 C. IfA Operations on the Island of Hawaii ...... 18 D. Protection of Hawaii’s Observatories from Light Pollution ...... 22 5. IfA Faculty ...... 24 A. Tenured and Tenure-Track Faculty ...... 24 B. Non-Tenure-Track Faculty ...... 26 C. Teaching Faculty ...... 26 6. IfA Research Programs ...... 28 A. The Research Environment ...... 28 B. Research Activities ...... 29 C. Publications ...... 51 7. Astronomy Education at UH Manoa ...... 52 A. Background and Chronology ...... 52 B. Astronomy Undergraduate Courses ...... 52 C Proposed Astronomy/Astrophysics Undergraduate Degrees ...... 55 D. The Astronomy Graduate Program ...... 57 E. NRC Ranking of the UH Manoa Astronomy Graduate Program ...... 61 F. UH School of Astronomy and Astrophysics ...... 68 8. Outreach, Community/Media Relations, and Fundraising ...... 71 A. Outreach ...... 71 B. Community Relations ...... 76 C. Media Relations ...... 77 D. Fundraising ...... 78 9. Funding and Budget ...... 79 A. Funding Sources ...... 79 B. The Institute Budget ...... 81 10. The Future of the Three-Island IfA ...... 83 11. The Mauna Kea Observatory ...... 84 A. Background ...... 84 B. Building on Existing Structures: The Observing Time Exchange Program ..... 84 C. Strategic Planning for Major New Instrumentation ...... 85 D. Cross-Observatory Instrumentation Cooperation ...... 86 E. TSIP and Mid-Scale Funding for Future Instrumentation ...... 86 F. Summary ...... 87 12. Future Telescope Projects ...... 89 A. The Pan-STARRS PS1+2 Observatory ...... 89 B. Pan-STARRS PS4 ...... 89 C. ATLAS ...... 90

iv D. The Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) ...... 91 E. Partnership role in the W. M. Keck Observatory ...... 92 F. The Thirty Meter Telescope ...... 92 13. Future Instrumentation Focus ...... 95 A. Adaptive Optics Development ...... 95 B. IR Detector Development ...... 96 C. ATST Instrument Development (Kuhn, Lin) ...... 96 14. Roles and Rights of IfA Faculty ...... 97 A. Factual Background ...... 97 B. Decisions Made ...... 99 15. The IfA Faculty Review Process (FRC) ...... 102 A. Application to Special Salary Adjustments ...... 102 B. Issues With the Review Process ...... 103

v List of Figures

Figure 1.1. The IfA on three islands ...... 1 Figure 1.2. Development of the IfA budget without and with extramural funds ...... 3 Figure 2.1. The summit of Haleakala ...... 5 Figure 2.2. Summit of Mauna Kea ...... 7 Figure 3.1. IfA organization chart ...... 9 Figure 4.1. IfA Manoa headquarters ...... 13 Figure 4.2. The Origins of Water as an overarching theme in the UH NASA Astrobiology Institute ...... 14 Figure 4.3. ATRC ...... 15 Figure 4.4. Mees Solar Observatory ...... 16 Figure 4.5. The Pan-STARRS PS1 telescope and a PS1 sky image around the Trifid Nebula 17 Figure 4.6. The IfA Hilo building ...... 18 Figure 4.7. UH 2.2 m telescope dome ...... 20 Figure 4.8. IRTF dome ...... 21 Figure 5.1. Tenured/tenure-track faculty – distributions ...... 24 Figure 5.2. Non-tenure-track faculty by research field ...... 26 Figure 5.3. Distribution of teaching loads for IfA faculty ...... 27 Figures 6.1 to 6.37 illustrate research activities ...... 29 to 50 Figure 6.38. Complete compilation of IfA refereed publications and citations 2000–2011 ...... 51 Figure 6.39. Mean total publications by faculty group in 2011 ...... 51 Figure 7.1. Enrollment per year in introductory astronomy classes ...... 54 Figure 7.2. Percentile rank of accepted applicants to IfA Graduate Astronomy Program ...... 59 Figure 7.3. IfA PhDs awarded by year (1975–2012) ...... 60 Figure 7.4. Research areas for all IfA PhDs (1975–2012) ...... 60 Figure 7.5. Positions held by PhD recipients immediately after graduation, 1995 to date ...... 61 Figure 7.6. Current employment of all IfA PhDs ...... 61 Figure 7.7. Normalized m factors for each IfA faculty member ...... 66 Figure 7.8. Normalized citations per normalized paper for each core graduate faculty ...... 66 Figure 7.9. Average normalized citations per normalized paper versus average normalized m-factor ...... 67 Figure 7.10. Organization chart for the planned “UH School of Astronomy & Astrophysics” ...... 69 Figure 8.1. Venus Transit on Waikiki Beach ...... 75 Figure 9.1. Distribution of extramural funds over different categories ...... 80 Figure 9.2. Distribution of research funding over different fields at IfA ...... 80 Figure 9.3. FY 2012 Institute Budget ...... 82 Figure 12.1. The Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) ...... 91 Figure 12.2. The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) ...... 93 Figure 15.1. Distribution of the 2011 FRC scores in the four different categories ...... 102 Figure 15.2. The salary of IfA BU07 faculty members as a function of years in service ...... 103 Figure 15.3. Correlation between weighted FRC grade and the deviation of salaries ...... 104

vi List of Tables

Table 1.1. Development of the IfA Staff ...... 2 Table 2.1. Telescopes on Haleakala ...... 6 Table 2.2. Telescopes on Mauna Kea ...... 8 Table 5.1. IfA Faculty (RISB) Year 2012 ...... 25 Table 6.1. Mean Number of Publications per IfA Faculty Member ...... 51 Table 7.1. Current Undergraduate Courses at UH Manoa ...... 53 Table 7.2. Graduate Program Courses at UH Manoa ...... 58 Table 7.3. Mean Application + Admission rates for UHM Astronomy Graduate Program ..... 58 Table 7.4. Current Graduate Students’ Nationalities (2012) ...... 59 Table 7.5. Graduation Rates for UH Manoa Astronomy Students (1975–2012) ...... 59 Table 7.6. NRC1995 Ranking of Astronomy Graduate Programs in the United States ...... 62 Table 7.7. NRC2010 Measures of Astronomy Graduate Program Performance ...... 63 Table 7.8. Revised NRC2010 Ranking for Correct Graduate “Core Faculty” ...... 65 Table 7.9. Average Quantities and Ranking for All 25 Astronomy Schools in the Study ...... 67 Table 9.1. NSF Ranking of Extramural Funds in Physical Sciences & Astronomy ...... 81 Table 10.1. The Distributed Three-Island IfA ...... 83 Table 14.1. Fringe Benefits Provided to Different Postdoc Hires ...... 98 Table 14.2. Summary of Current Non-Tenure Track Faculty ...... 98 Table 14.3. Rights and Responsibilities of IfA Astronomers ...... 101

vii Web Links to Appendix Materials

Visiting Committee Matters Report of the previous Visiting Committee for the IfA (11/2001) https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/self-study/2012/VC2001_Report.pdf Charter for the 2012 Visiting Committee https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/self-study/2012/VC2012_Charge.pdf

Section 1: Overview: The Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii 1.1 IfA Phone List http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/directory/phones_all.shtml Section 3: The Organizational Structure of the IfA Membership and Charters of the IfA Committees 3.1 https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/self-study/2012/Sec3-IfAComm.htm

IfA Computing http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/cs/ IfA Library http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/library/ Publications Office http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/self-study/2012/Sec3-Publications.html Section 5: IfA Faculty Faculty Resignations (1998–2001) 5.1 https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/self-study/2012/Sec5-Resignations.htm Section 7: Astronomy Education at UH Manoa IfA Faculty Teaching Assignments, 1977–1988, 1989–2002 7.1 https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/self-study/2012/Sec7-TeachingAssign77-89.html 7.2 https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/self-study/2012/Sec7-TeachingAssign89-02.html 7.3 https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/self-study/2012/Sec7-TeachingAssign02-12.htm Proposed Courses for the new Undergraduate Programs 7.4-7.6 https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/self-study/2012/Sec7-UndergradCourses.pdf Chronological List of IfA PhD Recipients 7.7 https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/self-study/2012/Sec7-IfAPhdsChronoOrder.pdf Reanalysis of the NRC2010 Ranking using a proper definition of “Core Faculty” 7.8 https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/self-study/2012/Sec7-NRC_Reanalysis.pdf ISI (First-Author) Citations for IfA Tenured/Tenure-Track Faculty 7.9 https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/self-study/2012/Sec7-ISI_FirstAuthorCites.htm

Section 8: Outreach, Community/Media Relations, and Fundraising HI STAR and Ali‘i http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/UHNAI/HISTAR.html http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/UHNAI/epo.htm

Faulkes Telescope Project http://www.faulkes-telescope.com/ IfA newsletter, “Na Kilo Hoku” http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/publications/newsletters/ Section 9: Funding and Budget Extramural Grants with Start Date in Calendar Years 2002–2012 9.1 https://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/self-study/2012/Sec9-Grants.htm

viii 1. Overview: The Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii

The IfA was founded in 1967 to pursue excellence in astronomical research and graduate education and to promote and manage astronomical development on Mauna Kea and Haleakala. In its 45 years in existence, the IfA has grown to become one of the most visible of the University of Hawaii’s scientific research programs and one of the most respected (and watched) astronomical institutions in the world. It is fair to say that the rapid growth and international complexity of the astronomical observatory complex in Hawaii is unprecedented in the history of astronomy. The fact that the premier sites for ground-based observing in the world have been developed and managed by a state university with little previous experience in such large scientific ventures is a tes- timony to the vision and trust placed by the University and the State in the IfA, and to the commitment of the government and the people of Hawaii to develop a first-rate scientific research program. The overall mission and goals of the IfA have been defined and reaffirmed over the past decades by the faculty and staff of the Institute through a process of self-evaluation during four Faculty Retreats (1990, 1995, 2000, 2011). Five main goals continue to guide our plans for the future: • To become one of the top research programs in the world, as judged by the research quality. • To realize the full potential of Mauna Kea and Haleakala as astronomical sites, while at the same time respecting and preserving the unique natural and cultural resources of the moun- tains. • To develop a first-rate astronomical education program. • To establish an outreach and public education program, and community relations that integrate the IfA into the society of the Hawaiian islands. • To contribute to the economic vitality and diversity of the State through the promotion of high-technology endeavors related to astronomy.

Figure 1.1. The IfA on three islands. The Institute operates facilities on the islands of Oahu, Maui, and Hawaii (Figure 1.1). Its main base is on Oahu, in Manoa Valley, just north of the main UH campus. The 51,000 sq. ft. building includes offices, laboratories, classrooms, a library, an auditorium, a large machine shop, and computer facilities.

1 On Haleakala (Maui), the Institute operates a solar observatory, with instruments on the Mees Observatory spar and the 50 cm SOLARC off-axis polarimetric telescope, which is the prototype of the 4 m Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST). Haleakala also hosts the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) PS1 telescope, which has been performing a highly sensitive and accurate sky survey since 2010, as well as the PS2 telescope, which is currently under development. The IfA’s Haleakala Observatory also hosts the 2 m Faulkes Telescope North (FTN) operated by the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope (LCOGT) as part of their global network of telescopes for professional research and citizen science, the TLRS-4 laser-ranging system operated for NASA, and the Maui Space Surveillance Complex (MSSC), which is operated by the Air Force Space Command (AFSC) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). The base support facility for Maui operations is the Ad- vanced Technology Research Center (ATRC) in Pukalani, opened in September 2007. The 16,000 sq. ft. building, also called “Maikalani,” includes laboratory workspace for microfabrication and advanced metrology and optical/infrared sensor development. It is strategically located approximately halfway between the Maui Research and Technology Park and the summit of Ha- leakala. The Waiakoa Laboratory, located further up-country in Kula, provides visitor lodging and additional space for instrument staging and storage. On Hawaii, over the past 45 years, the Institute has led the development of the Mauna Kea Ob- servatories (MKO), now the largest observatory complex in the world. Thirteen telescope facilities are located on Mauna Kea, including four of the 8–10 meter telescopes currently operational in the Northern Hemisphere and all of the large submillimeter telescopes in the North. The MKO is an international collaborative activity, with 11 countries and five continents represented. The Institute owns and operates one of the MKO telescopes, the 2.2 m and it operates the Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) for NASA. The University has scientific partnership agreements with the organizations operating all of the other telescopes. These agreements allocate a share of the observing time for UH astronomers. It is this assured access to the world’s most powerful ground- based telescopes, that has allowed the Institute to develop so quickly into one of the nation’s prime centers for astronomical research. At the same time, the astronomy development on Mauna Kea has been a tremendous benefit to the economy of the Big Island of Hawaii. The observatories provide high-quality employment for local residents and have an annual impact on the State economy of ~$140 M. The IfA’s sea-level activities on the Big Island are located in the IfA-Hilo Fa- cility, which was completed in the fall of 2000. The 35,000 sq. ft. building provides an operations base for the Institute’s activities on Mauna Kea, plus expansion space for our research, instrumentation, teaching, and outreach programs. At present, the building also houses offices for other UHH groups. Table 1.1. Development of IfA Staff Year 2003 Type of Personnel Manoa Maui Hawaii Total Tenure/Tenure-Track Faculty 35 1 3 39 Non-Tenure-Track Faculty 8 0 4 12 Postdoctoral Fellows 11 0 2 13 Graduate Students 30 0 2 32 Technical Support (incl. MKSS) 20 13 54 87 Administrative Support 28 3 5 36 TOTAL 134 17 70 219

Year 2012 Type of Personnel Manoa Maui Hawaii Total Tenure/Tenure-Track Faculty 33 2 5 40 Non-Tenure-Track Faculty 10 3 3 16 Postdoctoral Fellows 28 2 1 31 Graduate Students 42 0 0 42 Technical Support (+ MKSS) 39 25 26+44 134 Administrative Support 25 4 5 34 TOTAL 177 36 84 298 Change 2003-2012 32% 111% 20% 36%

The IfA staff has increased substantially over the last 10 years, from 219 people in the year 2003, to 298 in 2012. Table 1.1 shows the staff distribution in terms of both function and location. These tables do not include casual hires, which average about 25 additional people. (The current IfA Staff Directory (http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/directory/phones_all.shtml) is included as Ap- pendix 1.1.) The growth in staff occurred primarily in the number of technical support staff (+47), postdoctoral researchers (+18), and graduate students (+10), the majority of which are supported by external funds (see below). The number of state-funded tenured/tenure-track faculty members increased by only one. Despite the growth in the Institute, the administrative support staff could be reduced by two FTEs. The largest percentage growth happened in the IfA facilities on the island of Maui. This results mainly from the Advanced Technology Research Center (ATRC) and from the Pan-STARRS PS1 facility, which both became operational in the last decade. From the financial standpoint, the Institute’s activities divide into two categories—those funded as part of the IfA budget through appropriated State, tuition and return-of-overhead funds, and those funded entirely from extramural sources (primarily NASA and NSF grants and contracts). The Institute budget for the current fiscal year (7/11−6/12) is $10.4M, 47 percent of which is covered by State funds, 37 percent by tuition funds, and 16 percent by return-of-overhead funds. Ex- ternally funded activities have averaged approximately $22M/yr over the last 5 years, the largest components being Pan-STARRS development (~$10M/yr) and the IRTF operation ($4M/yr). During the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012, the Institute received $24.8 M in new external grants and contracts. The significant dip in extramural funding in 2011 is due to the loss of earmarked federal funds for Pan-STARRS PS2.

Figure 1.2. Development of the IfA budget without (left) and with (right) extramural funds.

Research at the Institute covers almost all aspects of modern astronomy and astrophysics, including extragalactic, interstellar matter, stellar, planetary, solar, and theory. A particular area of strength over the years has been the conception and development of instrumentation and telescopes. Distinct strengths of the IfA instrumentation program lie in the areas of detector technology and array controllers, sky survey hardware and software expertise, development of facility instruments, and certain areas of adaptive optics (deformable mirrors, ground-layer AO research). Highlights of the achievements in this area over the last decade include the development of the 2K×2K and 4K×4K HgCdTe arrays in cooperation with Teledyne, the Orthogonal Transfer CCD Arrays and STARGRASP CCD controller, the Pan-STARRS 1.4 Gigapixel camera GPC1, facility instruments for Gemini (NICI) and Subaru (HICIAO), and deformable mirror technology. Current initiatives include the development of an infrared echelle spectrograph for the IRTF (iSHELL), an infrared echelle spectropolarimeter for the ATST (Cryo-NIRSP), and a near-IR spectropolarimeter for ATST (DL-NIRSP). There are also plans to develop a near-infrared photon-counting Avalanche Photodiode (APD) array in collaboration with Raytheon. Feasibility studies have been developed for a near-infrared spectrograph (NIRES) and a mid-infrared spec-

3 trograph (MICHI) for the TMT project. In addition a collaboration with a first-light TMT instrument group is being developed (MOBIE). A concept for a ground-layer AO system was developed for the 2.2 m telescope that would be the test-bed for this technology. Telescope initiatives include the development of the Pan-STARRS 1 survey telescope and the associated data reduction storage and pipeline. The Pan-STARRS 2 telescope is in the process of being developed. Small survey telescopes have been deployed at Mauna Loa and in Chile (VYSOS, IRIS), and instrumentation for solar studies has been deployed at the South Pole (MOTH II). A 0.5 m off-axis telescope for polarimetric solar studies (SOLARC) was installed at Haleakala Observatory (HO), and this helped to define the concept for the ATST. A partnership between IfA, Tohoku, Finland (Tuorla), Germany (KIS), Mexico (UNAM) and private (Harling- ten) funding are proposing the development of PLANETS (Polarized Light Atmospheres of Near- by ExtraTerrestrial Systems). PLANETS would be a 2 m class narrow-field off-axis telescope optimized for low-scattered light, high-contrast polarimetry, spectropolarimetry, and coronogra- phy and would replace an existing IfA HO facility. The Harlingten H80 is a 0.8 m equatorial telescope built and provided to the IfA by Caisey Harlingten for dedicated stellar polarimetry investi- gations, to be installed in the IfA’s Baker-Nunn facility at HO. A small telescope array to detect asteroids that will impact the Earth (ATLAS) has been proposed and will likely get funding. On the longer term, a partnership with the Thirty Meter Telescope is planned. The Institute’s scientific vitality and productivity originates with its excellent faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students. In addition, the IfA faculty reaches ~800 undergraduate students annually through the teaching of introductory astronomy courses on the Manoa Campus. In the past decade, outreach and fundraising at the IfA have experienced significant growth. The HI-STAR summer research program for grade 8–11 science teachers and students is routinely producing science fair winners and college science majors, while our NSF REU program continues to thrive, with some of the attendees even returning to IfA as graduate students. The FTN on Haleakala is now part of the LCOGT network, and is used by researchers and students around the world. The Friends of the Institute for Astronomy is raising funds for our outreach and education programs, while putting on free public talks and stargazing events. We have nearly 200 regular donors and an outreach email list with about 1500 recipients. Our portable planetarium, staffed by graduate student volunteers, makes about 50 visits annually to schools on Oahu. Our annual In- stitute Open Houses on Maui and in Manoa attract 300 and 1200 attendees, respectively, while AstroDay, held in cooperation with observatories on the Big Island draws 3000 or more visitors. We also have occasional large events, such as a public viewing on Waikiki beach of the Deep Impact asteroid mission, with about 25,000 guests. We have again be in Waikiki and multiple other locations for the 2012 Venus Transit, where we interacted with tens of thousands of people and handed out about 20,000 solar viewers funded by donors. In 2011, we held over 150 outreach events with a total of nearly 25,000 attendees. We also expect that our new undergraduate astronomy and astrophysics majors will provide a new resource for outreach. We are also committed to engaging with private partners though a newly invigorated fundraising campaign. As an example, this June we will have our inaugural Sheraton Waikiki Explorers of the Universe lecture at the University's largest theater. We are in the process of more formally organizing our vast outreach and fundraising activities, with a dedicated position reporting to the Director's Office.

4 2. A Brief History of the Haleakala and Mauna Kea Observatories The founding Director was John Jefferies, a solar astronomer who arrived at UH in 1964, three years before the Institute for Astronomy was founded. Jefferies was succeeded in 1984 by Donald Hall, who served until 1997. In October 2000, Rolf-Peter Kudritzki became the Institute’s third Director. He was succeeded in January 2011 by Günther Hasinger. The original impetus for founding the Institute came from the potential for astronomy development on Mauna Kea and on Haleakala. Because the Institute’s history, its future, and even its ethos are so strongly linked to these two mountaintops, we devote this chapter to summarizing their astronomical history.

A. Haleakala Development The UH’s Haleakala High Altitude Observatory Site is the oldest high altitude observatory in the Hawaiian islands. At approximately 10,000-ft. elevation, Haleakala Observatory (HO), like Mauna Kea, sits above the tropical inversion layer most of the time (Figure 2.1). These conditions lead to seeing which is often as good as conditions on Mauna Kea. Unlike the Mauna Kea Sci- ence Reserve, which is leased from the Department of Land and Natural Resources, UH owns HO. While HO is only a little over 18 acres, which is considerably smaller than Mauna Kea, it is nevertheless one of the world’s most important astronomical sites. The Mees Solar Observatory was constructed at HO in 1964, prior to the founding of the Institute. Mees continues as the focal point for the Institute’s observational program in solar astronomy, and several new instruments are being installed on the Mees spar. One of the newest solar instruments at HO is SOLARC, a 0.5 m off-axis coronographic telescope that is both a prototype of new technology and a source of unique coronal observations. In 1976 NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) constructed the LUnar Ranging Experi- ment (LURE) observatory at HO. In the late 1980s the project’s focus shifted from lunar to Satel- lite Laser Ranging (SLR). In 2004 the NASA SLR contract expired and the system was decom- missioned. In 2006, a Transportable Laser Ranging System (TLRS-4) was installed at HO.

Figure 2.1. The summit of Haleakala.

5 Since 1965, the U.S. Air Force has been operating a satellite tracking and space-surveillance facility at HO on land leased from UH. In 1997, the MSSC was greatly expanded with the addition of the 3.67 m Advanced Electro-Optical System (AEOS) Telescope, the Air Force’s largest and most advanced telescope system. The IfA operates a high-resolution visible and infrared spectrograph and spectropolarimeter coudé facility instrument at AEOS. Inspired by the vision of Dr. Martin “Dill” Faulkes to use a remotely operated research-quality telescope to generate enthusiasm for science among school students, in 2004 the FTN and its twin, Faulkes Telescope South (FTS) in Australia, became the world’s largest telescopes dedicated to K–16 education and outreach. Now owned and operated by LCOGT, it offers students in the UK, Hawaii, and other places, a hands-on research experience under the direction of trained teachers and professional astronomers. The Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) is an innovative wide-field imaging facility developed at IfA. The first telescope, PS1, located in the former LURE observatory, has been scanning the sky since May 2010. With the world’s largest digital camera, 1.4 billion pixels spanning an unprecedented 7 square degrees field of view, the system is generating a time-lapse multicolor movie of the 75% of the sky visible from northern latitudes. PS1 operations are funded by an international consortium of universities and research institutions (the PS1 Science Consortium). Currently IfA is developing a second telescope, PS2, which we hope will start operation in 2014. Table 2.1 summarizes the telescopes currently on Haleakala.

Table 2.1. Telescopes on Haleakala Telescope Size Primary Use Sponsors Year Mees Solar Observatory various Optical UH 1964 Maui Space Surveillance Complex various Optical/Infrared USAF 1965 Advanced Electro-Optical System 3.7 m Optical/Infrared USAF 1997 (AEOS)

Faulkes Telescope North (FTN) 2.0 m Optical LCOGT 2004 Transportable Laser Ranging System Optical NASA 2006 (TLRS-4) SOLARC 0.5 m Optical UH/NASA 2007 Pan-STARRS PS1 1.8 m Optical UH/USAF 2010

B. Mauna Kea Development The discovery of Mauna Kea as an observatory site occurred in the summer of 1964, when the site-testing program initiated by Gerard Kuiper (University of Arizona) led him to declare, “This mountaintop is probably the best site in the world—I repeat—in the world, from which to study the Moon, the planets, the stars. It is a jewel!” The following year, UH was successful in winning a contract from NASA to install a research telescope on Mauna Kea, even though the University did not then have a nighttime astronomy program. This telescope, the UH 2.2 m (88-inch), was commissioned in 1970. From the very beginning, the State adopted the policy that if world-class astronomy was to come to Mauna Kea, then the people of Hawaii, through their University, would be full participants in the scientific endeavor and not simply bystanders or landlords. It was this basic philosophy that led to the creation of both the Institute and the Mauna Kea Science Reserve. The agreements between the University and the various observatory organizations are scientific partnerships. Table 2.2 lists the current MKO facilities. For the non-UH telescopes, the UH share of observing time is 15 percent on CFHT, IRTF, UKIRT, Keck II, and SMA, and 10 percent on CSO, JCMT, Keck I, and Gemini. On Subaru, the share is 52 nights per year. For VLBA, UH has a share of the

6 observing time only in the unlikely event that the Hawaii antenna is used for single-dish observations. Figure 2.2 shows the summit of Mauna Kea. The Mauna Kea Science Reserve Master Plan, adopted by the UH Board of Regents in 2000, provides guidelines for astronomy development through the year 2020 and introduced a new management structure. All future development must be located within a 525 acre Astronomy Precinct, leaving the surrounding 10,760 acres as a natural and cultural preserve. The guidelines prohibit development on currently undisturbed cinder cones and require facility designers to minimize environmental impact, including visual impact. Indeed, the IfA had already decided as early as the 1960s not to place facilities in either the Pu‘u Poliahu and Pu‘u Hau Kea cinder cones, or on the true geological summit (the peak to the southeast of the UH 2.2 m telescope).

Figure 2.2. Summit of Mauna Kea. The 2000 Master Plan also established the Office of Mauna Kea Management, located at the Uni- versity of Hawaii at Hilo. The office has a director reporting to the UH Hilo Chancellor, support staff, and a team of rangers who work on the mountain. Advising the office and the chancellor is the Mauna Kea Management Board, which represents the various stakeholder constituencies. This seven-person board has an oversight role for all activities on Mauna Kea, serves as the interface between the UH and the community, and provides policy guidance. The third component of the management structure is Kahu Ku Mauna, a council of Hawaiian elders who provide policy recommendations and advice on Hawaiian cultural matters. The only new project currently underway is the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT), to be located off the summit, on the northwest plateau, where it will have minimal impact on natural and cultural resources. TMT is currently in the final stages of the permitting process, and construction is expected to begin in 2014. It is likely that over the next 10 years one or two of the older existing facilities will be replaced or extensively refurbished. The CFHT and the UH 2.2 m telescope have been discussed in this context, but no firm plans exist at this time. In June 2012, the UK Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC) has announced that it will cease operational funding for UKIRT in September 2013 and for JCMT in September 2014. The Caltech Submillimeter Ob- servatory has announced that it will be ceasing operation in the 2016-18 timeframe, at which point it will be removed. Table 2.2 summarizes the telescopes currently on Mauna Kea.

7 Table 2.2. Telescopes on Mauna Kea Telescope Size Primary Use Sponsors Year

Optical/Infrared UH 0.9-m educational telescope 0.9 m Optical UH Hilo 2010 UH 2.2-m telescope 2.2 m Optical/Infrared UH IfA 1970 NASA Infrared Telescope Facility 3.0 m Infrared NASA 1979

United Kingdom Infrared Telescope 3.8 m Infrared United Kingdom 1979 Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope 3.6 m Optical/Infrared Canada/France/UH 1979 W. M. Keck Observatory (Keck I) 10 m Optical/Infrared Caltech/Univ. of Cali- 1993 fornia/NASA

W. M. Keck Observatory (Keck II) 10 m Optical/Infrared Caltech/Univ. of Cali- 1996 fornia/NASA

Subaru Telescope 8.3 m Optical/Infrared Japan 1999 Frederick C. Gillett Tele- 8.1 m Optical/Infrared USA (NSF)/UK/Canada/ 1999 scope (Gemini North) Argentina/Australia/ Brazil/Chile/

Submillimeter Caltech Submillimeter Observatory 10.4 m Millimeter/ Sub- Caltech/NSF 1987 millimeter James Clerk Maxwell Telescope 15 m Millimeter/ Sub- UK/Canada/Netherlands 1987 millimeter Submillimeter Array eight 6 m Submillimeter Smithsonian Astrophysi- 2003 antennas cal Observatory/Taiwan

Radio Very Long Baseline Array 25 m Centimeter NRAO/AUI/NSF 1992 Wavelength

8 3. The Organizational Structure of the IfA The Institute’s organizational and management framework is well matched to our mission, to our human and financial resources, and to the geographical and cultural environment in which we operate. The activities of the Institute are diverse: astronomical research; graduate and undergraduate teaching; development of sophisticated detectors and instrumentation; operation of national facilities; development and stewardship of two international observatory sites, one of which is the largest in the world; outreach and community relations; private fundraising. The Institute carries out these activities on three separate islands. Furthermore, the Institute is of a size (~300 employees) and complexity that cannot be managed informally by a few key individuals. A well- defined organizational structure, clear delegation of responsibility and authority, and well-established procedures for day-to-day operations are essential. At the same time, we must keep in mind that organizations are not structures and procedures; organizations are people. The ultimate objective is to set up the organization in such a manner that each individual is using his/her abilities to achieve his/her personal goals, while simultaneously accomplishing the goals of the organization. The organizational structure is shown in Figure 3.1.

Figure 3.1. IfA organization chart.

The Director’s Office – The Director is responsible for the overall scientific and administrative direction of the Institute. The Director sets policy, approves annual budget allocations and telescope time allocations, and is the final authority for all scientific staff and senior staff personnel actions. The Director is expected to be actively involved in research. Also, the Director is the principal point of contact between the Institute and a large number of external groups and organizations, including the local community on all three islands; federal, state, and county officials; the University administration; funding agencies (principally NASA and NSF); current and future partners for observatory and instrumentation collaborations; and current and prospective donors and other supporters. Assisting the Director is a five-person staff comprising an Associate Director who specializes in Mauna Kea development and management issues, an Assistant Director who specializes in external relations particularly on Maui, an Administrative Assistant, and two Secretaries. The astronomer who oversees outreach activities and the one who coordinates telescope time allocation and use also report to the Director’s Office, as does the General Manager of Mauna Kea Observato- ries Support Services.

9 In carrying out management functions, the Director receives advice and assistance from six committees (see Appendix 3.1). Executive Committee — This is the senior management committee at the Institute, chaired by the Director, and comprising the Faculty Chair, the Associate and Assistant Directors, the Director of Administrative Services, the IRTF Director, the UH 2.2 m Telescope Director, the Pan-STARRS project PI and the PS1 Observatory Director (see Figure 3.1). The Faculty Advisory Committee — The FAC provides a forum for close and continuing liaison between the Director and representatives of the faculty. The Director meets with the FAC on a regular basis and keeps it apprised of significant issues affecting the Institute. The Committee, in turn, serves as a “sounding board” and provides advice to the Director. Chaired by the Faculty Chair, the FAC includes two elected senior faculty, two senior faculty appointed by the Director, the Associate Director, and the Graduate Chair. Optical/Infrared/Submillimeter Time Allocation Committee — This committee (the TAC) reviews proposals for all optical, infrared, and submillimeter telescopes to which UH has guaranteed access, with the exception of the IRTF, and recommends observing time allocations to the Director. The TAC comprises eight UH faculty members who have a strong interest in observational astronomy. All are appointed by the Director. Astronomy Personnel Committee — The Astronomy Personnel Committee (APC) includes all tenured faculty except for the Director. The APC evaluates and makes recommendations to the Director on all applications for promotion and tenure. The preparatory work for the APC is done by a subcommittee, which is constituted each year by a combination of elected and appointed members. Faculty Review Committee — The Faculty Review Committee (FRC) conducts a regular performance review of all faculty. The establishment of such a review process was a strong recommendation of the 2000 Institute Retreat. It was further motivated by the University’s intention to institute merit salary adjustments based on performance review. The FRC consists of four elected members and two members appointed by the Director. Scientific Staff Screening Committee — This committee is responsible for the recruitment of tenure-track faculty. It develops advertisements, encourages desirable candidates to apply, reviews applications, interviews applicants, and makes recommendations on appointments for the Direc- tor. In the case of non-tenure-track appointments (e.g., externally funded positions) the role of the SSSC is limited to ensuring that proper procedures have been followed by the Principal Investi- gators. The SSSC comprises a four-person standing committee, augmented by 2-4 temporary members who provide additional expertise for a particular recruitment effort. All SSSC members are appointed by the Director. The Faculty — At the core of the IfA is its faculty, who carry out the basic research and education missions of the Institute. The principal activities of the faculty are research and teaching; these activities are discussed in detail in Sections 5, 6 and 7, respectively. Faculty Chair — The Faculty Chair is elected by the faculty and has a function similar to that of a department chair. The Faculty Chair manages much of the Research Support portion of the In- stitute budget (see Section 9), including support for observing trips and other research activities not covered by external funds, and for the colloquium program. Graduate Chair — The Graduate Chair oversees the graduate and undergraduate teaching programs, and serves as the spokesperson for the needs of these programs within the Institute. Re- sponsibilities include formulating and scheduling teaching assignments, recruiting and admitting graduate students, monitoring progress and financial support of students, etc. The Graduate Chair works closely with the Faculty Chair and is an ex officio member of the Faculty Advisory Com- mittee.

10 The Research Support Division — The Research Support Division comprises three separate sections: Computing, Library, and Publications. The division supports Institute activities on all three islands. The heads of each of the three sections report formally to the Director. Computing and Library have advisory committees that provide oversight and guidance. The Computing Section includes 5.5 FTEs in Manoa (two of whom have faculty specialist appointments), one in Hilo, and a one employee on Maui. The section develops and maintains the Institute’s central computing and networking systems and provides hardware and software support for the large number of individual PCs and workstations throughout the Institute. This activity is administered through the Computer Services Recharge System (CSRS). The CSRS is funded by per capita charges that are levied on all Institute employees and are paid from the same source as the employee’s salary. The IfA Library System is managed by a professional librarian (a faculty position). The main library is in Manoa, and libraries are being developed at the Hilo facility and at the ATRC. The Publications Office comprises two employees who provide graphics, text editing, newsletter, website, and related services for all Institute activities. Instrument Division — The Instrument Division encompasses all the technical facilities and services related to the planning, construction, and maintenance of astronomical instrumentation. This includes mechanical, electronics, and software engineering, and the associated shops. For many years, the Institute has maintained a shop in Manoa capable of developing state-of-the-art instruments such as the Pan-STARRS Gigapixel Camera, the Near Infrared Imager for Gemini, the In- frared Camera and Spectrograph for Subaru, and the 36-element adaptive optics system, Hokupa‘a. The Hilo Facility has a shop of similar size and capability. Technical services at the Institute are provided through the Job Order System, which charges out the time of technical staff at hourly rates. The Associate Director for Instrumentation has overall responsibility for the In- strumentation Division, including the recruitment, supervision, and assignment of personnel, and the allocation of resources. An advisory committee provides guidance and oversight. Maui Division — The major activities of the Maui Division are the operation of the Mees Solar Observatory, TLRS-4 Laser-Ranging System, (under contract to NASA), the UH participation in the FTN, the on-site activities of Pan-STARRS PS1 (completed) and PS2 (under development) and development activities such as preparation for the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope. The Division includes an engineering and technical staff to support the Maui-based activities. Overall responsibility for the Maui Division resides with the Associate Director for Maui. Hawaii Division — The principal activities of the Hawaii Division are the operation of the UH 2.2 m telescope on Mauna Kea and the instrumentation and detector development programs in the Hilo instrumentation center. Overall responsibility for the Hawaii Division resides with the Asso- ciate Director for Hawaii. The UH 2.2 m is the only Mauna Kea telescope over which we have exclusive control. It is the workhorse for our graduate program and has been the platform for many pioneering technical developments. The UH 2.2 m operation is under the responsibility of the UH 2.2 m Telescope Director. The UH 2.2 m and its scientific and technical program is discussed in Section 4. NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) — The Institute has operated the IRTF since 1979. We are in the final year of a five-year Cooperative Agreement between NASA and UH for supporting IRTF operations. We are just preparing the renewal as a five-year contract starting in February 2013. The IRTF has 20 FTE employees—four based in Manoa and 16 based in Hilo. The staff is led by the Director, who reports to the Institute Director. The IRTF is described in more detail in Section 4. Pan-STARRS — The Pan-STARRS wide-field imaging project comprises PS1, in operation on Haleakala since 2010, and PS2, currently under development at a location adjacent to PS1. PS1 operations are the responsibility of the PS1 Director. PS1 staff are located both at the ATRC in

11 Maui (site operations) and at IfA Manoa. Personnel working on PS2 are located in Manoa, some at IfA and the rest at the Manoa Innovation Center. Overall responsibility for Pan-STARRS resides with the Pan-STARRS Principal Investigator. A more detailed description of Pan-STARRS is given in Section 4. Administrative Services — The Director of Administrative Services is responsible for the activities of the Division and reports to the Director. The Personnel section handles the administrative aspects of the recruitment and employment of the Institute's ~300 employees. The Fiscal section processes all financial transactions (e.g., purchase orders, accounts payable/receivable, travel reimbursements), manages the financial reporting system, and maintains inventory records. The section manages the financial aspects of the Institute's three recharge systems: Job Order System (JOS), Computer Services Recharge System (CSRS), and Administrative Recharge System (ARS). The ARS is the IfA internal overhead system, which the Institute uses to provide distributed administrative services (e.g., grant/contract management and secretarial support) to the various activities. Mauna Kea Observatories Support Services (MKSS) – MKSS provides the common services required by the Mauna Kea Observatories, including operation of the food and lodging facility at Hale Pohaku; road maintenance and snow removal; operation of the Visitor Information Station; operation of the Mauna Kea Observatories Communications Network (through an arrangement with the IfA Computing Section); and the Mauna Kea Weather Center. MKSS has ~40 employees and is directed by a General Manager who reports to the Director’s Office. The MKSS Oversight Committee, comprising one representative from each of the observatories, provides oversight and advice to the General Manager and the Director.

12 4. The Multi-Island IfA

A. IfA Operations on the Island of Oahu

Figure 4.1. IfA Manoa headquarters. The main facility (Figure 4.1) for the IfA on Oahu is located at 2680 Woodlawn Drive, in Manoa Valley, at the northern edge of the main campus of the University of Hawaii. The Manoa building is home to most of the teaching/research faculty members within the Institute, as well as the astronomy graduate program. The facility includes offices, laboratories, a machine shop, computer facilities, classrooms, and a library in three buildings. Building A houses the machine shop, while buildings B and C house an approximately equal number of faculty, staff, and students. Although a few IfA staff members have relocated to Hawaii and Maui, the Manoa building still houses the great majority of the scientific, research support, and administrative staffs, as well as all of the graduate students. Some personnel associated with the Pan-STARRS project are located in the Manoa Innovation Center (MIC) at 2900 Woodlawn Drive. As the State’s only Carnegie I research institution, UH Manoa provides the level of research support and infrastructure required to properly carry out the large international collaborative research programs that are being undertaken by the Institute’s faculty. It also provides the level of support for graduate education that top students demand when choosing an astronomy graduate program.

Astrobiology The Institute for Astronomy hosts a NASA Astrobiology Institute team (UHNAI) through a NASA Cooperative Agreement (CAN, funding ~$1.2M/yr), led by PI Karen Meech. Water is the medium in which the chemistry of all life on Earth takes place and is likely to be equally important for Astrobiology in general. The UHNAI research group combines a set of interdisciplinary studies that range from the interstellar medium to the interior of planet Earth, all designed around “Water and Habitable Worlds.” The team consists of 17 Co-Investigators from UH (As- tronomy, Chemistry, Hawaii Institute of Geophysics & Planetology, Oceanography, and Infor- mation & Computer Sciences). The CAN funding supports 12 postdoctoral fellows and 7 graduate students, and additionally allows us to have a senior NASA fellow working with us, and four

13 other postdoctoral affiliates. The strength of this interdisciplinary research program is that it leverages outside funding. In the first five years the group brought in an additional $10.4M in funding, enabling the development of some major facilities including the Keck Cosmochemistry Ion Probe Lab and the Keck Astrochemistry Laboratory (for ice irradiation experiments). Part of the research effort is to develop tools to effectively accomplish interdisciplinary research. UHNAI has produced 71 papers this past year. In conjunction with its research activities, UHNAI hosts major conferences and workshops, including in 2011 a workshop on “Titan Chemistry” (Oahu, April), “Origins of Water II” (see Figure 4.2; Iceland, September) and “Formation of the First Solids in the Solar System” (Kauai, Nov.). The team is actively involved in flight mission development, both as co-investigators on missions and in developing a Discovery Mission concept related to the origin of water with several international partners. In addition to the research framework, the Astrobiology team has an integrated visitor program and education and public outreach (EPO) activities. Last year the group hosted 12 international visitors in our Astro Hale facility. The UHNAI has developed strong ties with the Nordic astrobiology network, and jointly runs graduate winter and summer schools every 18 months. UHNAI also has an innovative summer program in computational astrobiology, forging collaborations between computer science students and team members that need to develop interdisciplinary research tools involving pro- gramming. During summer 2011 the team began to set up a 3D virtual reality CAVE for 3D data visualization. Our team has its own EPO lead, who has developed some highly acclaimed summer programs (HISTAR and Ali‘i) for teacher and student training using the Faulkes telescope on Maui. In collaboration with the NAI Arizona State University team, UHNAI is developing some innovative “Virtual Field Trips” to communicate our interdisciplinary research through standards- based activities to both teachers and the public. Finally, it offers high profile public lectures with an interdisciplinary format 1–2 times per year.

Figure 4.2. The Origins of Water as an overarching theme in the UH NASA Astrobiology Institute. The increasingly interdisciplinary nature of astronomy programs leads to the fact that other fields of science are getting more and more interested in a cooperation with astronomy. In the proposed “School of Astronomy and Astrophysics” (see section 7F), we have developed the idea of an Astro-X program as a framework for interdisciplinary studies, where “X” could e.g. be chemistry, microbiology, engineering, informatics, and mathematics.

14 B. IfA Operations on the Island of Maui Research at HO has traditionally focused on solar and dedicated “experiment” facilities rather than general-purpose “visiting scientist” telescopes. Despite the limited land area available, we believe HO will continue to serve as a vital facility for long-term astronomical research using small to moderate apertures, and for solar science. The HO emphasis on dedicated facilities also makes the Haleakala site particularly well suited for remote or limited-access educational telescopes. The IfA operates the Mees Solar Observatory, SOLARC, and the Pan-STARRS PS1 facility at HO. The IfA also operates TLRS-4 for NASA’s GSFC. LCOGT operates FTN as part of their global network of telescopes for professional research and citizen science, and AFSC and AFRL operate the MSSC on land leased from UH.

Figure 4.3. ATRC. B1. Current Status of IfA Facilities in Pukalani Opened in September 2007, the Advanced Technology Research Center (ATRC, Figure 4.3) is a unique Hawaii facility for the design and construction of advanced instrumentation for remote sensing. Located in Pukalani, less than an hour from the summit of Haleakala, the ATRC was designed to fulfill both the needs of the IfA, which anticipated that the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) would be built on Maui and would need instruments, and of the local high-tech community, which helps the Air Force develop new instruments for its telescopes on Haleakala. The State of Hawaii provided funding for the construction, and competitive grants from the Air Force provided several million dollars for the sophisticated laboratory equipment. The goal was to provide a powerful resource for advanced microfabrication (the miniaturization of technical components), metrology (the scientific study of measurement), and optical testing. These laboratories are used by the local Maui technology community, and have been important for attracting other major instruments and projects to the IfA. All IfA administrative functions on Maui have also moved to the ATRC. Three IfA scientists now live and work from here, with the expectation that another solar scientist who will be based here will soon be hired. The old IfA Waiakoa base facility, a converted farm house sitting on ~2 acres located further up- country in Kula, was purchased by the university in 1963 and placed into service for office and laboratory space to support summit operations. It now provides visitor lodging and additional space for instrument staging and storage.

15 B2. Present Research Projects on Maui The IfA research program associated with Maui supports the technical staff, which maintains and operates HO. A list of recent federally funded projects includes the following: • SOLARC: Scatter-free Observatory for Limb Active Regions and Coronae, PI Kuhn, NASA • Support of the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope, PI Kuhn/Lin, NSF • Magnetic Eruptions on the Sun and Their Interplanetary Consequences, PI Kuhn, AFOSR • MOTH II Doppler magnetographs, PI Jefferies • Mees IR spectropolarimeter, PI Lin • TLRS-4, Satellite Laser Ranging, PI O’Gara, NASA

Figure 4.4. Mees Solar Observatory. Mees Solar Observatory (Figure 4.4) instruments: MOTH II Doppler magnetographs mounted on the Mees spar will be used to detect magneto-acoustic-gravity waves at two different heights in the Sun’s atmosphere and to determine the role of these waves in transporting energy from the convection zone up into the chromosphere and corona. The instruments use 20 cm telescopes and magneto-optical filters (using Na, K, He and Ca) to obtain simultaneous line-of-sight Doppler velocity and magnetic field measurements of the full solar disk at high cadence (0.2 Hz) with a resolution of 4 arcsec. The sensitivities of the Doppler and magnetic field measurements are 7 m/s and <5 G in a 5 sec integration, respectively. The Mees spectropolarimeter is an IR instrument for synoptic observations of the magnetic field of the solar photosphere and chromosphere.

B3. Pan-STARRS The Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-STARRS) is an innovative wide-field imaging facility developed at IfA. The combination of relatively small mirrors (1.8 m diameter) with very large digital cameras and excellent image quality results in a highly efficient and economic observing system that can survey the entire available sky several times each month. A major goal of Pan-STARRS is to discover and characterize Earth-approaching objects, both asteroids and comets, that might pose a danger to our planet, but its vast database is also ideal for research in several other astronomical areas, particularly those which involve an aspect of time variability. The first telescope, PS1 (see Figure 4.5) began full operations on Haleakala in May 2010. The telescope is equipped with the world’s largest camera, a 1.4 Gigapixel detector array that has been rated as 18th wonder of the world by Gizmowatch in 2011. Its scientific research program is

16 being undertaken by the PS1 Science Consortium, a collaboration between twelve research organizations in four countries: the University of Hawaii, the Max-Planck Institutes for Astronomy in Heidelberg and Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, the Johns Hopkins University, the Har- vard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Net- work, Durham University, University of Edinburgh, Queen’s University Belfast, National Central University Taiwan, the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).

Figure 4.5. The Pan-STARRS PS1 telescope and a PS1 sky image around the Trifid Nebula. The PS1 Surveys include (1) the 3π Steradian Survey of 60 epochs in 5 passbands (grizy) of the entire sky north of Dec = −30 degrees, (2) the Medium Deep Survey in grizy of 10 PS1 footprints on well-studied fields totaling 70 square degrees at high galactic latitude spaced around the sky, (3) the solar system ecliptic plane survey in a wide w = g + r + i passband with cadencing optimized for the discovery of near-Earth objects and Kuiper Belt objects, (4) the Stellar Transit Sur- vey of 50 square degrees in the galactic bulge, and (5) the Deep Survey of M31 with an observing cadence designed to detect microlensing events. PS1 has detected record numbers of potentially hazardous asteroids and near-Earth objects (we expect about 300 NEOs for 2012) and has detected hundreds of supernovae that are being used to probe the mysterious “dark energy” that dominates the expansion of the universe, including a new type of ultraluminous supernova. Recent discoveries include a new comet, Pan-STARRS C/2011 L4, which will become visible to the naked eye soon, as well as a supermassive black hole, which is currently swallowing a star. Operations of the PS1 System include the Observatory, the Telescope, the 1.4 Gigapixel Camera, the Image Processing Pipeline, the Published Science Products Subsystem (PSPS) relational database and reduced science product software servers. The complete PS1 database will comprise about three Petabytes of data. To fully exploit the scientific potential of the PS1 survey data we are committed to make the PS1 data public and accessible as soon as possible. To this end, we have joined forces with STScI, which has many years of experience with the Hubble Space Tele- scope and Multi-Mission data archive (MAST). Currently, a second telescope, PS2 is being developed for another enclosure on Haleakala. To-

17 gether with PS1, the PS1+2 system will provide by far the most powerful survey capability worldwide for many years to come. Ultimately, the plan is to build a 4-telescope system on Mauna Kea. Pan-STARRS is an enormous scientific step forward for the IfA. It will not only be a major technological and scientific contribution in the modern competitive world of astronomy, but will also provide a milestone of risk assessment of mankind’s existence in the solar system.

C. IfA Operations on the Island of Hawaii The IfA has maintained staff on the Island of Hawaii ever since site testing for the construction of the first telescopes on Mauna Kea in the late 1960s. With the opening of the new Kukahauula building (see Figure 4.6) in Hilo in 2000, the IfA Hawaii Island Division was established.

C1. The IfA Kukahauula Building in Hilo

Figure 4.6. The IfA Hilo building. The 35,000 sq. ft. building provides office and laboratory space for approximately one quarter of the IfA faculty and staff, with an emphasis on telescope support and instrument building. It has a library, auditorium, meeting rooms, laboratories, and a machine shop, as well as other infrastructure required for astronomical research, telescope operations, teaching, and public outreach. In 2006 and 2007, major repair work was done to the building, primarily fixing poor design and shoddy workmanship in the original construction. The main areas of improvement were the roof, which is now finally water tight, and the air conditioning system. The building is officially named the Kukahauula building, a Hawaiian term poetically referring to the summit region of Mauna Kea. The guiding principle for staffing our Hilo building was that any transfers from Manoa to Hilo would be a voluntary decision left to the individuals. Nevertheless, two clear research foci in Hilo have emerged: instrumentation and star-formation research. We have five tenured IfA faculty members resident in Hilo at this time (Aspin, Chun, Hall, Hodapp, and Reipurth). Bobby Bus and Michael Connelley are Hilo-based IRTF support scientists. Postdoctoral researcher Hsin-Fang Chiang is working with Reipurth. The technical staff for the UH 2.2 m, IRTF, and JWST Detector Development, along with several student assistants, work in the building. We have an administrative group consisting of five individuals, including one administrative officer.

18 Technical support for IfA instrumentation projects through the Job Order System (JOS) in Hilo has, over the years, diminished. Outside of the IRTF and UH telescope operations, we have only one instrumentation engineer on staff in Hilo at this time. We are in the process of hiring a new mechanical engineer to work on the upcoming Infrared Doppler Instrument (IRDI) project for the Subaru telescope. The Hilo machine shop is not currently staffed with a professional machinist. Much of the fabrication work for Hilo-based instrumentation projects has been done in the Manoa shop. In light of the slow ramp-up of the IfA staffing in Hilo, we have given a large number of rooms to UH Hilo and RCUH on a temporary basis, to help alleviate an acute shortage of office space on the UHH campus. The following groups are now sharing the building with us: • The RCUH management group of UHH • The Office of Mauna Kea Management • UHH special project management offices • The NASA-funded PISCES project All these groups share the common resources of the building—the auditorium, meeting rooms, and the library. The non-IfA groups are not charged rent, but are assessed their share of the operating costs of the building. All these agreements for use of our resources are mid- to long- term, but not permanent. The process of UHH vacating some offices in the Kukahauula Building and returning them to IfA use has begun in 2012. The additional space is primarily used as lab space for the maintenance and repair of UH 2.2 m telescope instruments.

C2. Present Research Projects in Hilo The research conducted at the IfA Hilo Division concentrates in two areas: 1. Detector and instrumentation development 2. Astronomical research in the general area of star and planet formation, with a particular emphasis on the study of accretion instabilities in young stars. The main IfA Hilo instrumentation projects are: • NSF-funded HAWAII-4RG development (P.I. Don Hall, co-I Klaus Hodapp) • Wendelstein Near Infrared Camera (P.I. Klaus Hodapp) • HANDS-IONS Camera (P.I. Klaus Hodapp) • NSF-funded Infrared Avalanche Photodiode Development (P.I. Don Hall, Co-I Klaus Hodapp) • Imaka wide-field ground-layer AO for CFHT (P.I. Mark Chun) • Mid-IR AO for TMT (P.I. Mark Chun)

C3. UH 2.2 m Telescope The UH 2.2 m telescope (Figure 4.7) was built with NASA funds and dedicated in 1970 as (then) the eighth largest optical telescope in the world, and one of the first with computerized control. Along with the 0.6 m Planetary Patrol Telescope, it demonstrated the virtues of Mauna Kea to the worldwide astronomical community, and has been heavily used by UH/IfA faculty and graduate students, and by outside visitors, including the U.S. planetary community. Historically, it has been invaluable for many optical and infrared projects, covering the full range of scientific research activities at the IfA directed at the solar system, stellar spectroscopy, star formation, galactic dynamics, and cosmology. As the only Mauna Kea telescope over which we have exclusive control, it has been the platform for several pioneering IfA technical development projects, including (a) the first large infrared arrays, (b) the first large mosaic CCD camera, and (c) the first fast tip-tilt secondary system at MKO. All of these systems became available to UH/IfA research

19 several years before implementation on other telescopes. This observational platform for rapid deployment of exciting new astronomical technology remains a major continuing strength.

Figure 4.7. UH 2.2 m telescope dome.

Since NASA operational support ceased in 1996, the full operational load (about $1.4 M/yr, including overhead) of this telescope has fallen on IfA State funding. To alleviate this, we have formed collaborative scientific agreements with two external organizations in exchange for a operational financial support. First, Japanese astronomers, through the National Astronomical Ob- servatory of Japan, apply for up to 10 percent of the UH 2.2 m time. Second, 40 percent of the UH 2.2 m time is allocated to the Lawrence Berkeley Labs to support their “Supernova Factory” spectroscopic observations of nearby SN from discovery through maximum light and decline phase. These observations are performed using the SNIFS integral field unit spectrograph (built by LBL/Lyon) which is permanently mounted on the south bent Cassegrain port. UH/IfA faculty and students also make use of the SNIFS spectrograph for their research projects. The operational support provided by these two collaborations has enabled us to fund our engineering staff and pursue the upgrade projects discussed in this section. Our current suite of instruments consists of (1) the Tektronix 2K × 2K optical imager named Tek (Cassegrain mounted), (2) the orthogonal transfer CCD optical imager named OPTIC (Cassegrain mounted), (3) the optical Wide-Field Grism Spectrograph named WFGS2 (Cassegrain mounted), and (4) the SNIFS optical integral-field spectrograph (south bent Cassegrain mounted). Both the telescope and the instruments are primarily operated remotely with observers located in Hilo, Manoa, the U.S. mainland, or Europe, and the telescope operator located in Hilo. Switching between the Cassegrain-mounted instrument and SNIFS is as easy as inserting a tertiary mirror into the telescope beam. We are working towards securing, within the next year, three new additions to the UH 2.2 m instrument suite. First, the UH/IfA led development of the next generation near-infrared imaging detectors, the HAWAII-4RG15, will allow us to provide near-infrared imaging capabilities in a refurbished instrument named ULBCam. This imager will contain one of the new 4K × 4K detector arrays and will provide high-performance direct imaging from 0.9 to 1.7 microns (2 micron imaging will not be supported at present due to the warm filter wheel currently in use in ULBCam). We additionally plan to implement the CFHT WIRCAM data reduction pipeline for online reduction of acquired images. Second, we are negotiating with a Taiwanese institute

20 (NCU) to place their four-channel simultaneous optical imager on the north bent Cassegrain port of the UH 2.2 m for an extended period. Third, in-house development of advanced adaptive optic techniques for ground layer correction will hopefully lead to a “test bed” ground layer AO system which could be used with our Cassegrain optical imagers and ULBCam. Of particular importance for continued operation of the UH 2.2 m telescope are the numerous upgrade projects for both the telescope itself and its instrument suite that are aimed at increasing operational efficiency, productivity, and scientific return. On the telescope side, examples of upgrades underway are improvements to the mirror cover assembly, the windscreen system, the RA drive, the focus unit, the telescope control computer system, the fiber optic communication network, and the weather station. On the instrument side, we are improving, for example, operation of the large filter wheel, the aging operational computers, and the user interface software. Additionally, we are building a telescope simulator to allow off-line testing of improvements to the telescope control software and installing Sun-avoidance software to allow daytime testing of infrared instrumentation.

C4. The NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) The IRTF (Figure 4.8) was established by NASA in 1979 primarily to provide infrared observations in support of NASA’s programs. It is managed and operated by the UH/IfA. We are in the final year of a 5-year Cooperative Agreement between NASA and UH for supporting IRTF operations. Due to a policy change at NASA, we are required to submit a renewal as a 5-year contract starting in February 2013. Under a unique agreement between NASA and NSF, NASA provides the costs of operation and NSF provides support for new focal plane instrumentation based on grant applications from the IRTF support astronomers. Observing time is open to the entire astronomical community, and 50 percent of the IRTF observing time is reserved for studies of solar system objects. UH receives 15 percent of the observing time and an additional 10 percent for engineering. The IRTF staff consists of 20 full-time equivalents, including the Director and three support astronomers, electronic and mechanical engineers, software engineers, technicians, and secretarial and support staff. At present four staff members are located in Manoa and 16 are located in Hilo. The operating budget for fiscal year 2012 is $4.3 M from NASA. We have received an additional $3.3 M from the NSF for visitor support and instrumentation development during the last five years. An additional $1.0 M was provided by NASA and UH as cost sharing for the echelle spectrograph under construction.

Figure 4.8. IRTF dome. The IRTF receives about 90–110 proposals per semester. The oversubscription over the last five years ranges from 0.9 to 2.0 for solar system research and 1.6–2.0 for non–solar system research.

21 Current facility instruments include SpeX (1–5 µm moderate resolution spectrograph), NSFCAM2 (1–5 µm camera), CSHELL (1–5.5 µm high resolution spectrograph), and MIRSI (8– 25 µm camera). We also have a CCD camera that is attached to SpeX and this allows simultaneous visible and near-infrared observations. Other instruments are available on a collaborative basis and are listed on the IRTF website (http://irtfweb.ifa.hawaii.edu/Facility). Current projects include completion of a detector upgrade for SpeX and NSFCAM2, completion of a high- resolution 1–5 micron echelle spectrograph, and image quality upgrades. Although operated as a facility to support NASA’s missions, the IRTF also plays an important role as a national infrared facility. The IRTF is scheduled to allow flexible remote observing so that programs requesting multiple partial nights can be accommodated. Observations as short as 1 hour can be scheduled. Thus one of the niches for the IRTF is in time domain astronomy. SpeX is an extremely flexible spectrograph and has proven to be very powerful in studies of asteroids, brown dwarfs, supernovae, and exoplanet spectroscopy. CSHELL is currently heavily used for radial velocity studies. We expect the new echelle spectrograph we are building will be in great demand, since it will be the only near-infrared spectrograph in the Northern Hemisphere providing 70,000 resolving power. In addition, the IRTF supports visiting instruments. Several high spectral resolution instruments, TEXES with R=105 and HIPWAC with R=106, are unique and are used primarily at the IRTF.

D. Protection of Hawaii’s Observatories from Light Pollution The University of Hawaii is leading efforts to protect the observatories on Mauna Kea and Haleakala from light pollution. Both observatories are threatened by population growth and the corresponding growth in lighting, and continued vigilance is needed to protect the dark night sky over these precious observatories.

D1. Mauna Kea Mauna Kea has been protected by a strong lighting ordinance in the County of Hawaii since 1989. The lighting ordinance requires use of low-pressure sodium (LPS) lighting for most uses. When color rendition is necessary, broader spectrum lighting is permitted, but it must be fully shielded. Enforcement of the lighting ordinance by the County of Hawaii has been lax. A quick drive around urban areas such as Hilo at night reveals many non-compliant light fixtures. Never- theless, the sky over Mauna Kea remains very dark—due in part to the large size of Mauna Kea (there are very few lights near the observatory), its high altitude, the very clean air (there is little aerosol scattering), and clouds that often cover some of the lower altitude lights. New advances in light emitting diodes (LEDs) have increased the efficiency of LED lighting to a point where it is competitive with or better than LPS. The high cost of electricity on the Island of Hawaii has provided strong motivation to the county to explore LEDs for streetlights. White LEDs are a poor light source for astronomy because they have a high blue content near 450 nm, at a wavelength where the natural night sky is very dark, telescopes are very sensitive, the human eye is not very sensitive, and where Rayleigh scattering by air molecules is high. In cooperation with the county and private industry, we have developed a filtered LED light that has essentially no emission below 500 nm. The light from the LED is very directional, and roadways can be lit with many fewer lumens using LEDs, because there is much less wasted light spilling off the road. The county lighting ordinance was altered in 2011, and now requires all lights to be fully shielded (previously, partially shielded LPS lamps were permitted), and now allows filtered LEDs to be used within 400 meters of a signalized intersection or 30 meters of a marked crosswalk. We expect the benefit from the proper shielding and reduced number of lumens to offset the broader spectrum, with the net effect being a reduction in light pollution over Mauna Kea. Preliminary discussions are underway to explore further protection of Mauna Kea as a World Heritage Site. A workshop is being held in June 2012 in New Zealand to discuss possible astronomical world heritage sites. A serial nomination including sites in Chile, Hawaii and in the Ca-

22 nary Islands may be recommended. This will be further discussed at the IAU General Assembly in August 2012.

D2. Haleakala For many years, Haleakala was primarily a solar observatory, and was not properly protected from light pollution by a county lighting ordinance. A lighting ordinance was passed in 2007 that requires most lights in the county to be replaced by fully shielded fixtures within 10 years. Most lighting on Maui is high-pressure sodium, which although not as favorable for astronomy as LPS, is still a good light source for astronomy. Maui County is also interested in switching to LEDs for energy savings, and the University is currently in discussions with the county over what spectral energy distribution is acceptable to astronomy. Just as for the Island of Hawaii, the blue light from LEDs is very damaging to astronomy. Light from Oahu, where Honolulu is located, is a significant contributor to light pollution on Ha- leakala. The northwestern half of the sky seen from Haleakala suffers from significant light pollution. The light pollution level on Haleakala should decrease by 2017 when all lights should be fully shielded. The contribution from Honolulu will be slow to decrease. The southeastern half of the sky over Haleakala is still very dark.

D3. Light pollution efforts statewide Senate Bill 2402 was passed by the 2012 Hawaii State legislature and is awaiting the Governor’s signature. It affects state lighting, e.g., highways, harbors, airports, and state buildings such as schools etc. It requires use of fully shielded lights in most cases with a correlated color temperature of <4000 K (to limit the amount of blue light). Reduction of light pollution from county and private lighting on Oahu will probably need a county lighting ordinance for the City and County of Honolulu. The County of Kauai already has excellent lighting as a result of the effect of nighttime lighting on endangered birds, and the federal endangered species act.

23 5. IfA Faculty At the core of the research and teaching mission of the Institute is its faculty. Tenured and tenure- track IfA faculty currently number 41 (see Table 5.1). Their research interests are broad and diverse, spanning all of the subdisciplines found in top astronomy programs worldwide. The IfA faculty also includes 16 long-term researchers and 31 postdoctoral researchers whose appointments normally last up to three years. Faculty appointments within the Institute have been made using the UH classification scheme of I = instructional, R = research, S = specialist and B = librarian. The separate I,R classifications make the IfA faculty unique when compared with appointments at other astronomy programs at U.S. universities, where most tenured faculty are normally hired as “professors” whose implicit duties combine instruction, research and service. The Institute for Astronomy is also an “Organized Research Unit” (ORU) within the UH system. This was done in recognition of the IfA’s special role of both managing and carrying out a program of focused research in a field where the state has unique resources that can be used to develop international leadership. There are several ORUs at UH, with the IfA being one of the largest, both in terms of extramural research funding and in the total number of faculty and staff. Tenured S and B appointments allow the IfA to recognize the important role played by specialists and library staff in running the world’s largest ground-based observatory complex.

A. Tenured and Tenure-Track Faculty Figures 5.1–5.3 show the distribution of appointment types, rank, gender, main research field, and “professional age” distribution for the 41 tenured and tenure-track faculty. The distributions are in general similar to those of other large top astronomy departments in the United States. The great majority of our faculty have attained the equivalent of “full professor” rank. The average years- since-PhD is 28 years.

Figure 5.1. Tenured/tenure-track faculty – distributions.

24 Table 5.1. IfA Faculty (RISB) Year 2012

Faculty Rank Status PhD Hire Comment Barnes, Joshua R5 Tenure 1984 1/91 * Bresolin, Fabio R5 Tenure 1997 8/01 * Chambers, Kenneth R5 Tenure 1990 10/91 PS1 Director Cowie, Antoinette R5 Tenure 1980 3/88 * Cowie, Lennox R5 Tenure 1976 2/86 * Ftaclas, Christ R5 Tenure 1978 1/02 [9/2012] Habbal, Shadia R5 Tenure 1977 9/05 * Hall, Donald R5 Tenure 1970 6/84 IR Detectors Hasinger, Guenther M Tenure 1984 1/11 * Heasley, James R5 Tenure 1973 9/77 PS1 Database Henry, J. Patrick I5 Tenure 1974 8/81 * Hodapp, Klaus-Werner R5 Tenure 1984 1/88 * Howard, Andrew R3 Tenure-Track 2008 9/12 Hu, Esther R5 Tenure 1980 5/86 * Joseph, Robert R5 Tenure 1971 9/89 * Kaiser, Nicholas R5 Tenure 1982 3/97 * Kewley, Lisa R4 Tenure 2002 6/07 * ANU joint Kudritzki, Rolf-Peter R5 Tenure 1973 10/00 * Kuhn, Jeffrey R5 Tenure 1981 8/98 * Lin, Haosheng R5 Tenure 1992 6/00 * Liu, Michael R5 Tenure 2000 11/00 * Meech, Karen R5 Tenure 1987 8/87 * Mendez, Roberto H. R5 Tenure 1978 1/02 * Owen, Tobias R5 Tenure 1965 3/90 [9/2012] Reipurth, Bo R5 Tenure 1981 12/01 * Roussev, Ilia R4 Tenure 2001 2/06 * Sanders, David R5 Tenure 1982 6/89 * Szapudi, Istvan R5 Tenure 1995 2/01 * Tholen, David R5 Tenure 1984 11/83 * Tokunaga, Alan R5 Tenure 1976 12/79 * Tonry, John R5 Tenure 1980 8/96 * Tully, R. Brent R5 Tenure 1972 11/75 * Williams, Jonathan R5 Tenure 1995 9/02 * Wynn-Williams, Gareth I5 Tenure 1971 8/78 [9/2012] Aspin, Colin S5 Tenure 1981 9/06 UH 2.2 m Chun, Mark S4 Tenure 1997 2/02 UH AO Coleman, Paul S5 Tenure 1985 1/02 Outreach Jedicke, Robert S5 Tenure 1992 3/03 PS1 McLaren, Robert M Tenure 1973 8/90 Assoc. Director Robertson, Kathleen B4 Tenure MLS1969 7/90 Librarian Wainscoat, Richard S5 Tenure 1986 10/89 UH Telescopes Boesgaard, Ann Emeritus 1966 9/67 2008 Herbig, George Emeritus 1948 7/87 2001 Stockton, Alan Emeritus 1968 8/68 2011 Bus, Shelte J. R4 Non-Tenure 1999 10/00 Cieza, Lucas PD Non-Tenure 2007 12/08 Connelley, Michael R3 Non-Tenure 2007 9/11 Ebeling, Harald R5 Non-Tenure 1994 1/96 Gal, Roy R3 Non-Tenure 2001 9/07 Haghighipour, Nader R4 Non-Tenure 1999 9/04 Hope, Douglas R3 Non-Tenure 2004 11/07 Jefferies, Stuart I5 Non-Tenure 1983 11/05 Keane, Jacqueline PD Non-Tenure 2002 11/05 Magnier, Eugene R4 Non-Tenure 1993 9/99 Morrison, Glenn R4 Non-Tenure 1999 7/05 Raja, Narayan S5 Non-Tenure 1992 3/94 Rayner, John R5 Non-Tenure 1988 7/88 Rhoads, Pui-Hin S4 Non-Tenure MS1986 5/93 Scholl, Isabelle S3 Non-Tenure 2003 11/08 Schörghofer, Norbert R4 Non-Tenure 1998 9/04 * denotes IfA tenured/tenure-track faculty members predominantly concerned with research and graduate education.

25 Figure 5.2. Faculty by research field

Note: Endowed Chairs and Named Professorships. The IfA currently stands alone among the top-20 NRC-ranked astronomy programs in the United States in not having named professorships or endowed chairs. This is not a distinction we wish to continue. Steps must immediately be taken to seek faculty endowments that can be used both to retain our top faculty and to recruit the best faculty from our peer institutions, many of whom already hold endowed faculty appointments.

B. Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Research Faculty Faculty supported by research grants are a vital part of any large astronomy department. There are currently 16 research astronomers (3 full, 7 associate, and 6 assistant) on the IfA faculty. Their distribution of research interests are shown in Figure 5.2.

Figure 5.2. Non-tenure-track faculty by research field.

Postdoctoral Researchers There are also 31 postdoctoral researchers (3-yr appointments) currently at the IfA. Seven postdocs hold endowed fellowships (3 Hubble, 1 Sagan, 2 NSF, 1 Beatrice Watson Parrent Fellow- ship, http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/directory/benefactors/parrent_fellowship.html), and 24 are paid from specific research grants. Emeritus Faculty The IfA currently has 3 emeritus faculty members: Ann Boesgaard, George Herbig, and Alan Stockton, all of whom are currently resident at the IfA. Adjunct Faculty The IfA currently has no formal adjunct faculty appointments. This will likely change when the IfA establishes the School of Astronomy & Astrophysics (SAA). Adjunct faculty appointments can be made for those faculty who are not formal members of the SAA, but who contribute directly to teaching astronomy courses and supervising IfA graduate students as part of joint degree programs, e.g. astro-physics, astro-chemistry, astro-biology, etc. Visiting Faculty Over the past two decades the IfA has averaged ~4–5 short-term visitor appointments (~1–3 months) per year, with on average 2 long-term visitors (~ 4–8 months) in residence at the IfA each year. The Institute should consider funding a strong Visitors Program that will allow distinguished astronomers to be in residence at UH for extended periods during which they can contribute more fully to the research and teaching mission of the Institute. C. Teaching Faculty The IfA has established programs of undergraduate/graduate teaching and graduate research that up until now have been carried out under a joint Department of Physics and Astronomy (P&A),

26 with the functional tie between the IfA and P&A being 4 tenure-track faculty positions whose “locus of tenure” is in the P&A Department, but who reside at the IfA. In practice, the teaching load has been distributed over a much larger number of IfA faculty (see Figure 5.3). A more complete chronology of the relationship between IfA and P&A will be given in section 7A. Starting in 1989 the 4 P&A FTEs were spread over 16 IfA faculty members who hold joint (0.25I, 0.75R) appointments. These 16 members were originally referred to as the professorial faculty and were expected to teach the equivalent of 3 credit-hours (one course) per year in addition to carrying out active research programs, providing research support for graduate students and supervising PhD thesis students, as well as contributing to public outreach and other service activities. The agreement signed by then-IfA Director Don Hall and Patrick Flanagan (Dean of the College of Natural Sciences), established a minimum number of faculty that was deemed necessary to teach the astronomy undergraduate and graduate curriculum. In practice, however, the 16 quarter-time P&A FTEs were only adequate to cover a single semester of courses, so the quarter-time appointments were “rotated” each semester to cover the larger number of ~30 IfA faculty members who were actually teaching classes during a given academic year. Starting in 2002, an attempt was made to require all tenure-track faculty to teach unless there was a strong reason for them to be exempted by the IfA Director. However, in practice, the teaching load has remained “bifurcated,” with ~13 members of the tenure-track faculty teaching less than 1 credit-hour per year, while ~28 members of the tenure-track faculty teach on average 3 credit-hours per year. Figure 5.3 shows the actual distribution of teaching load in the two 10-year periods 1991–2001 and 2002–2012.

Figure 5.3. Distribution of teaching loads for IfA faculty: (left panels) Graduate and undergraduate classes. (top right) ASTR699 graduate resaerch projects; (bottom right) PhD thesis students supervised.

27 6. The IfA Research Programs

A. The Research Environment Maintaining an environment within the Institute that both promotes and enhances scientific research continues to be a top priority of the IfA. We make a concerted effort to provide the best resources possible for research support in the areas of technical and administrative services, computing, library, and publications services. The quality and dedication of the IfA staff within these groups is very important to the IfA’s success. Significant improvements have been made over the last ten years to enhance and expand our research support services, which include computing, library, publications/graphics and administrative support. Computing Services — IfA computing services are provided through the Computer Services Re- charge System (CSRS), which currently supports a seven-member staff, including two faculty specialists. The CSRS maintains well-equipped public computing facilities, which are available to all students, faculty, and staff. These consist of Sun servers and Macintosh computers for general computing, and Linux servers – each with up to 12 cores, and total storage capacity up to 100 ter- abytes – for CPU-intensive computing. Individual staff members’ own Linux, Macintosh, and Windows workstations are also supported. IfA computers are connected to the network at 1-gigabit-per-second bandwidth. A 10-gigabit-per-second network connects the IfA locations on three islands (Hawaii, Oahu, and Maui) and to the Internet. IfA is currently connected to the observatories on Mauna Kea and Haleakala at 1-gigabit-per-second bandwidth. The observatories on Mauna Kea are interconnected by the Mauna Kea Communications Network (MKOCN), managed by the IfA, at the same speed. These connections are expected to be upgraded to a 10-gigabit-per-second bandwidth by August 2013. Additionally the IfA has recently invested in a Poly- com Video Switch which supports high-definition conferencing with up to 90 simultaneous connections. Working with the UH IT Infrastructure group, the IfA is currently in the process of con- verting our phone system to VoIP, which will help fix the problems we are having with aging (and an insufficient number of) phone lines. Library Services — The IfA Library has a core collection of journals and monographs in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, and optics that is distributed among facilities in Manoa, Hilo, and Pukulani. The IfA Library subscribes to the electronic versions of many journals and conference series. The Librarian provides full research and reference service and collection development. The Library supplies items not in the collection via a document delivery network that uti- lizes the University of Hawaii Libraries, and astronomy libraries in the State and worldwide. The Library supports a website with links to the Library’s online catalog and to licensed resources. Publications and Computer Graphics — The Publications Office, which consists of one editor and one computer graphic specialist, designs, writes, edits, produces, and distributes scientific, technical, and popular materials related to the Institute’s work. It is responsible for press releases, the Institute’s newsletter, parts of the website, and advertising materials for events. It assists faculty, staff, and students with a variety of publications-related tasks, such as printing posters for conferences, formatting tables in LaTeX, and answering questions about English grammar and usage. The publications staff also assists the computer staff in maintaining the Graphics Lab, where faculty, staff, and students can work at any time of day, with or without assistance from the publications staff, on Macintosh computers loaded with desktop publishing software, including Adobe Creative Suite and Microsoft Office. Administrative Services — IfA administrative personnel consist of seven secretaries supervised by faculty members, and 27 APT personnel supervised by the Director of Administrative Ser- vices. “APT” refers to the Administrative Professional Technical personnel in bargaining unit 08 of the Hawaii Government Employers Association union. The number of administrative personnel has not increased over the last 9 years as reflected in Table 1.1. During 2002–2008, considerable administrative effort was spent developing an internal accounting system. This effort was dis-

28 continued in 2008 and a document management system (DocuShare) was installed. This created significant efficiencies and supports multi-office operations. Both UH and RCUH have made major system changes and improvements over the last ten years. The biggest change will be UH’s implementation of the Kuali Financial System (KFS) http://www.hawaii.edu/kualifinancial/ on July 1, 2012, along with a powerful report writing tool from eThority. Kuali MyGrants and an online leave system were implemented in early 2012. It is expected that UH will implement additional Kuali modules and thereby reduce the number of stand-alone computer programs in the coming years. We expect RCUH’s planned interface with KFS will create additional processing efficiencies. Three areas have been identified for further improvements: (1) Clarity of secretarial role integration with administration. (2) More outreach to incoming personnel to assist in their transition to the IfA. Foreign staff dealing with US health care issues is particularly challenging. (3) Including administrative personnel in project planning to improve efficiencies and build teamwork.

B. Research Activities Solar System

Minimoons. R. Jedicke: Most of my work has concentrated on characterizing the population of near-Earth objects (NEOs; asteroids and comets that approach to within ~1.3 AU of the Sun). Some of them can be temporarily captured by Earth if they have a slow relative speed while passing through the Earth-Sun L1 or L2 points. We have for the first time calculated the population characteristics of these irregular natural Earth satellites (NESs). The steady-state NES size- frequency and residence-time distributions were determined under the dynamical influence of all the massive bodies in the solar system (but mainly the Sun, Earth, and Moon) for NEOs of negligible mass. We derived the NES capture probability from the NEO population as a function of the latter’s heliocentric orbital elements and combined those results with the current best estimates for the NEO size-frequency and orbital distribution. At any given time there should be at least one NES of 1-meter diameter orbiting Earth. The average temporarily captured orbiter (TCO; an object that makes at least one revolution

Figure 6.1. The Earth captures a minimoon. around Earth in a co-rotating coordinate system) completes 2.88±0.82 revolutions around Earth during a capture event that lasts 286±18 days. We find a small prefer- ence for capture events starting in either January or July. Our results are consistent with the single known natural TCO, 2006 RH120, a few-meter diameter object that was captured for about a year starting in June 2006 (see Figure 6.1). We estimate that about 0.1% of all meteors impacting the Earth were TCOs. Planetary Atmospheres. T. Owen has a long-standing interest in the origin of planetary atmospheres. Noble gases and isotopes provide vital sources of information. His participation in mass spectrometer experiments on past, present and future planetary and comet missions provides a rich harvest of data for these studies. Two new missions will contribute illuminating perspectives. Data he obtained from the mass spectrometer on the Viking Mars lander suggested a striking similarity between components of the atmospheres of Mars and Earth. The MSL spacecraft due to land on Mars August 5 carries a mass spectrometer that will repeat and extend the Viking meas-

29 urements with much higher precision (Figure 6.2). This will enable a rigorous comparison of Mars with Earth. If the new direct measurements on Mars duplicate the terrestrial array of noble gases, a common source for some fraction of the volatiles on these planets is implicated. What is this source? Comets are an attractive possibility. The first measurement of noble gases and nitro- gen isotopes in ammonia will be made in 2015 by the Rosetta Mission to comet Churyumov-Gerasi- menko. This will be the experimentum crucis. Owen is presently preparing for his role on both these missions. He plans to supplement the mission results with ground-based observations of comet Pan-STARRS 2011/C4. The final goal is a significant improvement in models for the origins and early histories for the atmospheres of these planets. Application to the atmosphere of Titan is also envisaged. Figure 6.2. The Mars Rover Curiosity. Exploring the Physics of the Corona with Total Solar Eclipse Observations. S. R. Habbal, H. Morgan, M. Druckmüller & A. Ding: During the total solar eclipse of 29 March 2006, we imaged the corona in the Fe XI 789.2 nm line for the first time, discovering an emission extending out to a few solar radii above the limb. This discovery was made possible by the advent of affordable scientific-grade cameras and the independent development of two complementary image-processing techniques. The realization that the extended Fe XI emission was a consequence of the dominance of resonant excitation of different ionization states of heavy elements, such as Fe, by the solar disk radiation, led to the implementation of novel diagnostic tools to explore the physics of the corona. By acquiring simultaneous images in Fe IX, Fe X, Fe XI, Fe XIII, and Fe XIV, as well as the continuum (Figure 6.3), we established for the first time that (1) the electron temperature in coronal structures has a clear demarcation, with open field lines associated with the solar wind outflow being characterized by a 106 K plasma, while the archlike structures are at 2×106 K; (2) the hottest structures enshroud the coolest material in the corona in the form of suspended or anchored prominences; (3) the empirical determination of the location where the ions become frozen into the charge state that is subsequently measured in interplanetary space occurs within 0.5 to 1 radius above the solar surface; and (4) localized enhancements of the ion relative to the electron density occur in distinct magnetic structures, thus providing the first empirical evidence for what had been found in models of the solar wind when the heating of heavy ions was quenched. These findings are fundamental for further explorations of the physics of the corona. They underscore the important diagnostic capabilities of coronal forbidden lines, in particular the suite of Fe lines, which can be observed only with total solar eclipses or with coronagraphs. Figure 6.3. An overlay of white light, Fe XIV 530.3 nm (green) and Fe XI 789.2 nm (red) emission from observations taken during the total solar eclipse of 1 August 2008. The different images forming this overlay have been processed by M. Druckmüller to reveal the fine scale structures. [Habbal et al., 2010, ApJ 708, 1650]

Near-Earth Asteroids. D. Tholen, M. Micheli & G. Elliott have been tracking near-Earth asteroids to help determine which of them may represent an impact hazard to Earth. One object in particular has become of significant interest to the impact hazard community. Asteroid 2011 AG5 is an approximately 150 m in diameter with a 1 in 550 chance of impacting Earth in 2040. How- ever, Earth is fairly well-centered in the current ephemeris uncertainty ellipse, which means that the impact probability would likely increase as the size of the uncertainty ellipse is decreased

30 with additional observations. If it becomes necessary to deflect this object to prevent an impact, it would far easier to do so before a keyhole passage in 2023, which leaves little time to prepare such a mission. Tholen’s team helped to refine the impact calculations by extending the observational arc of 2011 AG5 from 229 to 255 days. They also helped with the measurement of prediscovery images that lengthened the arc by an additional 61 days. Tholen’s group has also measured the density Figure 6.4. Asteroid Itokawa. of a small near-Earth asteroid, 2009 BD, via the detection of radiation pressure effects acting on the object. The results indicate a nominal density that is less than that of water, suggesting a very porous internal structure, which has also been seen in a couple of other small asteroids. If these results can be shown to apply to larger near-Earth asteroids, the potential impact energy estimates could be revised downward, making them less of a threat. Tholen was a member of the imaging team for the Japanese Hayabusa mission, which returned samples from the near-Earth asteroid Itokawa (Figure 6.4). The target surprised many with its lack of obvious craters and its boulder- rich surface. The images are suggestive of a rubble pile interior structure. Together with F. Bernardi, the group conducted a survey of near-Earth asteroids at small solar elongations, which is the only place in the sky where it is possible to find objects with orbits that lie completely interior to the Earth’s orbit. The survey yielded, notably, 2004 XZ130, which at the time held the record for smallest aphelion distance known (0.898 AU), as well as 2004 MN4, now known as (99942) Apophis, the “poster child” for “killer asteroids,” the first near-Earth object discovery to reach level 2 on Torino scale of hazardous asteroids. Prior to some prediscovery observations being located in archival data, the impact probability reached 1 in 37 for 2029 April 13 (a Friday!). Although the 2029 impact has now been ruled out, an impact in 2036 is still possible, and the object has opened up an entirely new field of study known as “keyhole science.” The very precise astrometric observations of Apophis by Tholen’s team ultimately revealed biases in the USNO-B1.0 reference catalog, and forced the impact monitoring services to adopt bias corrections to the astrometry reported by those tracking near-Earth asteroids. New reductions of the Mauna Kea observations using the 2MASS reference catalog, which has considerably less bias than the USNO-B1.0, have yielded a set of over 400 astrometric observations of Apophis with an RMS error of 0.12 arcsec, which rivals the radar observations of Apophis in terms of fractional precision.

Main-Belt Asteroids. B. Bus: A primary goal of studying small bodies in the solar system is to place constraints on the time, location and conditions under which these objects formed. Some of the oldest materials in the solar system are the refractory minerals contained in calcium, alumi- num-rich inclusions (CAIs) that are found in chondritic meteorites. Spectroscopically, CAIs have a unique 2-micron absorption band that is attributed to iron-bearing aluminous spinel. We have identified several asteroids with spectra containing this 2-micron feature, and based on the strength of this absorption, have estimated these asteroids contain upwards of 30% CAI materials, 2 to 3 times that found in any meteorite (Figure 6.5). The survival of these CAI-rich bodies ar- gues that they may have formed at a location with very high concentrations of refractory materials, at a time before the injection of radiogenic 26Al into the solar system, and that these bodies have remained relatively unaltered since their formation. This study identifies these asteroids as being more ancient than any known sample in our meteorite collections, making them prime candidates for future sample return missions.

31 Figure 6.5. Three main-belt, CAI-rich asteroids (green, red, orange) showing the 2-micron absorption band diagnostic of aluminous spinel. The overlaying model fits (black) are created using spectral components from the Allende carbona- ceous chondrite meteorite. A 30 ± 10% contribution of CAI materials is required to fit the asteroid spectra. [Sunshine et al. 2011, Science 320, 514]

Small Body Missions. K. Meech, B. Yang, T. Riesen, J. Keane, G. Sarid, H. Kaluna & T. Zenn: The team has been active in coordinating and executing Earth-based observations in support of two extended Discovery missions to comets: EPOXI and StardustNExT. The ground-based and Earth- orbital data plays a critical role in the interpretation and understanding of the in-situ data obtained by the spacecraft. The EPOXI flyby of comet 103P/Hartley 2 on 4 November 2010 revealed a small, highly active comet with CO2-driven jets and a swarm of icy chunks surrounding the nucleus, and the StardustNExT flyby of comet 9P/Tempel 1 on 14 February 2011 allowed us to visit a comet nucleus for the second time to look for changes on the surface after it had made one orbit around the Sun. From the ground-based data for the EPOXI mission, the group developed a simple volatile sublimation model using the Earth-based data that showed that carbon dioxide played a very important role—one even more important than water—in the activity of the comet near perihelion. This was seen from the spacecraft at flyby, and we are now developing a new paradigm for understanding the mechanism for comet activity which may have important implications for the chemistry of these early solar system planetesimals. We are part of the SEPPCoN large Spitzer program, which determined radii for 100 comets, and the NEOWISE IR- sky survey mission, which will result in radii and CO2 production estimates for ∼155 comets. We have a 25-year database of heliocentric light curves for many of these comets and are working on getting a complete set of albedo and gas production rates for all of these. Soon we will be able to merge studies of solar system chemistry, as seen from early leftovers from 4.5 Gyr ago, with chemical models of protoplanetary disks, in order to make resolved disk chemistry observations with ALMA. A large data set with radii, albedos, H2O and CO2 production rates will allow us to look for correlations between chemistry in comets, mechanisms of activity, and formation location and dynamics—all of which feed into disk models and predictions for disk-resolved observations.

Figure 6.6. Composite photometric light curve of the 12 CARA comet brightness as observed by several teams as a IAC function of time from perihelion. Data from several Trappist observers are shown as points, and model contribu- 14 Bauer Meech tions from various ices shown as solid lines. Ac- H2O+Nuc cording to the model, the comet became active about Nucleus 16 CO2 500 days before coming to perihelion, and until CO about 100 days before perihelion water ice sublima- R(1,1,0) magnitude Total tion explained this behavior (blue curve). Near peri- 18 helion, however, the comet grew even more active, ï800 ï600 ï400 ï200 0 and the CO2 jets started to appear. The bottom inset Time from perihelion (days) is an enlargement of the data near perihelion. 11 12 28.0 O

13 2 H 14 27.5 Q 15 27.0

R(1,1,0) magnitude 16 ï100 ï50 0 50 100 Time from perihelion (days)

Main-Belt Comets. K. Meech, J. Keane, T. Riesen, J. Kleyna, G. Sarid, B. Hermalyn, B. Yang, H. Hsieh, H. Kaluna, L. Urban, T. Zenn: The distribution of volatiles, and in particular water, in our solar system is a primary determinant of solar system habitability and planetary formation. In particular, the origin of terrestrial water is a fundamental unresolved planetary science issue. There are three leading scenarios for its origin: direct capture from nebular gas, delivery from icy planetesimals, and chemical reactions between oxides in a magma ocean and a tenuous hydrogen atmosphere. Comets provide one of the mechanisms for large-scale transport and delivery of water within our solar system, and asteroids provide another source of volatiles. However, neither comets nor asteroids can explain both Earth’s water and its noble gas inventory. A recently discovered new class of icy bodies in the outer asteroid belt, the Main-Belt Comets (MBCs), are comets in near-circular orbits within the asteroid belt that are dynamically decoupled from Jupi- ter. Dynamics suggest they formed in-situ, beyond the primordial snow line, and as such represent a class of icy bodies that formed at a distance from the Sun that has not yet been studied in detail and which could potentially hold the key to understanding the origin of water on terrestrial habitable worlds. The UHNAI team has been very active in searching for additional MBCs and characterizing both previously known and new ones. Project work includes automated searches for MBCs using the Pan-STARRS1 telescope. PS1’s first “discovery” of an MBC occurred in 2010, when the activity of P/2010 La Sagra was imaged by PS1. MBC 2006 VW139 was discovered on 2011 November 5, and prediscovery images were then observed in data taken during Au- gust. Our work also includes impacts in the Asteroid Belt that masquerade as MBCs, including imaging, and dust dynamical and thermal models.

Figure 6.7. Composite image of P/2010 A2 LINEAR obtained using the Gemini North telescope on Mauna Kea on 1/19/10. The stars have been removed from the stacked images to more clearly show the tail.

Figure 6.8. Spectrum of asteroid 596 Scheila. Open squares are the Subaru observation of Scheila obtained on UT 14 December 2010. The red dashed line is the best-fit Hapke radiative transfer model, fit with amorphous carbon (AC) and the mineral pyroxene (pyr). No absorption features were observed, suggesting that surface water ice was less than 1% on this object.

The Pluto System. D. Tholen, M. Buie (Southwest Research), W. Grundy (Lowell Observatory) & G. Elliot (IfA) have been studying the Pluto system using the Hubble Space Telescope. After making corrections to the astrometry caused by the surface albedo markings on Pluto, they have concluded that the orbit of Charon is circular to within 3 km, as expected from tidal dissipation effects. Previous work had suggested the presence of a significant nonzero orbital eccentricity, but the astrometry is corrupted by the changing albedo pattern on Pluto, which shifts the measured center of light away from the center of mass. The data also show that the three outer satel-

33 lites have orbits close to the 4:1 (Nix), 5:1 (new unnamed satellite), and 6:1 (Hydra) resonances with Charon (Figure 6.9). The orbits are also being used to plan the observational sequence for the New Horizons spacecraft when it flies through the Pluto system in July 2015. Figure 6.9. The outer satellites are circled. Pluto and Charon are saturated.

Galactic Studies

High-Resolution Submillimeter Imaging of a Planet-Forming Disk. J. Williams: The dry skies above Mauna Kea have made possible many new discoveries at submillimeter wavelengths. The Submillimeter Array (SMA) provides the ability to carry out subarcsecond imaging at these short wavelengths for the first time and is a pathfinder to ALMA. As an example of the potential for innovative research in this regime, graduate student G. Mathews, supervised by Williams, imaged a protoplanetary transition disk in the nearby Upper Scorpius region at 0.3'' resolution. The disk is seen to be nearly face on and has a clear central cavity, about 70 AU in radius. The existence of a central, dust depleted hole had been inferred from the pronounced dip in the spectral energy distribution, but the SMA observations allow us to directly measure the size of the gap, determine the dust surface density profile and characterize the sharpness of the inner disk edge. A detailed truncated accretion disk model that simultaneously fits the spectral energy distribution and SMA spatial information is shown to fit the data very well. The “ringing” in the radially averaged visibility profile is an indication that the edge is quite sharp which, in turn, suggests that the inner regions have been dynamically carved out by one or more protoplanets rather than other proposed processes such as grain growth which produce more gradually tapered disk holes. The disk is also gas rich, and we are carrying out further work to understand the chemistry and implications for planet formation (Figure 6.10). Figure 6.10. Top: 880 μm continuum map (left), model image (mid), and residual map (right) of J1604-2130. Lower: Model fits to the SED (left), continuum visibilities (mid), and surface density function for adopted disk model (right). The surface density within the cavity (20–72 AU) is reduced by a factor ~10 relative to the disk.

A Planet in the Process of Forming. A. L. Kraus reported the direct-imaging discovery of a likely (proto)planet around the young transitional disk host LkCa 15, located at the middle of the known gap in its disk. The observations have revealed a faint and relatively blue point source, surrounded by co-orbital emission that is red and resolved into at least two sources (Figure 6.11). The most likely geometry consists of a newly formed gas giant planet that is surrounded by dusty material, and that has been caught at its epoch of formation. This discovery was the first direct

34 evidence that at least some transitional disks do indeed host newly formed (or forming) exoplan- etary systems, and the observed properties provided crucial insight into the gas giant formation process. The IfA issued a press release to recognize that LkCa15 b was the youngest planet known. The press release led to over 300 articles on Google News, numerous phone and television interviews, and an appearance by the lead author on the flagship NPR program “All Things Considered.”

Figure 6.11. Left: The transitional disk around the star LkCa 15. All of the light at this wavelength is emitted by cold dust in the disk. The hole in the center indicates an inner gap with a radius of about 55 times the distance from Earth to the Sun. Right: An expanded view of the central part of the cleared region, showing a composite of two recon- structed images (blue: 2.1 microns, from November 2010; red: 3.7 microns) for LkCa 15. The location of the central star is also marked.

The Hunt for Other Worlds. M. C. Liu: The Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign: One of the most exciting astronomical developments in the past 15 years has been the discovery and characterization of extrasolar planets—planets in orbit around stars other than our Sun, a.k.a. “exoplanets.” Direct detection of gas-giant exoplanets is now becoming possible, opening the door to new avenues of understanding distinct from radial velocity and transit detections. We are currently completing an unprecedented 250-star high-contrast imaging campaign to detect and characterize young (<1 Gyr) extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs using the Near-Infrared Coronographic Im- ager (NICI) on the Gemini South 8.1 m telescope. NICI is the first instrument designed from the outset for high-contrast imaging on a large telescope. It comprises a high-performance adaptive optics (AO) system with a simultaneous dual-channel coronographic imager. Funded by NASA, NICI was built with substantial involvement from the IfA, including faculty members M. Chun and C. Ftaclas. In combination with state-of-the-art AO observing and data analysis, the NICI Campaign achieves about 2 magnitudes better contrast compared with any previous ground-based or space-based planet-finding efforts inside of ~2 arcsec separations. Overall, the NICI Planet- Finding Campaign represents the largest and most sensitive imaging survey to date for brown dwarfs and Jovian-mass planets around other stars. To date, the NICI Campaign has discovered three new substellar (~30 MJup) companions to young stars, as well as several dozen exoplanet candidates which are in the process of being confirmed/refuted through high-precision, second- epoch astrometry (Figure 6.12). Confirmed planets will be prime targets for photometric and spectroscopic follow-up to determine their properties. More broadly, our final goal is to quantify the mass and separation distributions of outer (>~5–10 AU) planets with this large homogeneous data set, since the physics behind planet formation is en- coded in these quantities. Figure 6.12. PZ Tel A and B. The vast majority of light from PZ Tel A has been removed from this image using specialized image analysis techniques. The size of the orbit of Neptune is shown for comparison; PZ Tel B would lie within Neptune’s orbital dimensions and is one of few brown dwarfs or exoplanets imaged at a distance of <30 AU from its parent star. Credit: Beth Biller and the Gemini NICI Planet-Finding Campaign, Gemini Observa- tory/AURA.

35 Habitable Extrasolar Planets. N. Haghighipour studies potentially habitable extrasolar planets. During the past five years, he has been very actively involved in a very extensive program to detect these objects, both on theoretical and observational fronts. After 2

Figure 6.13. Artistic rendering of habitable planet GJ 667Cc around years of theoretical studies on the M star GJ 667C. This star is a member of a wide three-star system. habitable planet formation around low-mass stars, he identified a large number of potentially planet-hosting M stars, and in 2009, initiated an observational project to search for small planets around these targets. He has been using the HIRES spectrometer on the Keck I telescope and also collaborated with the UC Santa Cruz Lick Observatory, and Carnegie Institute of Washington to use their telescope in Las Campanas, Chile. During the past 3 years, his project has resulted in the detection of 12 planets among which there are two Earth- sized planets in the habitable zone, namely Gliese 581g, the very first habitable planet detected, and GJ 667Cc, a recently identified habitable planet (Figure 6.13). They have also detected a Saturn-mass planet in the habitable zone of the M dwarf HIP 57050 with a high potential for harboring a habitable moon, a new Uranus-mass planet in a Laplace resonance in the multiplanet system around M star GJ 876 (the only three-body resonant system known among planetary bodies), and two giant planets around the Sun-like star HD 207832.

Nature’s Coolest “Stars.” M. C. Liu: Residing at the “stellar” extremes of mass, luminosity, and temperature, brown dwarfs serve as laboratories for understanding gas-giant extrasolar planets, as well as the faint end of the star formation process. The coldest known brown dwarfs have temper- atures of ~400–700 Kelvin, bolometric 6 luminosities of <10 Lsun, and possess molecule-dominated spectra (e.g., H2O, CH4, and NH3) and atmospheric processes (e.g., nonequilibrium chemistry) that are more akin to Jupiter than any star. This similarity has motivated energetic searches for even more extreme objects to close the gap of ~200 K in temperature and factor of 1000 in luminosity between the T dwarfs and Jupiter. We have been using high angular resolution imaging from the Keck laser guide star adaptive optics (LGS AO) system to search for binaries among the field brown dwarf population. This remarkably successful program has three major aspects: (1) High angular resolution Figure 6.14. This image of the brown dwarf binary imaging is a proven path of identifying CFBDSIR 1458+10 was obtained using the LGS AO even cooler objects, found as companions system on the Keck II Telescope. Adaptive optics cancels to the coolest known brown dwarfs. Our out much of Earth’s atmospheric interference, improving the image sharpness by a factor of 10 and most extreme discovery has been the enabling the very small separation binary to be resolved. CFBDSIR J1458+10AB system (Figures This is the coolest pair of brown dwarfs found so far— 6.14 & 6.15), which is the coldest known the colder and dimmer of the two components is a binary to date (500 K + 370 K binary), and candidate for the brown dwarf with the lowest tempera- the secondary was one of the first objects ture ever found. This color picture was created from images taken through four different filters at near- found in 2011 that is cooler than known T infrared wavelengths. dwarfs. (2) We have been revealing the

36 cooling sequence of brown dwarfs, as they evolve from spectral types of late-M, to L, then T, and ultimately to Y dwarfs. We use binaries as “mini-clusters” of two coeval objects of common metallicity. Our Keck LGS AO results have been invaluable for understanding the removal of clouds at the L/T transition. (3) On the longest timescales, we have been carrying out astrometric monitoring of these binaries over 5–10 years. Such monitoring yields direct dynamical masses, which are the very best way to test current theoretical models of brown dwarf evolution and their ultracool atmospheres. This work has benefited from IR parallax measurements carried out at the Canada-France Hawaii Telescope over the last 5 years. We have successfully produced parallaxes as good as any previous program (~1 milliarcsec accuracy) but for objects 2–4 magnitudes fainter than measured before. Parallaxes are the key to tracing the luminosity evolution of brown dwarfs. Also, dynamical mass measurements from visual binaries require high-precision distances.

Figure 6.15. This artist’s impression shows the pair of brown dwarfs named CFBDSIR 1458+10. Observations with ESO’s Very Large Telescope and two other telescopes have shown that this pair is the coolest pair of brown dwarfs found so far. The colder of the two components (shown in the background) is a candidate for the brown dwarf with the lowest temperature ever found—the surface temperature is similar to that of a cup of freshly made tea. The two components are both about the same size as the planet Jupiter.

Orphaned Protostars. B. Reipurth: Stars are often, and perhaps always, formed in small multiple systems. This gives rise to strong dynamical interactions between the stellar embryos, resulting in the formation of a tight binary and a single object that is ejected, either into a distant orbit or into an escape. Numerical N-body simulations reveal that such break-ups of triple systems most frequently occur during the protostellar stage, when the stellar embryos are embedded in their placental cloud cores and are still growing. In those cases when an embryo is escaping before it has grown to a mass of 0.08 Msun, it will forever remain a brown dwarf. In many cases, protostellar objects are ejected with insufficient momentum to climb out of the potential well of the cloud core and associated binary (Figure 6.16). These loosely bound companions can travel out of their dense cloud cores to distances of many thousands of AU before falling back and eventually being ejected into escapes as the cloud cores gradually disappear and the gravitational bonds weaken. Such orphaned protostars offer an intriguing glimpse of newborn stars that are normally hidden from view. A number of such orphans have been identified in nearby star-forming regions in the vicinity of deeply embedded protostars, for the first time allowing detailed studies of protostars at near-infrared and even at optical wavelengths. [Reipurth et al., 2010, ApJ 725, L56,] Figure 6.16. One hundred simulations showing the dynamical evolution of a low-mass triple system embedded in a cloud core. Ejections leading to an escape are plotted in red, while bound systems are blue.

37 Cool Star Library. Rayner et al. have constructed a 0.8–5 μm spectral library of 210 cool stars, observed at a resolving power of R ≡ λ/∆λ ≈ 2000 with the medium-resolution infrared spectrograph, SpeX, at the 3.0 m NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Mauna Kea. The stars have well-established MK spectral classifications and are mostly restricted to near-solar metallicities. The sample not only contains the F, G, K, and M spectral types with luminosity classes between I and V, but also includes some AGB, carbon, and S stars (see Figure 6.17). In contrast to some other spectral libraries, the continuum shape of the spectra is measured and preserved in the data reduction process. The spectra are absolutely flux calibrated using the Two Micron All Sky Survey photometry. Potential uses of the library include studying the physics of cool stars, classifying and studying embedded young clusters and optically obscured regions of the Galaxy, evolutionary population synthesis to study unresolved stellar populations in optically obscured regions of galaxies and synthetic photometry. The library is available form from the IRTF website: http:// irtfweb.ifa.hawaii.edu/~spex/ IRTF_Spectral_Library/ [(ApJS 185, 289, 2009] Figure 6.17. Sequence of M, S, and C giants of approximately the same effective temperature illustrating the effect of increasing carbon abundance during AGB evolution. The spectra of HD 213893 (M0 IIIb), HD 64332 (S4.5 Zr 2 Ti 4), HD 92055 (C-N 4.5 C2 4.5), and HD 76221 (C-N 4.5 C2 5.5 MS 3) have been normalized to unity at 1.08 μm and offset by constants (dotted lines). Also plotted is the very cool carbon star R Lep (HD 31996, C7,6e (N4)). Regions of strong (transmission <20%) telluric absorption are shown in dark grey, while regions of moderate (transmission <80%) telluric absorption are shown in light grey.

Metal-Poor Stars. A. M. Boesgaard and three graduate students completed a major study of Be in metal-poor stars with Keck/HIRES spectra of 117 stars. The resonance lines of ionized Be are in the ultraviolet spectral region (313.0 and 313.1 nm). The upgraded detector on HIRES has a quantum efficiency of 93% at those wavelengths making it the ideal instrument/telescope combination for this project. The light elements, Li, Be, and B, provide tracers for many aspects of astronomy including stellar structure, Galactic evolution, and cosmology. They made observations of Be in 117 unevolved, metal-poor stars ranging in metallicity from [Fe/H] = –0.5 to –3.5 with Keck I and HIRES. Our spectra are high-resolution Figure 6.18. The distribution of A(Be) with [Fe/H] for our (~42,000) and high signal-to-noise (the total sample, for the dissipative stars, for the accretive median is 106 per pixel). They determined stars, and for retrograde subset of the accretive stars. the stellar parameters spectroscopically There is a steeper slope, 0.94, for the dissipative stars than from lines of Fe I, Fe II, Ti I, and Ti II. The for the accretive stars, 0.68. The hexagons with the crosses are the Be-rich stars which are both accretive and abundances of Be and O were derived by retrograde. spectrum synthesis techniques, while

38 abundances of Fe, Ti, and Mg were found from many spectral line measurements (Figure 6.18). There is a linear relationship between [Fe/H] and A(Be) with a slope of 0.88 ± 0.03 over three orders of magnitude in [Fe/H]. They found that Be is enhanced relative to Fe; [Be/Fe] is +0.40 near [Fe/H] ~–3.3 and drops to 0.0 near [Fe/H] ~–1.7. For the relationship between A(Be) and [O/H], they found a gradual change in slope from 0.69±0.13 for the Be-poor/O-poor stars to 1.13±0.10 for the Be-rich/O-rich stars. Inasmuch as the relationship between [Fe/H] and [O/H] seems robustly linear (slope = +0.75±0.03), they concluded that the slope change in Be vs. O is due to the Be abundance. Much of the Be would have been formed in the vicinity of SN II in the early history of the Galaxy and by Galactic cosmic-ray (GCR) spallation in the later eras. Although Be is a by-product of CNO, they also used Ti and Mg abundances as alpha-element surrogates for O in part because O abundances are rather sensitive to both stellar temperature and surface gravity. They found that A(Be) tracks [Ti/H] very well with a slope of 1.00±0.04. It also tracks [Mg/H] very well with a slope of 0.88±0.03. They incorporated kinematic information on 114 stars in their sample; their stars divide equally into dissipative and accretive stars. Almost the full range of [Fe/H] and [O/H] is covered in each group. There are distinct differences in the relationships of A(Be) and [Fe/H] and of A(Be) and [O/H] for the dissipative and the accretive stars. It is likely that the formation of Be in the accretive stars was primarily in the vicinity of SN II, while the Be in the dissipative stars was primarily formed by GCR spallation. Their data also shows that Be is not as good a cosmochronometer as Fe. There is a spread in A(Be) that is valid at the 4σ level between [O/H] = –0.5 to –1.0, which corresponds to –0.9 to –1.6 in [Fe/H]. [Boesgaard, Rich, Levesque & Bowler, 2011, ApJ, 743, 140]

Extragalactic Studies

Extragalactic Stellar Astronomy. The first mass-metallicity Relationship based solely on Stellar Spectroscopy. R.-P. Kudritzki: The first galaxy mass–metallicity relationship based solely on stellar spectroscopy. The mass-metallicity relationship of galaxies is a Rosetta stone to understand the physics of galaxy formation and evolution in an expanding universe dominated by dark matter and dark energy. Unfortunately, the standard technique to determine the metallicities of star-forming galaxies from emission line spectra of HII regions, nearby and at large redshifts, is subject to large systematic uncertainties (up to 0.8 dex!) that are poorly understood. The alternative is the quantitative spectral analysis of low-resolution spectra of individual supergiant stars. These objects are the brightest stars in the universe with absolute magnitudes MV > –9 mag (blue supergiants) and MJ > –11 mag (red supergiants), and their spectroscopy with Keck LRIS and MOSFIRE (in the future) yields stellar metallicities with an accuracy of 0.15 dex for galaxies as distant as 10 Mpc using a novel analysis technique developed by Kudritzki and his IfA collaborators M. Urbaneja, F. Bresolin, and Z. Gazak. Figure 6.19 gives an example of a recent study of the grand spiral M81. The figure also shows the first galaxy mass–metallicity relationship based solely on stellar spectroscopy and demonstrates the enormous uncertainty inherent in the published SDSS studies using HII region strong lines. Using the TMT (in the future) will make it possible to extend this work to distances of 30 Mpc for blue supergiants. For red supergiants, which have SEDs peaking in the J-band, AO-supported near-infrared multi-object spectroscopy will allow us to study such objects as individual stars in galaxies as distant as 100 Mpc, for instance, in the Coma cluster. [Evans, Davies, Kudritzki et al., 2011, A&A 527, 50].

Figure 6.19. A spectroscopic study of blue supergiant stars in the spiral galaxy M81 and first galaxy mass–metallicity relationship based solely on stellar spectroscopy. Top: Model atmosphere fit (bold solid) of the metal lines of one supergiant in M81 in the spectral range from 4520 to 4620 Å for different metallicity [Z] (logarithm of metallicity relative to the sun). [Z] is determined by χ2 minimalization. Bottom left: Metallicity of individual supergiants (blue) as a function of galactocentric radius. The uncertainty of each data point is 0.15 dex. The red circles correspond to logarithmic oxygen abundances obtained from a detailed analysis of planetary nebulae, which are on average 5 Gyr old, much older than the young (10 Myr) supergiants. This points to dramatic chemical evolution of the M81 stellar disk over the last 5 Gyr that is very different from that of the Milky Way. Bottom right: The galaxy mass–metallicity relationship based solely on stellar spectroscopy (blue circles; the red square corresponds to M81). For comparison, the relationships obtained by Kewley & Ellison are also shown. These are obtained from strong emissions lines of 20,000 SDSS galaxies. Each curve is based on the same data set, but a different calibration of the strong line method is used. Note the enormous difference (up to 0.8 dex!) between the different calibrations. Curve (1) belongs to the frequently cited Tremonti et al. work. [Kudritzki et al., 2012, ApJ, 747, 15]

Extragalactic Planetary Nebulae. Roberto H. Mendez: Planetary nebulae (PNs) are easy to detect in early-type (elliptical or S0) galaxies at distances smaller than 25 Mpc. Once detected, the strong emission lines in PN spectra are well suited for accurate radial velocity measurements. PNs are valuable test particles to study angular momentum content, dark matter existence and its distribution in elliptical galaxies, which are hard observational problems. At typical extragalactic distances, PNs appear as point sources, detectable using Figure 6.20. Radial velocities of PNs in the elliptical galaxy NGC an on-band, off-band filter tech- 4697, plotted as a function of their X coordinates along the major axis of the galaxy. nique. At the IfA we have implemented an efficient method for slitless PN radial velocity measurements, using the Subaru

40 telescope on Mauna Kea with its Cassegrain FOCAS camera and spectrograph. We have discovered, and measured velocities of, more than one thousand PNs in galaxies like NGC 4697, NGC 821, and NGC 4649. Figure 6.20 shows radial velocities of PNs in the flattened, almost edge-on elliptical NGC 4697, plotted as a function of their coordinates along the major axis of the galaxy. The slight asymmetry in the distribution is because of the rotation of the PN system, which is significant inside, but becomes undetectable in the outskirts. This indicates lack of angular momentum outside. The marked outward decrease in the velocity dispersion can be interpreted either as a relative lack of dark matter in the halo of NGC 4697, or as the consequence of radial anisotropy in the PN velocity distribution. A decision about which explanation is correct will influence theoretical efforts to understand the formation and evolution of elliptical galaxies. [Mendez et al., 2009, ApJ 691, 228; Teodorescu et al., 2010, ApJ 721, 369; Shih & Mendez, 2010, ApJ 725, L97; Teodorescu et al., 2011, ApJ 736, 65]

Chemical Abundances of Normal, Nearby Spiral Galaxies. F. Bresolin: This research has involved both young massive stars (carried out mostly together with IfA collaborators Kudritzki and Urbaneja) and ionized nebulae (HII regions). Among the most interesting results is the measurement of the metallicity of HII regions in outer spiral disks, where the star formation rate is about 2 orders of magnitude lower than in the inner, optically bright disks. The spectroscopic in- vestigation of the faint nebulae in these “extended” disks has been carried out with 8 m class telescopes on Mauna Kea and in Chile. Four extended-disk galaxies have been studied to date. In all cases it has been found that the metallicity of the outer disks, rather than follow an exponential decline with distance from the center (as typically found for the inner disks) flattens out to a virtually constant value. Moreover, the metallicity measured in the outer disks is rather high (about 1/3 solar), contrary to the expectations for galactic regions that are considered to be unevolved relative to the inner regions. An example is provided in Figure 6.21, which shows the radial distribution of the O/H ratio of about 70 HII regions in the galaxy NGC 3621 (different symbols refer to different nebular metallicity diagnostics). Together with collaborators Kennicutt (Cam- bridge) and Ryan-We- ber (Swinburne) I have speculated that recent models of enriched galactic outflows could Figure 6.21. The galactocentric O/H abundance gradient in NGC 3621, as explain the observed determined from two different diagnostics. The galactocentric distance axis is labeled both in terms of R/R25 (bottom scale) and in kpc (top scale). The line abundances and the be- represents the linear fit to the inner disk HII region radial abundance havior of the metallicity distribution (R < R25), and the constant value assigned to the outer disk from gradient at large galacto- the mean O/H ratio for R > R25. centric distances. The Local Void. B. Tully: The importance of the Local Void is being revealed by the local vol- ume velocity field studies by Tully. Accurate distance measures are leading to increasingly re- fined and dense coverage of the nearest several tens of megaparsecs, and the 600 km/s motion of our Galaxy with respect to the Cosmic Microwave Background reference frame is increasingly understood to be made up of several parts. A significant contributor, at the level of 260 km/s, is a motion away from the Local Void. The compelling evidence comes from a discontinuity in velocities just beyond the structure we live in, the Local Sheet. Galaxies within the Local Sheet are moving coherently with a tiny dispersion while galaxies in the adjacent structures are moving with their own coherent but quite distinct flow (Figure 6.22). The nature of the motions makes it

41 clear that our Local Sheet is part of the wall of the Local Void and experiencing the expansion of the void. The substantial expansion velocity implies that the Local Void is impressively large and empty.

Figure 6.22. Our Galaxy at the origin in the figures and our nearest neighbors have a peculiar velocity relative to adjacent structures. Each point represents a galaxy, and colors indicate relative motions—blue toward us and red away from us. Our Local Sheet has a motion indicated by the orange vector in the right panel. The blue component of this vector is a motion toward the Virgo Cluster, the knot of galaxies at the extreme right. The residual red component is directed away from the Local Void, indicative of void expansion.

Infrared Luminous Starbursts and Active Galactic Nuclei. D. Sanders, J. Barnes and collaborators are studying the multiwavelength properties of a complete sample of far-infrared selected galaxies in the local universe, as part of the Great Observatories All-Sky LIRGs Survey (GOALS: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/goals), in order to understand the origin and evolution of the most luminous infrared systems, with infrared luminosities 10–1000 × the total bolometric luminosity of our Milky Way. These “luminous infrared galaxies” (LIRGs) appear to be triggered through mergers of massive gas-rich spiral galaxies, an event which leads to powerful starbursts and the growth of supermassive black holes. The end stages of the merger process lead to quasarlike luminosities, including the final stage marked by binary AGN (Figure 6.23). The eventual merger of the two supermassive black holes is accompanied by a massive “blow-out” phase, expelling as much as several billion solar masses of gas and dust into the intergalactic medium, leaving a massive gas-poor elliptical as the merger remnant. This exotic process of galaxy transformation, although relatively rare in the local universe, is now believed to be one of the dominant processes of galactic evolution in the early universe, when the space density of LIRGs was ~104 times larger than observed locally, and coinciding with the peak epoch in the formation of quasars and super- starbursts. Figure 6.23. The ultraluminous infrared galaxy, Mrk 273, a major merger of 2 gas- rich spirals (left panel) with dual AGN (right panel).

42 Galaxy Interactions and Mergers. R. D. Joseph: One of the broad themes of my research over the past 25 years has been to study the astrophysical and morphological effects of interactions and mergers between galaxies. Using IR photometry and spectroscopy, we have found (1) interactions are correlated with high-IR luminosities and mergers with very high IR luminosities, (2) starbursts are the dominant underlying energy source in interacting galaxies, (3) the starburst IMF is biased against high-mass stars, and (4) while optical and 2 µm spectroscopy showed no evidence for buried AGNs in a sample of 30 LIRGs, mid-IR (Spitzer) spectroscopy revealed high excitation coronal lines in ~20% of the sample. Thus interactions and mergers trigger bursts of star formation with a “bottom-heavy” IMF, and the starburst dominates the bolometric luminosity. Using IR imaging and spectroscopy for a sample of 50 merging galaxies, we found (1) nearly all the sample has undergone violent relaxation, (2) there is “excess light” at the centers of the IR surface brightness profiles which we interpret as the effect of an interaction-induced starburst, and (3) these mergers lie on the IR “fundamental plane” characteristic of ellipticals. Thus mergers are making elliptical galaxies.

N-body Simulations of Galaxy Collisions. J. Barnes uses N-body methods to simulate galactic collisions and other aspects of galactic dynamics. One area of ongoing effort is improving existing techniques for force calculation, construction of initial conditions, and simulation including star formation and recycling of interstellar material. A second area of emphasis is to develop accurate models of well-observed interacting galaxies. To this end, Barnes has recently de- vised an automated method to produce interacting galaxy models matching available observational constraints (see Figure 6.24). Ulti- mately, one objective of this research is to test dark-matter models and prescriptions for star formation by comparing detailed models of specific interacting galaxies with observations. Figure 6.24. Computer-generated model of NGC 4676. From top left, the first three panels show orthogonal projections of an HI data cube, while the last panel shows the stellar distribution. Boxes represent constraints used to derive the numerical model, while points show an N-body solution for the morphology and kinematics of this system.

Massive Galaxy Clusters. H. Ebeling: Combining X-ray and optical data to identify the most massive cluster at redshifts z > 0.3, Ebeling’s MAssive Cluster Survey (MACS) has compiled a catalogue of extremely massive clusters that is 30 times larger than previous samples (Figure 6.25) and has triggered a wealth of in-depth follow-up studies across research areas ranging from galaxy evolution, through dark-matter characterization, to measurements of key cosmological parameters. Recent highlights of research on individual MACS clusters include the confirmation of ram-pressure stripping by intracluster gas as a prime physical mechanism driving galaxy evolution in high-density environments, the measurement of an upper limit of the dark-matter self-interaction cross section, and the first unambiguous weak-lensing detection of a large-scale filament. Going beyond MACS, Ebeling’s team played a central role in the discovery of the Dark Flow, a large-scale motion of galaxy clusters across the entire observable universe detected via measurements of the kinematic Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect in WMAP Cosmic Microwave Back- ground data. Work in progress includes the eMACS project, an extension of MACS to yet higher redshifts and lower X-ray fluxes that uses Pan-STARRS 3π imaging data to identify the most distant X-ray luminous clusters detected in the ROSAT All-Sky Survey at X-ray wavelengths out to redshifts approaching unity.

eBCS MACS Figure 6.25. LX-z distribution of clusters from various X-ray selected samples. By design MACS 10.0 finds the high-redshift counterparts of the most X- ray-luminous (and best-studied) clusters in the EMSS local universe. Note also how MACS selects systems , 0.1 - 2.4 keV) -1 400 sq.deg. that are typically about 10 times more X-ray

erg s luminous, and thus much more massive, than those 44 1.0 found in deeper serendipitous cluster surveys such (10 X

L as the EMSS, WARPS, the 400 sq.-deg. project, or WARPS the XMM cluster survey. XMM

0.1 0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 redshift z Large-Scale Structure at z = 1.72 in the Lockman Hole. J. P. Henry, K. Aoki, A. Finoguenov, S. Fotopoulou, G. Hasinger, M. Salvato & M. Tanaka. We previously reported the discovery of an X-ray-selected cluster at z = 1.75. This cluster was briefly the most distant known with a spectroscopic redshift but has since been superseded by an object at z = 2.07. Although almost all high-latitude extended X-ray sources like our source are clusters, this identification was not entirely secure because there was only one galaxy with a spectroscopic redshift. Using MOIRCS on Subaru we now have an additional seven concordant spectroscopic redshifts as well as a confirmation of the initial one. In addition, an accurate photometric redshift catalog of the field has been published. Figure 6.26 summarizes this new information. The X-ray object lies between two galaxy overdensities at z = 1.688 and 1.751, SE and NW, respectively, with a bridge in- between. This configuration resembles so-called bullet clusters, in which the collision of two clusters separates their collisionless dark matter + galaxies from the dissipative X-ray gas. However, we believe the situation in Figure 6.25 is more like pearls on a string in which clumps of matter slide along large-scale matter filaments eventually merging at filament intersections because there are still some galaxies associated with the X-ray source. Initial analysis of the clusters’ color-magnitude diagrams shows their galaxies formed ~185 Myr before the observation epoch. Hopefully, the galaxies still exhibit some imprint of their formation process and that is what we will investigate next. [Fotopoulou et al., 2012, ApJS 198, 1; Henry et al., 2010, ApJ 725, 615] Figure 6.26. The green contours show the X-ray source with values of 1.2, 3.0, 3.5, 3.7, 4.4, 4.9 × 10-16 ergs cm-2 s-1 arcmin-2. The black contours are galaxy isopleths with values 1.1, 2.25, 2.75, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0 (26.1 arcmin2)-1. Only galaxies with photometric redshifts from 1.65 to 1.80 are plotted. The blue and red dots mark the locations of galaxies with spectroscopic redshifts from 1.675 to 1.700 and 1.745 to 1.755, respectively.

The COSMOS Deep Field. D. Sanders & G. Hasinger are the principal investigators for the far- infrared (Spitzer) and X-Ray (XMM-Newton) surveys, respectively, of the Hubble Space Tele- scope Cosmic Evolution Survey (HST-COSMOS: http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/cosmos), which is the largest contiguous (2-deg2) deep field survey ever carried out with the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) on HST (Figure 6.27). The far-infrared and X-ray data have been used to determine the evolution of the luminosity functions of luminous infrared galaxies and powerful AGN,

44 respectively, over a large range of look-back times, corresponding to redshifts, z ~ 0–5. IfA researchers are carrying out multiwavelength observations with telescopes on Mauna Kea, in combination with the vast amount of data currently available within the international COSMOS collaboration, in order to better understand the origin and evolution of powerful infrared galaxies and X-ray-selected AGN, and the overall role these exotic objects have played in the evolution of all galaxies throughout cosmic time.

Figure 6.27. Optical image (grz) of a small portion of the HST-COSMOS Deep Field, obtained with the SUPRIMEcam camera on the Subaru 8.2 m telescope on Mauna Kea.

Lyman-alpha Escape Fraction. L. Cowie: Since the first discovery of high-redshift field Lyman- alpha emitters (in 1995 by our group here at the IfA) Ly-alpha searches have been widely used to find high-redshift galaxies. For the highest redshift z > 6 galaxies, this line is the only spectroscopic signature that can be used to confirm the redshift of a galaxy selected on the basis of its color properties and measurements of the Ly-alpha fraction may be a powerful probe of the reionization boundary. However, Ly-alpha is a difficult line to interpret. Because the line is reso- nantly scattered by neutral hydrogen, determining its escape path and therefore its dust destruc- tion is an extremely complex problem. To understand how the line escapes from galaxies, we have been developing samples of Ly-alpha emitters at low redshifts using HST and GALEX observations. These samples can be used to study how the escape depends on the mass, metallicity age, and size of the galaxy. We have recently shown that Ly-alpha emitters (LAEs) with luminosities comparable to those of the highest-redshift objects are first seen at z = 1 (Figure 6.28). We have developed a novel data cube search method for GALEX grism data that allows us to obtain a large flux-limited sample of LAEs at z = 0.67–1.1. Follow-up optical/NIR spectroscopy of these objects should allow us to determine in detail how the escape process depends on the galaxy properties. Figure 6.28. Ly-alpha luminosity function at z = 0.67– 1.16 (black squares: open, raw data; solid, corrected for the effects of incompleteness.) Green open triangles show a previous estimate of the luminosity function at z = 0.65–1.25. Green solid triangles show their luminosity function after corrections for incompleteness. Blue dotted curve shows the Schechter function fit to the Ly-alpha luminosity function at z = 0.194–0.4. Red solid curve shows the fit at z = 3.1. Red dashed curve shows the z = 3.1 luminosity function with its normalization reduced by a factor of 30. This provides a reasonable match to the z = 0.67–1.16 luminosity function.

45 The Chandra Deep Field South 4 Megasecond Observation. L. Cowie, A. Barger, & G. Hasinger: In 2010 the Chandra X-ray Observatory obtained the deepest image yet of the X-ray sky: a 4 million second image of the Chandra Deep Field South. In such an ultradeep image, an AGN with a 0.5–2 keV X-ray luminosity of 1042 ergs s-1 can be detected out to a redshift near five. It is also possible to use the image to stack objects in order to explore the average X-ray properties of galaxies to much fainter levels. Our group used this technique to examine the average X-ray properties of galaxies out to redshifts near eight (Figure 6.29). Below a redshift of five, we were able to determine the average X-ray properties of the galaxies. We found that they were consistent with expectations for the contributions from high-mass X-ray binaries in the galaxies. At higher redshifts, there is no longer a significant signal from any of the known galaxy populations. However, we were able to place an upper limit of 4 × 1041 ergs s-1 (rest-frame 3.75–15 keV band) on the average X-ray luminosity of a galaxy for the known sample of z = 6.5 galaxies. We translated our stacking results into an X-ray determined star formation history for galaxies that agrees well with determinations made at other wavelengths and is independent of many of the corrections (e.g., those needed to account for extinction) that normally must be applied. Figure 6.29. The Chandra Deep Field South 4 Ms image overlaid with a circle showing an off-axis radius of 6' and the object positions used for the analysis. Superposed are the weighted mean X-ray count rates vs. redshift for the sources with photometric redshifts in the GOODS-S core region. The red squares denote the 0.5–2 keV band, and the blue diamonds denote the 2–8 keV band. Reionization. A. Songaila Cowie & L. Cowie: The mean free path (mfp) of ionizing photons at high redshift is a crucial input for determining the ionizing history of the intergalactic medium and thus of the formation and evolution of the sources presumed to ionize it, widely assumed to be galaxies at z > 3. In addition, the smooth redshift evolution of the mean free path can be expected to change dramatically as reionization is approached, and the mfp determines the direct observability of the epoch of reionization in redshifted 21 cm radiation. The mfp of the intergalactic gas is determined from the normalization and slope of the HI column density distribution in the vicinity of the dominant opacity source in the intergalactic gas, namely absorbers with column density just below the Lyman Limit systems (LLS). We have recently determined the incidence of LLS out to a redshift near 6 by measuring the opacity at the Lyman limit in medium resolution Keck ESI spectra of z = 4.5–6 quasars. Assuming a plausible shape to the HI column density distribution function at high redshift, we showed that the mfp is smoothly evolving to z ~ 6, with no sign of the onset of reionization. Figure 6.30 shows this smooth evolution and emphasizes that model predictions can differ drastically beyond z ~ 6, and it probably wise not to extrapolate the mfp beyond the measured range.

Figure 6.30. Evolution of the mean free path (mfp). The filled squares are the mfp with 1σ errors computed from the density of LLS in redshift bins indicated by the horizontal lines. The thick red line is an analytic fit to the full sample computed for a slope of –1.28 for the HI column density distribution in the vicinity of the LLS, and the dotted red lines show the effect of a 1σ range in this slope. The blue dashed and black dot-dash lines illustrate the evolution of the mfp from recent models.

The Integrated Sachs-Wolfe Effect. I. Szapudi: The cosmic microwave background (CMB) is a snapshot of the early universe; however, the light we observe has been processed by large-scale structure at low redshift, in part through the late-time integrated Sachs-Wolfe (ISW) effect. As photons travel through time-varying gravitational potentials, they are slightly heated or cooled. In a universe dominated by dark energy, the gravitational potential decays with time even in linear theory, heating photons traveling through crests and cooling photons in troughs of large-scale matter density fluctuations. Granett et al. measured hot and cold spots on the CMB associated with supercluster and supervoid structures identified in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey Luminous Red Galaxy Catalog (Figure 6.31). The mean temperature deviation is 9.6±2.2 μK. We interpret this as a detection of the late-time ISW effect, in which cosmic acceleration from dark energy causes gravitational potentials to decay, heating or cooling photons passing through density crests or troughs. In a flat universe, the linear ISW effect is a direct signal of dark energy. The statistical significance of our detection is over 4σ, making it the clearest detection to date using a single galaxy data set. Moreover, our method produces a compelling visual image of the effect. [Granett, Neyrinck & Szapudi, 2008, ApJ 683, L 99]

Figure 6.31. Stacked regions on the CMB corresponding to supervoid and supercluster structures identified in the SDSS LRG catalog. We averaged CMB cut-outs around 50 supervoids (top) and 50 superclusters (middle), and the combined sample (bottom).

Instrumentation Developments

The Pan-STARRS 3π Photometric and Astrometric Reference Catalog. E.A. Magnier et al. The Pan-STARRS 3π Survey has now covered the 3/4 of the sky visible from Haleakala with 4–8 observations in the 5 filters g,r,i,z,y. The Pan-STARRS 1 system has been designed with precision astrometry and photometry as fundamental goals, and this capability is now paying off. The dataset provides us the opportunity to construct a single reference database with both high-quality astrometry (systematic residuals of 15–20 milliarcseconds) and high-quality photometry (system- atics better than 7–10 millimagnitudes). We are working (in collaboration with D. Finkbeiner, E. Schlafly, D. Monet, and B. Goldman) on both aspects of the reference database. Starting with the ubercal analysis, which uses only data from nights with photometric conditions, we have tied all images from the 3π Survey into a single database, with relative photometric solutions for the remaining data. Comparisons between our 3π grizy photometry and both SDSS and 2MASS show both the quality of our dataset, and the calibration limitations of these other large-scale surveys (as well as our own systematic errors, Fig. 6.32). The eventual combination of the PS1, 2MASS,

47 and SDSS datasets will allow us to back out the systematic contributions from all 3 of these surveys. Astrometric calibration of the dataset is now yielding precision proper motions across the sky, and starting to yield parallax measurements, the first large-scale untargeted digital parallax survey. We are working to a first public release of a precision photometry catalog, expected in summer 2012.

Figure 6.32. 3π Comparison of PS1 and 2MASS photometry. The color re-presents the mean H-K color from 2MASS at a fixed g-i color from PS1 for early-type stars. Extinction from the Galactic Plane dominates, while bands with Dec height 6 degrees are caused by systematic errors in 2MASS H and K at the 2–3% level.

Figure 6.33. Example of a parallax measurement from PS1 3π data. PS1 observations were used to fit for the parallax and proper motion of the nearby low- mass star 2M1835+22. Our independent fit agrees well with the values from the dedicated USNO parallax study.

Infrared Array Detector Development. D. Hall, K. Hodapp: In the fall of 2009 the NSF awarded nearly $7 million to UH’s IfA, teamed with Teledyne Imaging Systems (TIS) and GL Scientific (GLS), to develop the 16 megapixel 4k×4k HAWAII 4RG-15 (H4RG-15) CMOS infrared array. Offering four times the pixels of the largest IR arrays now available to astronomers, the H4RG-15 is intended primarily as an affordable building block for the huge mosaic focal plane arrays required by wide-field imaging with survey and 30 m class telescopes. However it also incorporates new features that significantly improve noise performance, making it particularly valuable for spectroscopic applications. As of June 2012 Teledyne has successfully completed its 2½ year Phase-1 technology development by yielding perfect CMOS readouts at two silicon foundries, hybridizing six IR arrays, packaging them into the GL Scientific carrier and passing Figure 6.34. First-light image (M51) of the HAWAII 4RG-15 infrared array detector at the 2.2 m telescope.

48 along the best to UH for evaluation. In Hilo we have thoroughly characterized bare readouts and the most promising Phase-1 hybrids, particularly with regard to the ultimate read noise achievable with a new interleaved reference pixel readout mode. Most recently, on May 7, we used the best Phase-1 hybrid in ULBCam to evaluate imaging performance at the 2.2 m telescope observing 15 × 15 arcminute fields at J and H as illustrated by this H-band image of Messier 51, the whirlpool galaxy (Figure 6.32). Overall the UH test program has confirmed both the ultra-low noise performance and remarkable wide-field imaging potential of the H4RG-15, giving high confidence that over the coming year the Phase-2 program will both transition the H4RG-15 to a commercial product and also provide UH several science grade H4RG-15 arrays for deployment in ULBCam at the 2.2 m telescope and in the Subaru Infrared Doppler radial velocity spectrograph (IRD).

Immersion Grating Spectrograph for the IRTF. A. Tokunaga and J. Rayner are leading an effort to design and build an 1–5 micron immersion grating spectrograph for the IRTF. This instrument will provide a cross-dispersed spectrum at a resolving power of 70,000 with a 0.3 arcsec slit. The heart of the instrument is a silicon immersion grating that is being fabricated at the Univ. of Texas at Austin as a collaborative effort. Since the dispersion occurs in the silicon material, the dispersion is n times larger than in vacuum, where n is the index of refraction of silicon. For silicon, n = 3.4, and this instrument is 3.4 smaller in linear dimensions than a conventional spectrograph. This instrument will provide 1–5 micron high dispersion spectroscopy that is unmatched by any other facility in the Northern Hemisphere. We have optimized this instrument for the K- band and L-band in order to allow studies of molecular species in planetary atmospheres, comets, stars, brown dwarfs, and the interstellar medium. To accomplish this the instrument is designed to utilize two immersion gratings, one for each band. Figure 6.33 shows a concept of the instrument on the IRTF. Completion of the instrument will take another 3 years. For more information, see http://irtfweb.ifa. hawaii.edu/~ishell/.

Figure 6.35. Cross-sectional view of the immersion grating spectrograph for the IRTF. This instrument would be too large for the IRTF without the immersion grating. For scale, the length of the instrument is approximately 1 m.

Advanced Imaging Methods for Large-Aperture Telescopes. S. Jefferies & D. Hope: Modern astronomy will soon herald the arrival of telescopes with apertures of 30 m or more. These behemoths will necessarily be equipped with the next-generation of adaptive optics (AO) systems with large-format deformable mirrors to help compensate for image distortion caused by turbulence in Earth’s atmosphere. Numerical image restoration methods will then be used to further improve the resolution of the observations. However, due to the extreme levels of turbulence that will be encountered at visible wavelengths (due to the size of the aperture and the small coherence length of the atmosphere at these wavelengths), even the combination of AO and numerical image restoration will be ineffective, and observations will have to be restrained to infrared wavelengths. To address this shortcoming, the IfA’s imaging group is developing methods that can deal with these adverse conditions. The methods, which strive to improve the synergy between the data acquisition approach and the image restoration process, include

49 partitioning the aperture, augmenting the observations with simultaneous observations from a smaller aperture telescope in proximity and using the AO system’s wave-front sensor data along with a multilayer model of the atmosphere to constrain the restoration process. Numerical simulation of the application of these methods to problems related to space situational awareness shows that they should be able to extend our capability to deal with turbulence conditions that are approximately three times worse than current methods can effectively deal with (Figure 6.36). Validation of the numerical results using 3.5 m to 6.5 m class telescopes equipped with AO is currently underway.

Figure 6.36. Left: Simulated observation of the Hubble Space Telescope (mv=2) obtained with a 3.6 m aperture telescope through atmospheric turbulence with Fried parameter of 9 cm at a frame rate of 500 Hz. Left center: Restoration using a conventional multiframe blind deconvolution algorithm. Right center: Restoration based on simultaneous observations from 1.6 m and 3.6 m telescopes. Right: Restoration obtained from 3.6 m data using simultaneous wave-front sensor data during the restoration. All restorations are based on 40 msec of data.

The Atlas Project. J. Tonry: NASA has indicated willingness to fund a project called ATLAS that will scan the entire visible sky to m = 20 several times a night in search of impending asteroid impact. ATLAS is described in a 2011 paper by Tonry and in a website, fallingstar.com, for laypeople. ATLAS comprises a pair of 0.5 m astrographs with 100 Mpixel imagers, and complements Pan-STARRS by surveying a shallower but much wider area. It is hoped that ATLAS units will be replicated in the Southern Hemisphere or elsewhere around the planet. ATLAS will provide light curves with one hour resolution for all stars in the galaxy brighter than m=20, some billion light curves. Interesting examples include M dwarf flares, RR Lyrae, Cepheids, novae, cataclysmic variables, R Cor Bor stars, FU Orionis, eclipsing binary stars, etc. A key scientific goal is to monitor 20,000 white dwarfs for eclipses from transiting planets, especially habitable, Earth-sized planets. ATLAS should detect 10,000 SNIa per year, virtually all of the events at z < 0.1. There will be many core-collapse supernovae, and dozens of exotic supernovae such as ultraluminous and unusually dim explosions. Apart from providing large, unbiased samples of supernovae for understanding their hosts and progenitors, a key goal is to start to map large-scale flows at z < 0.1 using SNIa as distance estimators. We certainly believe that gravitational waves are emitted by coalescing binaries, and Advanced LIGO should be able to detect them within the next 5 years. What electromagnetic counterparts to such an event might look like is currently debated, but ATLAS should provide an important follow-up capability. A final contribution that ATLAS can make for the broader world of transients is providing an imagery archive of 1000 photometric measurements per year for 1011 pixels over the entire sky (Fig. 6.37). [Tonry, 2011, PASP 123, 58] Figure 6.37: A comparison of Wide-Field Surveys

50 C. Publications

Figure 6.38. Complete compilation of IfA refereed publications and citations 2000–2011.

The scientific output of the Institute as measured by the total number of refereed articles, conference papers (Invited and contributed talks), meeting abstracts, and circulars has continued to increase as the size of the IfA scientific and technical staff has increased. Figure 6.38 summarizes the total publications and citations produced by the IfA during the last 10 years. Figure 6.39 and Table 6.1 give the distribution of publications during the past calendar year (CY2011) by type and by tenure-track (T), non-tenure track (R) and Specialist (S) faculty, and for graduate students (G). The mean number of publications per IfA faculty member is 5–8 per year, approximately half of which are refereed papers; tenure-track faculty tend to give more invited talks at conferences, but otherwise the publications output of T and R faculty are nearly the same. Most of the IfA graduate student (G) publications are by students past their qualifying exams. Post-qual graduate students at the IfA are already publishing several refereed papers prior to receiving their PhD.

Figure 6.39. Mean total publications by faculty group in 2011.

Table 6.1. Mean Number of Publications per IfA Faculty Member

Tenure-track Research Postdoc Grad Spec, Em Refereed 4.1 3.8 2.9 1.8 2.6 Conference 1.8 1.7 0.6 0.4 0.5 Abs/Circ 3.0 1.1 0.9 0.6 0.2 Total 8.9 6.6 4.4 1.6 3.2

51 7. Astronomy Education at UH Manoa

A. Background and Chronology The Department of Physics became the Department of Physics and Astronomy (P&A) in 1965 when three solar astronomers were added to the faculty. By the end of the 1960s there were six astronomers on the faculty of the Department of P&A and a few research faculty members at IfA. The Department faculty all held joint appointments with the IfA although the reverse was/is not true. (Some research faculty do not hold academic appointments.) All astronomy courses were called PHYS xxx until fall 1975 when, at our request, they became officially ASTR xxx, e.g., our introductory course, PHYS 110 became ASTR 110 and attracted many more students increasing from ~100 per semester to ~400 per semester. This was part of an intentional program to increase the enrollment in beginning astronomy. The increase continued until the mid-1980s and we increased the number of sections of ASTR 110 from 2 to 4 then to 6 reaching about 900 students per semester. In the early 1970s, faculty appointments were formalized with a “locus of tenure” for I (9 months) = Instructional and R (11 months) = Research in departments or research institutes along with some inherent inequities in pay and benefits. In astronomy in this era many research faculty wished to be involved in teaching courses. Joint appointments (I/R) became the rule. By the mid to late 1980s the I faculty became 11 month I-R appointees. Both I and R faculty taught one course per year unless they had a major functional responsibility, e.g., Associate Director. All appointment letters for new faculty said that the individual should expect to teach one course per year. P&A Faculty Appointments and Astronomy Graduate Faculty In 1989 we had 5.0 FTE faculty positions in astronomy, but this lapsed to 4.0 when vacancies due to retirements were not filled, or were filled by research appointments. Following an agreement reached between the Dean of Natural Sciences and the IfA Director in late 1989, the 4.0 FTE instructional positions were spread over 16 faculty with most having 0.25 FTE in the P&A Department. The Astronomy Graduate Faculty now includes those faculty with academic appointments as well as research faculty of rank R4 and above. The number of Graduate Faculty members increased from 16 in the mid-1970s to 25 in the mid-1980s, to 33 by the end of the 1990s, to 35 in 2001 and to the current number of 40 (see section 5). Because the planned revision of the rights and roles of IfA faculty (see section 14) and the formation of the “School of Astronomy and Astrophysics” (see section 7F), the graduate faculty will need to be redefined to a core team plus adjunct members. A listing of graduate and undergraduate teaching assignments over the periods 1977–88, 1989–2001 and 2002–12 is given in Appendices 7.1–7.3.

B. Astronomy Undergraduate Courses Currently, UH Manoa does not offer an undergraduate degree in astronomy; most of our teaching comprises sections of ASTR 110, a general introduction to astronomy for non-scientists. In the last decade several new courses have been developed as a result of initatives by individual faculty members. Table 7.1 lists undergraduate courses currently taught at UH Manoa. Several other undergraduate courses are listed in the catalog but have not been offered in many years; our plans for some of these courses will be discussed in Section 7C.

52 Table 7.1. Current Undergraduate Courses at UH Manoa Course Frequency Title Enroll/sem Prerequisite ASTR 110 ~5/sem Survey of Astronomy 300–400 None ASTR 110L ~3/sem Survey of Astronomy Lab ~70 ASTR 110* ASTR 130 Fall Intro. to Archaeoastronomy 20–30 None ASTR 280 Fall Evolution of the Universe 20–30 Any intro. P/A ASTR 281 Spring Astrobiology 20–30 ASTR 110 ASTR 380 Spring Cosmos in Western Culture ~20 ASTR 110 * ASTR 110 and 110L may be taken concurrently

B1. 100-level courses ASTR 110 is a one-semester, 3-credit general survey of modern astronomy, with 3 contact hours of lecture. Most of the students taking this course are doing so to satisfy the general education core requirement that they take one physical science course. Lectures are typically given by faculty members, with TAs providing support for office hours and grading. However, summer sections of ASTR 110 are taught by senior graduate students who want to gain teaching experience. Although we used to teach this class in a room that held 200 students, we now use a smaller room that holds 70 students for most of our lectures. Over the years, several variants of ASTR 110 have been offered. An honors section was introduced in Fall 2008 and was last taught in Spring 2011, with an average enrollment of ~10 students per semester. A total of three active learning sections, with enrollment capped at 30 students per section, were given in Spring 2010 and 2011. Both variants were successful, and we hope to offer them again as staffing permits. Another course, ASTR 120 (“Astronomical Origins”) was briefly offered but did not attract enough students to justify its continuation as a distinct alternative to ASTR 110. ASTR 110L is an evening laboratory course complementing ASTR 110, with 3 contact hours; field trips to observe occur whenever weather permits. Many of the students taking this course do so to satisfy the core requirement of one science laboratory, but a substantial number are also motivated by an interest in astronomy at an amatuer level. To date, most laboratory sessions have been led by faculty, with TAs providing logistical support and grading assistance, but in Fall 2012 two sections will be led by experienced TAs. This course was introduced in 2003 and has proved consistently popular; most sections reach their maximum enrollment of 24 students. ASTR 130 is a one-semester, 3-credit lecture course, with 3 contact hours of lecture. It presents a survey of astronomical knowledge in ancient cultures, and may attract students interested in traditional cultures and practices who would not necessarily take ASTR 110.

B2. Upper-level courses ASTR 280 and ASTR 281 are non-mathematical courses, with 3 contact hours of lecture, intended for students who want to progress beyond ASTR 110. ASTR 280 focuses on cosmology, and ASTR 218 focuses on astrobiology within the solar system. Both of these courses are open to students who have taken ASTR 110, and have maintained steady popularity in recent years. ASTR 380 is a non-mathematical lecture course, with 3 contact hours, emphasizing the interaction between astronomy and the history of ideas. Introduced in Spring 2007, it became significantly more popular once it was deemed to satisfy the core requirement for writing- intensive courses, and in recent years has generally operated near maximum capacity.

B3. Demand for the IfA Undergraduate Teaching Program Figure 7.1 shows the annual enrollment in our introductory astronomy sections, with 100-level and upper-level numbers shown in blue and purple, respectively. Each bar represents the total for an academic year; for example, the rightmost bar shows total enrollment for Fall 2011, Spring 2012, and Summer 2012. Figures for summer are not available before 2004 (dashed vertical line); since then, summer classes have enrolled an average of 37 students per year.

Figure 7.1. Enrollment per year in undergraduate astronomy classes.

Enrollment in ASTR 110 peaked at ~1800 per year in the early 1980s, but by 2000 it had fallen, by fits and starts, to only a third of that figure. Possible causes for this decline include (a) adoption of more rigorous grading standards, including routine homework and quizzes; (b) competition from other science courses; and (c) reduction of the core science requirement. Since 2000, the number of students taking ASTR 110 has gradually increased; in some semesters, the number of available seats now appears to be the limiting factor. It appears that offering many sections of ASTR 110 at different times is one way to attract a larger number of students. However, we have a finite number of faculty who can teach this course well, and in practice we may need to reduce the number of sections offered. Giving these classes in larger lecture rooms would increase our overall capacity, but it remains to be seen if demand will match supply; there’s some concern that offering “industrial-scale” lectures to classes of 200 students could reduce overall enrollment. Traditionally, most faculty have developed their own syllabi for ASTR 110, and while many try to survey topics from the solar system to cosmology, the learning goals for ASTR 110 are not predefined. This encourages motivated faculty to develop unique and distinctive interpretations of the course, but it limits ASTR 110’s role as an effective prerequisite for more advanced courses. Both the lack of standardization and the prospect of larger class sizes suggest that it may be worth considering other models for teaching this class, including team teaching and coordination of course material across different sections. From the start, ASTR 110L has adopted a different strategy; instructors for the laboratory class have shared lesson plans and ideas for activities, and meet weekly to discuss progress and upcoming events during each semester. Since lab activities are weather-dependent, it’s inevitable that different sections cover somewhat different material. However, the discussions help maintain roughly consistent goals and standards for the various lab sections. These weekly meetings will play an even more important role as graduate students take on the job of teaching the lab.

54 Teaching evaluations are collected for all undergraduate classes at the end of each semester. We continue to use a paper form, filled out in class, which yields a larger and less self-selected sample than on-line evaluation systems provide. Instruction is graded along various dimensions (amount learned, difficulty, instructor’s preparation, knowledge, presentation, availability, grading, and overall) on a numerical scale of 1 to 5. Most faculty get average overall scores between 4 and 5; given this range, the numerical evaluations are not very useful for ranking faculty in terms of teaching ability, but provide some assurance that a reasonable standard of instruction is being met. Written comments, prompted by open-ended questions, are useful for individual faculty trying to improve their teaching. Finally, the number of forms returned, compared to official enrollment, indicates that astronomy lecture classes are fairly well-attended; typically ~70% of ASTR 110 students are still showing up at the end of the semester, while attendance in labs and upper-level courses is often 90% or better. Evaluation scores, attendance levels, and the general popularity of the undergraduate classes all suggest that individual classes are taught well. However, the program as a whole may be faulted for lack of coherence. ASTR 110 functions as a prerequisite for a handful of more advanced courses, but as far as the students are concerned, these courses are dead end.

C. Proposed Astronomy/Astrophysics Undergraduate Degrees One long-standing ambition of the Institute for Astronomy has been “to develop a first-rank astronomical education program” at the undergraduate as well as graduate level. The absence of an undergraduate astronomy degree program at UH Manoa not only sets us apart from all of our National Research Council (NRC) peer institutions, but also precludes our goal of providing a clear career path in the astronomical sciences for undergraduate students from the State of Hawaii. Moreover, astronomy faculty at the IfA have no way to share the excitement of doing research with the world’s best telescopes on Mauna Kea and Haleakala with undergraduates at UH Manoa. An undergraduate degree program is part of the vision of the new IfA Director. As early as 1978, the IfA Visiting Committee commented on the difficulty of administering the astronomy “teaching program” at UH Manoa given the lack of significant interaction between faculty in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and faculty in the Institute for Astronomy. The 2001 IfA Visiting Committee continued to urge us to solve these problems, and in particular, offered the following strong comment on “undergraduate education” (from p. 2 of the VC Report of 19 December, 2001): “It appears that the IfA has not examined its undergraduate curriculum for many years. We believe that the faculty could benefit substantially by increasing its contribution to the intellectual program of the university through a modernization and expansion of its undergraduate course offerings. Such an expansion should include serious consideration of establishing an astronomy/astrophysics major in close collaboration with the Physics Department. Liberal Arts course options could include offering more sections of introductory astronomy, active learning, laboratory courses, and establishing additional advanced special topics course offerings.” While several of these Liberal Arts options were implemented soon after, an astronomy/astrophysics undergraduate program could not be created so quickly. Meanwhile, the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UH Hilo moved ahead, and independently launched an Astronomy BS degree in 2004. The Hilo initiative helped to spur efforts to develop a program leveraging the unique resources of the IfA, but also complicated matters since competition between programs is counterproductive. In the next few years a “straw-man” outline for an Astrophysics BS degree at UH Manoa was developed, and discussions with UH Hilo were initiated to insure that the two programs could coexist. However, budget pressures within the UH system precluded, for the time, acting on these plans.

55 With the nearly simultaneous arrival of a new IfA Director and a new Dean of Natural Sciences at UH Manoa, the prospects for action have much improved. Dean William Ditto, in response to an initial proposal from the IfA, offered strong support and additional resources for establishing undergraduate major and minor degree options in astrophysics and astronomy. The IfA faculty endorsed this initiative at their 2011 retreat, and a working group with colleagues from UH Manoa’s Physics and Astronomy Department began meeting to develop these degree programs. After further discussion including UH Hilo, a coherent strategy has emerged. We propose to create new Astronomy BA and Astrophysics BS undergraduate programs in Manoa. This will be done in cooperation with the Astronomy BS program in Hilo in order to leverage the UH attractions and integrate them into a more coherent UH astronomy education system. Students will thus have a choice of (1) an Astronomy BA at UH Manoa, (2) the existing Astronomy BS at UH Hilo, and (3) an Astrophysics BS at UH Manoa. These programs represent different flavors and specializations of UH astronomy undergraduate education tailored to different student clienteles. The Astronomy BA will be aimed at students who may later go into science writing, public communication, planetarium work, or science policy. Experience from other schools in the US shows that the BA option has the potential to draw large numbers of students. The BS degrees are intended for students going into competitive astronomy graduate programs, including our own. The existing Astronomy BS in Hilo is attractive because of the proximity to the Big Island observatories and the corresponding instrumentation/engineering programs. Apart from graduate programs, it also has the potential to strengthen workforce development for the observatories. The IfA is committed to support the instrumentation specialization in this program at UH Hilo. The new Astrophysics BS is a rigorous physics degree with a specialization in astronomy, given in cooperation with the Physics & Astronomy Department in Manoa. Compared to the Astronomy BS, it requires a deeper knowledge of physics, leading up to a full year of senior-level quantum mechanics; it also leverages the expertise of IfA faculty as supervisors of senior research projects. Here we briefly describe the contents of the new Astronomy BA and Astrophysics BS programs: The BS Astrophysics Major is a rigorous physics degree with a specialization in astronomy. By design, students from this program should be prepared for graduate work in astronomy, astrophysics, or physics. The course offerings are similar to what the great majority of UH Manoa astronomy graduate students encountered at their undergraduate institutions. This degree draws heavily on existing undergraduate courses in the Physics (PHYS) program at UH Manoa, and will have the option of using cross-listed Astronomy graduate courses during the student’s senior year. A semester-by-semester program of study for the undergraduate BS Astrophysics major is presented in Appendix 7.4. Briefly, the second year of the program introduces students to theoretical astrophysics, the third year emphasizes observational astronomy, and the final year covers advanced topics and hands-on research. Nine new non-introductory ASTR courses are needed for the BS Astrophysics major; these are listed and briefly described in Appendix 7.6. While formal approval to develop the program is still pending, two of the key courses, ASTR 241 and 242 (Foundations of Astrophysics I and II), have already been proposed since they have potential to attract students immediately; ASTR 241 will be given in Fall 2012. In addition, two advanced courses, ASTR 427 (Cosmology) and ASTR 430 (Solar System), are already offered as cross-listed graduate courses. The BA Astronomy Major is intended for students planning careers as planetarium staff, night assistants, science teachers, science writers, etc. Compared to the Astrophysics BS degree, it is less focused on rigorous physics education and offers more flexibility in designing a course of study. A semester-by-semester program of study for the undergraduate BA Astronomy major is presented in Appendix 7.5. Several of the non-introductory courses needed to establish the BA Astronomy Major already exist within the current ASTR 200–400 level courses. In particular, ASTR 240 (Foundations of Astronomy), which was last given in 2001, will be relaunched as the gateway course of the BA. Other courses already on the books, including ASTR 280 (Evolution

56 of the Universe), 281 (Astrobiology), 380 (Cosmos in Western Culture), and 399 (Directed Study) will be given new purpose as electives within this degree. Finally, the Astronomy BA shares several courses with the Astrophysics BS, including the third-year sequence in observational astronomy. While the Hilo and Manoa degree programs are independent of each other, there is a great potential for synergy and coordination among them. The contents of the lower-level courses can be harmonized and cross-listed, so that students can transfer credit between the two campuses. This allows a larger variety of career paths in the course of the undergraduate studies. The higher- level courses could be specialized and coordinated, so that students can select from a larger number of possibilities, assuming the necessary remote learning capabilities. Finally, important and expensive infrastructure should be used jointly. Particularly attractive is the utilization of the new UHH 0.9 m educational telescope Hoku Ke‘a. Equipped with remote observing capabilities, this telescope can be used for lab classes both in Hilo and in Manoa. The establishment of undergraduate degree majors, BS in Astrophysics and BA in Astronomy at UH Manoa, in addition to the BS Astronomy major at UH Hilo, is both timely as well as necessary in order to meet the increasing demand from undergraduate students wishing to further their professional careers in astronomy. Based on queries from current undergraduate physics students and students from outside Hawaii, as well as the current enrollment in ASTR nonintroductory courses, we might reasonably expect 12 + 20 new students to enter the BS Astrophysics major and BA Astronomy major programs, respectively, each year. We also believe it is prudent to assume an attrition rate of 33% and 25%, after year 2 of the BS and BA major, respectively.

D. The Astronomy Graduate Program The astronomy program offers the MS and PhD degrees. Almost all astronomy graduate students join the program with the intention of completing a PhD, earning the MS degree en route. Our PhD program follows a fairly standard pattern. Students take most of their courses in the first two years; during this period they are also required to undertake two year-long pieces of directed research, each of which must culminate in an ApJ-style written paper and a verbal presentation to the whole IfA. At the beginning of their fifth semester they are subjected to an assessment that is (inaccurately) called the “qualifying exam.” The assessment includes a written and an oral exam, but also takes into account a student’s performance in classes and directed research projects. Most students pass the qual at their first attempt and use their fifth and sixth semesters to fine-tune their thesis proposals. They are awarded PhD candidacy when their thesis topic is approved, and spend their remaining time completing their PhD research. Students usually spend between 6 and 7 years in the program, though both shorter and longer stays have occurred.

D1. Graduate Program Courses The core of the graduate astronomy curriculum is contained in a series of 3-credit courses that provide the broad base upon which specialized knowledge may later be added. In the interest of a broad education we encourage students to take all of the 600 level courses (Table 7.2), but we can also be flexible with students who wish to vary their program by including courses from physics or geophysics. We also offer the irregularly taught seminars in Astrophysics, 734, 735, and 736. These are, in most cases, short specialized 1-unit seminars on topics closely related to current research programs at the Institute. These 700-level courses change from year to year, though some, such as submillimeter astronomy, are taught on a semi-regular basis. A list of recent seminars may be found at http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/gradprog/700-level.htm

57 Table 7.2. Graduate Program Courses at UH Manoa Course Frequency Title Credits ASTR 622 Alt years The Interstellar Medium 3 ASTR 623 Alt years Stellar Interiors and Evolution 3 ASTR 626 Alt years Galaxies 3 ASTR 627 Alt years Cosmology 3 ASTR 630 Alt years The Solar System 3 ASTR 631 Alt years Radiative Transfer and Stellar Atmospheres 3 ASTR 633 Fall Astrophysical Techniques 3 ASTR 635 TBD Fundamentals of Astrophysics 3 ASTR 640 Alt years General Relativity 3 ASTR 641 Alt years Active Galaxies 3 ASTR 699 Fall Introduction to Research at IfA 2 ASTR 734–736 ~ 2 per semester Graduate Seminars 1–3 ASTR 740 every semester Astrobiology Seminar 3 ASTR 777 Alt years Star Formation 3

D2. Financial Support of Graduate Students Most students are supported on NASA or NSF research assistantships (RAs). There are also six teaching assistantships that employ students to provide support to undergraduate ASTR 110 classes. We usually offer the TAs to first year students, so that they can familiarize themselves with the IfA research programs before committing themselves to a faculty member’s research program. Our graduate assistantship stipends (which include a full tuition waiver) are quite generous, so that graduate students do not generally suffer from financial problems (see http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/gradprog/graduate_assistantships.htm) D3. Recruitment of Graduate Students We admit students to the graduate program once a year. Table 7.3 shows the statistics of applications received, offers made and offers accepted for the last five years. Currently we make offers of admission and support to ~20% of the applicants; ~35% of our offers are accepted.

Table 7.3. Mean Application + Admission Rates for UH-M Astronomy Graduate Program

Mean (yr-1) 1998–2002 2003–2007 2008–2012 Applications 71 110 112 Offers 17 24% 22 20% 22 20% Acceptances 3.6 21% 5.6 25% 8.4 38% There has been an encouraging rise in the number of applications received over the past 5 years, and we are pleased with the quality of students entering our program. Figure 7.2 shows an increasing fraction of students drawn from the top percentile over time. The students are drawn from some of the top universities worldwide.

Figure 7.2. Percentile rank of accepted applicants to IfA Graduate Astronomy Program. Their educational background can be found on the website http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/gradprog /graduate_students.htm. The breakdown of our current students by nationality and gender is shown in the Table 7.4. Table 7.4. Current Graduate Students’ Nationalities (2012) Male Female Total US Citizens 17 9 26 (67%) Non-US Citizens 9 4 13 (33%) Total 26 13 39 (100%)

D4. PhD Degree Completion Rate and Employment Outcomes The most important product of the IfA graduate program is the number and quality of the PhDs that it has produced. The success rate for students entering the UH astronomy graduate program over the last 25 years is high. As of June 2012, 161 students had passed through the UH astronomy graduate program (excluding those currently enrolled). Almost two-thirds of these students left with a PhD degree; another 20% gained the MS degree (Table 7.5). Most of the remaining 19 students made their decision to withdraw from the program within one year of entering it, or transferred into another graduate program. Table 7.5. Graduation Rates for UH Manoa Astronomy Students (1975–2012) Male Female Total Awarded PhD 87 (74%) 30 (26%) 117 (100%) Terminal MS 20 (69%) 9 (31%) 29 (100%) No degree 15 (79%) 4 (21%) 19 (100%) Total 122 (74%) 43 (26%) 165 (100%)

D5. Quality Assessment of the IfA Graduate Program The IfA has awarded 117 PhD degrees since 1975. Figure 7.3 gives the number of PhDs awarded per year and shows the approximate factor of two increase that occurred in the mid-1980s (from ~1.5/year during the period 1975–86 to ~3/year for 1987–2001 and ~4/year for 2002–12) when the size of the Institute’s faculty also showed a similar factor of two increase. Figure 7.4 and Appendix 7.7 summarize the distribution of general area of thesis research of our PhD recipients.

Figure 7.3. IfA PhDs awarded by year (1975–2012).

Figure 7.4. Research areas for all IfA PhDs (1975–2012). It is clear from our students that access to all of the telescopes on Mauna Kea and Haleakala is a very strong plus in their choosing Hawaii over other top astronomy programs. The research environment provided by the IfA is also considered to be of the highest caliber. Complaints about inadequate stipends of a decade ago have almost completely disappeared; IfA graduate student salaries are now competitive with the best offers at other institutions. The overall impression that we have of our graduate program is that it has improved dramatically, but there is still much to do, particularly in the area of external perceptions of our program. For example, we need to be able to capture a larger percentage of the top-ten students who apply to our program each year by offering named graduate fellowships and other incentives that are typically available at our peer institutions. We also can still do a better job of promoting our PhDs for named awards and prizes (e.g., the Trumper Award, Hubble, Chandra, and other fellowships). Almost all our PhD alumni move onto postdoctoral fellowships; the statistics for the last six years are shown in Figure 7.5.

Figure 7.5. Positions held by PhD recipients immediately after graduation, 1995 to date. All our PhD and MS alumni are listed by name on our website, together with recent career information (http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/gradprog/alumni-alpha.htm). A chronological listing of all of our PhDs can also be found in Appendix 7.7.

Figure 7.6. Current employment of all IfA PhDs. An additional measure of the effectiveness of our graduate program is the percentage of our PhDs who remain in astronomy throughout their professional careers. Figure 7.6 shows that 83% of all IfA PhDs have remained in the field of astronomy. This is among the highest percentages for any PhD program in the United States, which we believe is a testament to the strong research programs carried out by IfA students during their graduate student years in Hawaii.

E. NRC Ranking of the UH Manoa Astronomy Graduate Program The National Research Council (NRC) survey of Graduate Programs is considered the most authoritative ranking of the qualitiy of graduate research programs in the United States. The survey has normally been carried out at ~10yr intervals, and is typically based on survey data collected 2–6 years prior to the publication of the Report. In the NRC1985 survey, the UH Manoa graduate astronomy program was simply too young to be reliably evaluated (only 7 PhDs had been awarded prior to 1982), thus the first meaningful NRC assessment of the UH Manoa Astronomy Graduate Program appeared in the NRC1995 Report.

61 E1. How Were We Ranked in the 1995 NRC Report ? In the 1995 ranking of Astronomy and Astrophysics “Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States” by the NRC, the UH Astronomy program (IfA) placed eleventh out of 33 programs nationwide as judged by “research quality.” [Note: The NRC1995 report noted that 72 US institutions granted PhDs in astronomy & astrophysics, but only 33 institutions granted a sufficient number of PhDs to be ranked in the NRC study. ] Our “research quality” score of 3.60 In addition to the qualitative questionnaires that will be mailed to Department Chairs, Deans and Directors for the 2004 survey, there is also a strong push to make better use( onof quantitative a scale of statistics 0–5: (suchsee Table as “ … per-capita7.6) placed citation us in the “second quartile.” However, our “5-yr change” counts and federal support for R&D, and scholarly awardsscore and prizes of received +0.49 by placed faculty members us second …”) thatamong can now the 33 ranked astronomy and astrophysics programs, be more reliably gathered from electronic databases. Indeed,confirming several independent the feeling “rankings among” of astronomy many ofresearch- us that the quality of the IfA Research-Doctorate program ers using electronically accessible databases have been published by astronomers during the past few years. All of these studies have used the Science Citation Index (SCI) publishedhas been by improving the Institute for rapidly Science Informationover the past (ISI). 10–15 years. This report is a first attempt at presenting a comprehensive quantitative assessment of how the research-doctorate faculty of the IfA currently compares with the “Top-20” NRC-rankedThe 1995 astronomy NRC published and astrophysicsAll ranking our programs PhD was and in MS basedthe alumni on are a listedwritten by name survey on our conduced Web site, together in 1992 with–9 recent3 and career also information. US. The citation data used are from the same source(s) listedincluded in the NRC quantitative’s 1995 report, data and ( arehttp://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/gradprog/alumni-alpha.htmsuch the quantitativeas citation data counts and published papers). covering the 5-yr period likely to be compiled by the NRC as part of its 2004 report.1988 The– citation92. In counts our were2001 compiled Self- Studyby hand usingReport, the we noted “Given the relatively recent buildup of our annual summary data in the SCI for CY1999, the most recent annual summary currently availableExternal (hardcover) ranking in by the the National Research Council UH Library. (Note: the University of Hawaii is one of theprogram, few Carnegie-I plus Research the factUniversities thatThe ourthatmost does overallrecent not national doctoral ranking program of the UH/IfA is also astronomy the youngest graduate program of all is ofthat thecarried 33 out by the National currently subscribe to the electronic version of the SCI). Awardsranked and programs, prizes were alsoit seemscompiledResearch reasonable using Councildata available to(NRC) assume in 1995. that While the our “qualitative” astronomy graduate ranking program reported was eleventh in outthe of 33 programs ranked on the Web. The outputs from this self-study are summarized1995 in theNRC accompanying Report ha graphsd not andaccording yet tables. caught Theseto the up resultsquality to the of itsreality research of faculty,our “quantitative” it was ranked seventeenth ranking.” in the “effectiveness” of its graduate show that even our own internal impressions of our rank have been underestimates of our trueprogram qualitative in “educating ranking ! research scholars/scientists.” Among all graduate programs at UH-Manoa ranked by the NRC, Table 7.6. NRC1995 astronomyRanking ranked of Astronomy first in research Graduate quality and Programsfifth in effectiveness. in the The United NRC rankingsStates are shown in Tables 7.6 and How Were We Ranked in the 1995 NRC Report ? 7.7. Quality of Graduate Faculty Table 7.6. NRC Quality effectiveness of Graduate rankings Pro of gramastronomy graduate program Several “opinion polls” have been produced which Table 6.2. NRC-ranked list for 1995 report rankings of various science programs. Rank Institution Quality 5Yr Chg Rank Institution Effectiveness Different measures as well as different definitions of 1 Caltech 4.91 +0.10 1 Caltech 4.75 2 Princeton 4.79 +0.00 2 UC Berkeley 4.53 “research” areas are used in the various reports. The 3 UC Berkeley 4.65 -0.03 3 Princeton 4.38 most detailed ranking is that conducted by the NRC, 4 Harvard 4.49 +0.20 4 UC Santa Cruz 4.14 and more to the point, it is the NRC ranking that the 5 U Chicago 4.36 +0.25 5 Cornell 3.97 University of Hawaii administration has adopted as 6 UC Santa Cruz 4.31 +0.10 6 Harvard 3.92 7 U Arizona 4.10 -0.09 7 U Chicago 3.85 the benchmark for setting standards and goals for 8 MIT 4.00 +0.38 8 U Arizona 3.69 university departments into the next decade. The 9 Cornell 3.98 +0.05 9 MIT 3.68 NRC-ranked programs in terms of “Research 10 U Texas at Austin 3.65 +0.09 10 U Wisconsin 3.47 11 U Hawaii at Manoa 3.60 +0.49 Quality” (as measured by scholarly publications, 11 U Texas at Austin 3.39 12 U Colorado 3.54 +0.23 12 U Colorado 3.38 citation counts, etc. ) and “Effectiveness” in training 13 U Illinois at Urbana 3.53 +0.08 13 Yale 3.31 PhDs (as measured by career performance, etc.). 14 U Wisconsin 3.46 +0.25 14 U Illinois at Urbana 3.24 The overall rankings were determined by the relative 15 Yale 3.31 -0.01 15 U Massachusetts at Amherst 3.23 16 UC Los Angeles 3.27 +0.20 score obtained for “Research Quality.” Table 6.2 16 U Virginia 3.16 17 U Virginia 3.23 +0.28 17 U Hawaii at Manoa 3.09 reproduces the NRC-ranked list for 1995 for all 33 18 Columbia 3.20 +0.12 18 UC Los Angeles 3.05 PhD programs in Astronomy & Astrophysics. [Note: 19 U Maryland at College Park 3.07 +0.03 19 U Maryland at College Park 3.02 The NRC report noted that 72 US institutions 20 U Massachusetts at Amherst 3.04 +0.17 20 U Michigan 3.00 21 Pennsylvania State U 3.00 +0.73 21 U Minnesota 2.94 granted PhDs in astronomy & astrophysics, but only 22 Stanford 2.96 +0.02 22 Stanford 2.91 33 institutions granted a sufficient number of PhDs 23 Ohio State U 2.91 +0.23 23 Columbia 2.90 to be ranked in the NRC study. ] 24 U Minnesota 2.89 -0.05 23 Ohio State U 2.76 In agreement with our perceptions, the NRC report 25 U Michigan 2.65 -0.25 24 Pennsylvania State U 2.75 26 SUNY at Stony Brook 2.58 -0.28 25 SUNY at Stony Brook 2.59 shows that we have one of the highest “5-year 27 Boston U 2.40 +0.32 26 Boston U 2.56 change” scores in “Research Quality” of all 28 Indiana U 2.16 -0.09 27 Indiana U 2.53 departments surveyed. 29 LSU 2.06 0.00 28 Georgia State U 2.10 30 Iowa State U 2.03 +0.38 29 Iowa State U 2.07 31 U Florida 1.98 0.00 30 LSU 2.02 32 New Mexico State U 1.85 +0.53 31 U Florida 1.92 33 Georgia State U 1.81 +0.32 32 New Mexico State U 1.82 In measuring the success of IfA PhD recipients it is important to note that the IfA is the youngest of the NRC “Top- 20” ranked astronomy graduate programs in the U.S., as well as one of the youngest of all PhD astronomy graduate E2. How Were We Rankedprograms in the worldwide. 2010 NRC For example, Report in ?noting that there are no IfA PhD recipients who are currently members of the National Academy of Sciences or who have one major international prizes one should keep in mind that the vast Following the 1995 Report,majority the of NRC such awards revised are given its ranking to more senior procedures scientists, and in anthat attemptthe most “ senior to replace” of IfA PhD recipients are only previously used subjectivejust survey now reaching criteria, that withpoint inobjective their careers. criteria It is interesting based onto note the that growing of the ten access recipients to of IfA PhDs through 1982, nine are still active astronomers: six are full professors (Caty Pilachowski, Daniel Kirkwood Chair at Indiana accurate and complete databasesUniversity and (e.g. president-elect, ISI) of of scientific the American output Astronomical (publications, Society; Terry citations, Jones, University etc). of Minnesota; Bob 38Questionnaires were sent Brown,to graduate University faculty of Arizona; in order Suzan to Edwards, agree on Smith objective College; Billmeasures Heacox, ofUH-Hilo; quality Bob of Ruotsalainen, Eastern research and graduate educationWashington University), within broad Chas Beichman, scientific is NASA disciplines. chief scientist, The Origins initial Program, report and was Nancy Morrison is director, completed in 2006 but wasRitter not Observatory, formally Universityreleased of for Toledo. another 4 years (2010), during which time graduate programs were given the chance to review and suggest revisions to the ranking

62 procedures based on reassignment of weights to the different measures of performance adopted for the review. The final report is referred to here as NRC2010. During our previous retreat (2000) it was assumed that our national rank would continue to improve from our ranking in the 1985 and 1995 NRC reports, and that we could be ranked as high as 5–6 (out of 33) astronomy graduate programs in the United States. Thus we were surprised to see that our rank had dropped into the lowest quartile (27/33 or 22/33, depending on the weighting scheme used), in the NRC2010 Report titled “A Data-Based Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States” (Table 7.7). Table 7.7 NRC2010 Measures of Astronomy Graduate Program Performance 2010 “S-Ranking” 2010 “R-Ranking” Original rank (most quoted) Iterated Rank (after feedback)

S-Rank Institution Core R-Rank Institution Core 1 Caltech 12.4 1 Princeton 13.6 2 UC Berkeley 17.9 2 Caltech 12.4 3 Johns Hopkins 25.5 3 Penn State 23.7 4 Princeton 13.6 4 UC Berkeley 17.9 5 MIT 23.5 5 U Chicago 21.1 6 Harvard 31.1 6 U Washington 13.9 7 Penn State 23.7 7 Ohio State 17.5 8 U Arizona 31.4 8 UC Santa Cruz 24.1 9 U Texas 19.2 9 Columbia U 12.1 10 Ohio State 17.5 10 Harvard 31.1 11 U Chicago 21.1 11 MIT 23.5 12 Cornell 22.2 12 U Arizona 31.4 13 U Washington 13.9 13 Cornell 22.2 14 U Colorado 38.8 14 U Wisconsin 15.5 15 U Illinois 12.9 15 Johns Hopkins 25.5 16 U Maryland 19.1 16 U Texas 19.2 17 U Virginia 15.1 17 U Virginia 15.1 18 U Michigan 17.1 18 Michigan State 8.1 19 UC Los Angeles 13.8 19 U Michigan 17.1 20 UC Santa Cruz 24.1 20 New Mexico State 14.8 21 U Hawaii 42.2 21 Boston U 19.5 22 Indiana U 9.2 22 U Maryland 19.1 23 Yale 10.6 23 Yale 10.6 24 U Wisconsin 15.5 24 U Colorado 38.8 25 Columbia U 12.1 25 U Hawaii 42.2 26 U Minnesota 11.1 26 U Minnesota 11.1 27 New Mexico State 14.8 27 Indiana U 9.2 28 Boston U 19.5 28 UC Los Angeles 13.8 29 Michigan State 8.1 29 U Illinois 12.9 30 U Florida 18.5 30 U Florida 18.5 31 Georgia State 7.8 31 Georgia State 7.8 Top-5 “S-Ranking” criteria Top-5 “R-Ranking” criteria 1. per-capita Faculty Pubs 1. # PhDs awarded per year 2. % Faculty with Grants 2. per-capita Faculty Awards/Prizes 3. per-capita Faculty Cites 3. per-capita Faculty Cites 4. per-capita Faculty Awards/Prizes 4. per-capita Faculty Pubs 5. % Students with Academic Jobs 5. Student mean GRE-Q score * The 2010 NRC ranking attempted to combine both Faculty and Student performance measures into a single weighted ranking scheme. Considering the weights used for student and faculty performance in the 2010 NRC report, the following conclusions hold: (1) “Quality of Graduate Faculty” in 1995 is most similar to the NRC2010 “S-Ranking” (2) “Quality of Graduate Program” in 1995 is more akin to the NRC2010 “R-Ranking” The NRC2010 report is also the first report to also be accompanied by a table (in Excel format) that presents all of the data used to determine program rankings.

63 E3. An Assessment of the NRC2010 Ranking An analysis of the data used by the NRC to compute our ranking in the NRC2010 Report shows that the dominant factor contributing to our precipitous drop in rank was the number of “core faculty” (42) used in computing the measures of research quality of our faculty. The NRC Report describes how “core faculty” were determined and gives a detailed description of each of the performance measures used in the rankings. In trying to understand the data used for the UH Manoa Astronomy Graduate Program and how our program compares with other Astronomy Graduate Programs in the United States, the following conclusions can be drawn:

1. We are the only “Organized Research Unit” among the 33 Astronomy Graduate Programs in the US ranked by the NRC; the other 32 are Academic Departments. 2. The NRC could not define the UH-Manoa “core department faculty”: therefore the UH Dean of the Graduate Division was asked to provide names of anyone who had served on a PhD Thesis committee (47 names). Of those 47 names provided, 43 were included in the final NRC2010 ranking. 3. UHM Astronomy had the largest number of “core faculty” and the largest percentage of non- tenure-track faculty among all 33 ranked astronomy graduate programs. 4. The most important per capita “faculty” research performance measures (publications, citations, grants, prizes) for the UHM astronomy graduate program were all ranked in the lower half of all 33 ranked astronomy programs. 5. Student performance measures (#PhDs, %jobs-in-academia, GREs) for the UHM astronomy graduate program were all ranked higher than the performance measures for the UHM astronomy “core faculty”.

It seems obvious that the NRC was unclear as to how the Astronomy Graduate Program was defined and administered at UH Manoa, and in particular how our graduate faculty – and “teaching faculty” in general (see Section 5C) – have been selected and defined. The IfA Director has presented a possible way forward in his “Vision for the IfA”. which states that – “In order to better present our graduate teaching program to the outside world and to improve the IfA’s position in future NRC rankings, we plan to form a “Graduate School of Astrophysics” at UH Manoa (see section 7F). In this context we can better define and describe the “graduate faculty” as well as the 5-year curriculum for grad students. The undergraduate programs in Manoa and Hilo should be aligned with this graduate school.”

E4. A Self-Analysis of the IfA Ranking using a proper definition of “Core Faculty” In Table 7.8 we show how our NRC2010 ranking would change simply by using data for the 27 “core faculty” members identified in Table 5.1. Table 7.8 provides a comparison of the NRC ranking of our Graduate “core faculty” (27 members), to the rank given in the NRC2010 Report, which assumed a core faculty size of 42.

In Appendix 7.8 we provide a more detailed picture of how each of the top-4 per-capita “measures of performance” (i.e. publications, citations, research grants, awards and prizes), for the “graduate astronomy faculty” would change assuming 27 “core faculty” versus the 42 “core faculty” used in NRC2010. For completeness, we also provide a Table showing how the top-3 per-capita student “measures of performance” (i.e. annual number of PhDs awarded, percent of graduates employed in astronomy after graduation, GRE-quantitative scores) would change if data had been used for the most recent 6-year period as opposed to the CY2000-2006 period adopted for the NRC2010 Report.

64 Table 7.8. Revised NRC2010 Ranking for Correct Graduate “Core Faculty”

To assess the quality of the IfA research program over the last few years on our own and to verify that a cleaner and more restrictive definition of the corresponding faculty body will lead to a fairer overall ranking of IfA, we have also performed a more extensive comparative publication and citation analysis for the major US astronomy departments. The graduate core faculty sampled in this exercise are the 27 scientists on tenured/tenure-track R&I positions predominantly concerned with research and graduate education (see asterisks in table 5.1). This is comparable to the faculty bodies defined by our peer and benchmark institutions for the NRC ranking (see above). For each scientist we have compiled the publication and citation statistics from the NASA ADS database. (see Appendix 7.9; this also contains yearly citation rates to first-author papers from the Thompson ISI database.) The Hirsch-factor (H) is a widely used bibliometric measurement quantity, which gives a kind of median citation rate per publication. H is defined as the number of publications of a particular scientist with more than H citations and has a turned out to be a relatively robust quantity, at least in the comparison among different researchers in the same field. H is in particular weighing the integrated, life-time contribution of a scientist. In order to estimate the actual average visibility, in particular of younger scientists, it is convenient to define the value m=H/dt, where dt is the number of active years of a scientist, here counted as the time since the second refereed publication. The quantity m yields an average yearly growth rate of H and is in particular weighing younger scientists at the peak of their most active period. In order to compare scientists in large collaborations with those who typically work in smaller teams it is also useful to look at normalized bibli- ographic quantities NH and Nm=NH/dt, where each entry is divided by the number of co-authors on a paper. Statistically, these normalized quantities are similar to measures based on first-author- ship, but somewhat more robust. We also calculated the normalized number of papers per year (Np/yr) and the average number of normalized citations per normalized paper (Ncit/Np).

Figure 7.7. Normalized m factors (Nm) for each IfA graduate core faculty member, sorted in decreasing order (red circles). The y-axis is on a logartithmic scale. The x-axis is the corresponding percentile. The other symbols denote the scientists from 24 other astronomy schools. Black dots correspond to the total number of astronomers in this study.

Figure 7.7 shows normalized m factors for the 27 IfA graduate core faculty. Compared to the astronomers in our peer and benchmark institutions, IfA ranks close to the median in this graph, but is significantly underperforming in the quartile of the highest normalized m factors, which is dominated by younger scientists. This is also apparent from the comparison of age distributions.

Figure 7.8. Normalized citations per normalized paper (Ncit/Np) for each IfA core graduate faculty, in comparison to the scientists from 24 other astronomy schools. Symbols as in Figure 7.7.

Figure 7.9. Average normalized citations per normalized paper (Ncit/Np) versus average normalized m-factor for each of the 25 astronomy schools in the study. Symbols as in Figure 7.8.

Table 7.9. Average Quantities and Ranking for All 25 Astronomy Schools in the Study. (The ranking is based on the normalized quantities NH, Nm and Nc/Np.) av av av av av av R R R Institute H m Nc/Np NH Nm p/y cp NH Nm Rank Princeton 57.9 2.02 74.6 27.9 0.99 1.66 1 1 1 1 Caltech 50.0 1.82 59.4 22.0 0.82 1.33 2 3 6 2 Texas 41.0 1.59 54.9 22.0 0.85 1.37 6 2 4 3 Berkeley 40.3 2.17 55.3 19.1 0.96 1.55 4 12 2 4 Chicago 44.0 1.7 55.0 21.3 0.79 1.40 5 5 9 5 Yale 39.8 1.88 56.8 18.7 0.85 1.57 3 13 5 6 UCSC 47.2 1.82 54.5 20.9 0.79 1.39 8 6 8 7 Harvard 48.2 1.74 51.1 21.4 0.76 1.49 9 4 15 8 Ohio 41.6 1.74 47.4 19.7 0.79 1.47 12 10 10 9 Wisconsin 36.9 1.92 46.4 17.9 0.89 1.46 14 15 3 10 IfA 41.5 1.53 54.6 19.7 0.71 1.26 7 9 17 11 Virginia 37.3 1.38 47.8 20.3 0.72 1.31 11 7 16 12 UCLA 42.0 1.72 43.0 19.2 0.78 1.41 18 11 12 13 Michigan 39.9 1.90 44.9 17.5 0.80 1.37 16 18 7 14 JHU 45.6 1.66 43.6 19.9 0.68 1.53 17 8 18 15 Columbia 37.9 1.75 45.5 17.5 0.76 1.32 15 17 14 16 MIT 32.6 1.42 48.4 16.6 0.65 1.18 10 21 20 17 Maryland 36.6 1.58 38.6 17.2 0.78 1.33 22 19 11 18 Arizona 36.2 1.70 39.2 17.0 0.77 1.24 21 20 13 19 Washington 48.5 2.11 47.1 16.2 0.66 1.11 13 22 19 20 Minnesota 36.8 1.20 40.7 17.7 0.51 1.15 19 16 24 21 Cornell 39.0 1.19 36.8 18.0 0.57 1.32 23 14 23 22 Illinois 25.0 1.28 39.7 12.8 0.60 0.94 20 24 22 23 Penn 39.6 1.84 36.0 14.1 0.63 1.09 24 23 21 24 Boston 24.2 0.99 25.3 11.8 0.47 0.95 25 25 25 25

67 Figure 7.8 shows another statistic, independent from H and m-factors, namely averaged citations per paper for an individual scientist; however, in units normalized by the number of co-authors on each paper. This measure weighs heavier on legacy and seminal publications normalized to the contribution of an individual author. IfA fares quite well in this comparison, in particular in the lower half of the diagram with the highest citation numbers. This reflects on the relatively large numbers of scientists at IfA with high lifetime achievements. Finally, Figure 7.9 and Table 7.9 show averaged quantities for all 25 US astronomy schools in this study. Depending, on which quantity is chosen, IfA ranks between number 7 and number 17 among all 25 schools. Its average rank in the normalized quantities is 11 out of 25, confirming the assumed corrections to the NRC rankings above.

F. UH School of Astronomy and Astrophysics The astronomy graduate program at UH Manoa is one of the largest in the US and is very attractive due to the access to the telescopes on Mauna Kea and Haleakala. The astronomy undergraduate classes for non-science majors in Manoa are extremely popular and regularly draw ~800–900 students per year into the ASTR100-level courses. IfA is an organized research unit and formally not charged with the academic teaching duties, which reside at the Department for Physics and Astronomy (P&A) at UH Manoa. Nevertheless, IfA has in fact acquired the responsibility for teaching. All UH Manoa Astronomy (ASTR) courses are currently taught by IfA faculty, under supervision of the Chair of the Astronomy Graduate Program, as part of an agreement with the P&A Department. Astronomy teaching currently receives the equivalent of 4 FTEs (I-faculty) and 6 Teaching Assistantships (TAs) from the P&A Department, two of which have been recently awarded to the program by the Dean of the College of Natural Sciences. The current number (4) of ASTR I-faculty FTEs does not reflect our current ASTR teaching commitments, and more importantly, does not represent the much larger number of teaching IfA faculty. As described below, 8 I-faculty FTEs are, in effect, required to support our undergrad and graduate teaching programs, and the IfA Director has achieved this number by requiring all tenure-track faculty (mostly R-faculty appointments) to teach at the 0.25FTE level. To meet our teaching requirements (both undergraduate and graduate) the IfA Director has, in the past, taken a step toward a proper accounting of our teaching by agreeing to split the 4 ASTR I- faculty FTEs into quarters (i.e. 16 × 0.25FTE) in order to give split (0.25I, 0.75R) appointments to those 16 faculty teaching each semester. These I/R appointments are then rotated to an additional 16 IfA faculty teaching the following semester, so that in any given calendar year, there are 32 (0.25I, 0.75R) IfA appointments, or 8 I-faculty FTEs. The 0.25 I-faculty FTE is, in fact, a proper reflection of the “teaching commitment” required of all tenure-track IfA FTEs, most of whom have been hired as R faculty with the understanding that they “will teach as required” to provide adequate support to the undergraduate and graduate ASTR programs at UH Manoa. The rather complicated organization of astronomy teaching at UH Manoa has hampered our graduate program in the past for several reasons. Although it is one of the major draws of UH Manoa, the visibility of the program inside the UH system and towards the outside is very limited. Being an “appendix” in the organizational chart of the P&A department does not do justice to the breadth and depth of the program and to the fact that the number of IfA student contact hours is comparable to those of P&A. As viewed from the outside world, prospective astronomy graduate students often hit the P&A department website and cannot directly navigate to the real astronomy graduate program. This can directly be seen in a popular student web page about astronomy programs in the US (http://dimitriveras.com/mapUS/), which lists Hawaii with zero graduate students and astronomy professors. This poor outside image is also impeding our ability to attract the best graduate students in the country. We also believe, that the current organization has hampered our most recent ranking in the National Research Council (NRC) ranking (see section 7E). Basically, unlike typical astronomy departments, we did not define and

68 personalize our graduate teaching faculty in a way that is similar to our peer institutions. A final factor to consider is the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of astronomy programs, as evidenced, for example, by the continuing success of our UH NASA Astrobiology Institute (PI Karen Meech) over the last years. More and more other fields of science are getting interested in a cooperation with astronomy, so that we have developed the idea of an Astro-X program as a framework for interdisciplinary studies, where “X” could be, for example, chemistry, microbiology, engineering, informatics, or mathematics. Most important, very good cooperative relations with the physics and astronomy departments both in Manoa and in Hilo have been established over the last year. Different specializations of the teaching programs at UH Hilo and at UH Maui College are adding to the mix of interdisciplinary possibilities. The proposal to install a new astronomy undergraduate program at UH Manoa (Astronomy BA and Astrophysics BS; see section 7C) amplifies the need to reorganize the UH astronomy teaching program.

Figure 7.10. Organization chart for the planned “UH School of Astronomy & Astrophysics.” We propose to group the astronomy graduate program and its interdisciplinary Astro-X variants together with the astronomy undergraduate program into a new structure called “UH School of Astronomy & Astrophysics” (see Figure 7.10). The school should be carried by both the College of Natural Sciences (CNS) and the Institute for Astronomy (IfA). The current chair of astronomy graduate studies should be the chair of the school and report both to the Dean of CNS and the Director of IfA. The IfA graduate teaching faculty (TBD, see below) should form the core of the faculty body of the school, with I appointments from CNS and R appointments from IfA. Their locus of tenure and promotion should remain at IfA. The various interdisciplinary Astro-X initiatives should be able to participate in the school through adjunct professorships, co-opted from their home departments, which also keep their locus of tenure and promotion. The astronomy/astrophysics undergraduate programs in Hilo and Manoa should remain separate entities, but coordinated among each other and with the graduate program through cross-listing of courses and joint usage of infrastructure (see section 7C).

69 The definition of the IfA core graduate faculty has to be done with great care, since this also affects their rights and responsibilities in the school. In the current situation, the access to thesis committees and graduate student supervision was basically unrestricted, and the whole IfA faculty, including tenure-track and research faculty, was eligible for the graduate faculty body. This has significantly affected our NRC ranking (see section 7E). In the context of the School of Astronomy and Astrophysics we have to sharpen the definition of this body. One model, which has also been assumed for the publication and citation analysis in section 7E, is to define all IfA R&I tenure-track faculty, who spend more than 50% of their time on research and teaching, and are also actively supporting and supervising graduate students, as the core graduate faculty. Currently, this is a body of 27 people. Other faculty members can be co-opted to the school in a way similar to that of the interdisciplinary members.

70 8. Outreach, Community/Media Relations, and Fundraising Outreach, public education, community relations and fundraising form an interconnected web of activities that are essential to the success of academic institutions, especially large units like the IfA within state universities. As a recipient of State funds as well as the benefits of access to the facilities on sensitive sites atop Mauna Kea and Haleakala, we are accountable to the State Legislature and Governor’s office, and in turn, to the residents of Hawaii. Federal funding agencies typically require grant proposals to include an educational and/or public outreach component. The people of Hawaii want to know what we are doing with their money and their resources. This reflects both an interest in our discoveries about the universe, as well as a desire to ensure proper stewardship of the lands upon which the observatories are constructed. The public perception of astronomers, and especially the IfA, as “good citizens” is vital to the potential development of facilities like the TMT, ATST and Pan-STARRS. UH and IfA’s special roles in this regard are evident in the discussions at public meetings and hearings on these new projects. Furthermore, as federal funding for basic research declines, we must look to private sources to support new initiatives and even to support our core mission. A good public image, extensive outreach, and engagement with the community all support fundraising activities, which in turn allow us to grow these aspects of the IfA. Since the last self-study report, the IfA has undertaken a number of new initiatives to address these issues, and we continue to refine and define our goals in these areas. The main missions of the IfA are research in astronomy and graduate (and soon to be undergraduate) education. In this section we consider many of the activities that fall outside of these roles, even though they may require a variety of resources in terms of personnel, equipment, and facilities. Historically, components of outreach, community relations and fundraising were mainly delegated among the faculty and IfA staff. Since the last report, we have added a faculty position on Maui with responsibility for outreach on that island (Dr. J. D. Armstrong) and a professional position on the Big Island in charge of outreach there (Gary Fujihara). We also have a faculty chair of the Friends of the IfA (Dr. Roy Gal), who works with our part-time events coordinator (Donna Bebber), on both public events and on fundraising in coordination with the UH Foundation. In addition, Mike Maberry (IfA’s Assistant Director for External Relations) heads the community relations activities, especially related to the legislature. We recently constituted an Outreach Oversight Committee, chaired by Dr. Gal, to monitor our activities across all the islands. Given the depth and breadth of all of the activities described in this section, we are planning for a new position to report to the Director’s Office for an individual to coordinate our outreach so that it addresses the needs and concerns of the community and the IfA, and to seek external funding and collaboration opportunities.

A. Outreach Outreach, in the broadest sense, is intended to raise public awareness and improve public perception of the Institute for Astronomy. Despite astronomy’s prominent role in Hawaii’s economy and the importance of Hawaii to astronomy, the general population here is not aware of our great research nor of our community impact. The target audiences for broad public outreach can at times include local, national, and/or international communities, while more specific programs may address the professional astronomy, general science, and educational communities. The implementation of a particular outreach activity depends to a large extent on the target community and on the IfA’s interest in addressing that community.

A1. Educational Programs Education is a key outreach activity in its importance to the citizens of Hawaii, where there is great demand for science programs in K–12 public schools. At the same time, program officers within NASA, NSF, and other funding agencies have expressed considerable interest in the implementation of education programs within grant proposals. The IfA has a long history of success

71 in these programs, and we are working to expand them to serve a broader population. Here we describe specific programs for K–12 students and teachers, undergraduates, and for professional development. Many of these programs were being initiated at the time of the last self-study report, and today they are all thriving, even as we have added major new programs. At the K–12 level, the annual TOPS (“Toward Other Planetary Systems”) program developed by Dr. Karen Meech inaugurated one of IfA’s most successful ongoing outreach programs. Today, with continued funding from a variety of sources, our K–12 educational specialist (Mary Ka- dooka) organizes HI-STAR, a one week astronomy program at the University of Hawaii Manoa campus. This program is designed for incoming grade 8–11 students who would like to work on science research projects along with their teachers, with the intent of introducing them to undergraduate life and enhancing their interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers. About 60 students have gone through HI-STAR since its inception in 2007; the first attendees are graduating from college this year. A few have made it to the International Science Fair, and a significant fraction have gone on to pursue STEM majors. For teachers, the annual Astrobiology Laboratory Institute for Instructors (ALI‘I), funded since 2004 by the UH NASA Astrobiology Institute (UHNAI) offers lectures and state-of-the-art lab tours, with the active participation of scientists leading hands-on activities and development of teaching lessons by the participants. About 75 teachers from 15 states have gone through ALI‘I; many have returned more than once to form a cadre of master teachers who can conduct their own workshops around the country. From 2010–3013, the CA$HEd—the Center for Advancing Systemic Heliophysics Education—has held heliophysics workshops on 4 of the Hawaiian Islands and trained a suite of 10 master teachers to organize and conduct workshops, along with purchasing equipment for use in schools. At the undergraduate level, a decade ago we initiated an NSF-funded Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program (Coleman, current PI). This extremely successful program was initially funded under a 5-year grant, and is now being proposed for renewal for the third 5-year term. The program costs about $100,000 annually, and with efficient use of funds we were able to extend our previous grant by one year. Each summer we bring about 10 undergraduates to the IfA for 10–12 weeks to work under the direction of a faculty or postdoctoral mentor. We have had excellent participation by traditionally underrepresented students: almost two-thirds of the students are female, 11% Hispanic, 5% African-American and 3% Native Hawaiian. We have seen the results of this program in excellent “word of mouth” advertising for the IfA by the summer students as they return to their home institutions. Almost all of our REUs (90%) have continued on to an advanced science degree, with many of the others pursuing technical careers. Many projects result in refereed papers or presentations at AAS or other meetings. Seeing a need for a growing technical workforce as well as professional development for graduate students and postdocs, the IfA on Maui (PI: Lisa Hunter, co-I: Jeff Kuhn) launched the NSF- funded Akamai Workforce Initiative (AWI) in 2008, in partnership with the University of Cali- fornia, Santa Cruz (UCSC); UH Maui College (UHMC); and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR). Major components of the AWI include an internship for local college students, a program that prepares scientists and engineers to be effective educators, and curriculum development and a teaching in the new UHMC Engineering Technology program. The program also developed a grassroots network organization that includes technology and observatory professionals on Maui and the Big Island to provide long-term STEM employment opportunities for AWI students. The AWI internship uses an innovative model designed to advance local students into STEM careers. In partnership with the Air Force Maui Optical and Supercomputing Site and Maui high-tech companies, AWI places 12–18 students each summer at Maui sites. The National Solar Observatory collaborates with AWI to offer technical career workshops and identify prospective employees, with the ultimate goal of stimulating the growth of local talent for the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope. On Hawaii Island, AWI partners with the Thirty Meter Telescope and Mauna Kea Observatories to place another 12–18 students. The internship has had nearly 200 students in the program and tracked their progress. To date,

72 84% have remained on a STEM pathway. ATST recently hired a graduate of AWI in a permanent position. The Professional Development Program (PDP), the AWI component led by the UCSC Institute for Scientist & Engineer Educators, uses Akamai programs and courses as a venue to train scientists and engineers in innovative teaching strategies, including getting them into classes to co-teach with college faculty. About 20–25 UH graduate students, postdocs, and faculty participate in the PDP on Maui annually, with many of them developing and teaching activities in our undergraduate labs and in a special course for Akamai interns. AWI and the IfA on Maui are major partners in creating the new UHMC Engineering Technology 4-year degree program by helping to develop curriculum and now teaching upper division courses. AWI assisted with defining workforce needs, developing a laboratory intensive inquiry-based curriculum, and establishing a full-time student coordinator to monitor and work directly with students. Based on current and future workforce needs, IfA Maui faculty and researchers have designed courses, and teach one course every semester. One of the more ambitious educational initiatives undertaken at the IfA was the construction of the Faulkes Telescope North (FTN), begun in 2001, and now fully operational. Originally funded by the Dill Faulkes Foundation, it was taken over by the Las Cumbres Observatories Global Telescope (LCOGT) Network in 2004. UH receives 30% of the time on this telescope, and it is specifically used for educational purposes, primarily working with K–12 students. IfA astronomer Dr. J. D. Armstrong coordinates the use of FTN. Educational projects proposed by the lessee include follow-up observations of objects discovered by the Pan-STARRS PS1 telescope. Originally challenged to utilize the available time, the UH portion is now oversubscribed. Data from FTN is being used in classes at UH Maui College, University of Hawaii at Hilo, and UH Manoa. FTN has been used for at least four Hawaii entries in the International Science Fair, and hundreds of community members use it annually. Armstrong is developing projects (with Dr. Russ Genet) in which middle school and high school students will be first authors on peer reviewed papers, and the telescope is also being used by the NASA Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) Teacher Research Program (NITARP). LCOGT is interested in adding to their observatory on the site, with a planned installation of two 1 m and up to six 0.4 m telescopes, and UH would receive a portion of time on all of these. Effective utilization of this resource will require coordination with our EPO activities on all islands, and we expect to use it in our new undergraduate astronomy program. By implementing education programs targeting audiences from elementary school to adult professionals, we aim to build a ladder of success for the citizens of Hawaii. For example, combining the Pan-STARRS and LCOGT telescopes with K–12 student projects and teacher training provides the next generation with an authentic astronomy experience, with people and tools all found in Hawaii. The REU program enhances our graduate student pool while showcasing IfA to a broader undergraduate population. The Akamai program enhances Hawaii undergraduates’ access to higher-paying technical careers, while providing our graduate students and postdocs with marketable skills. Taken together, this diverse array of projects is an impressive commitment to the community and to our students.

A2. Activities on the Big Island While the great majority of Hawaii’s population is located on the island of Oahu, most of the public focus on astronomy in the state is directed toward the Big Island of Hawaii due to the major observatory presence atop Mauna Kea. All of the Big Island observatories as well as the IfA, the ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center, and the Mauna Kea Visitor Information Station (MKVIS) are represented on the Mauna Kea Astronomy Outreach Committee (MKAOC). This committee helps coordinate outreach activities on the Big Island, especially those where multiple astronomy facilities are represented, such as the Hawaii County Fair, Merrie Monarch parade, AstroDay and

73 Journey Through the Universe, or where there is broad public participation, such as this year’s Venus Transit. There is great public awareness of the current large facilities (Gemini, Subaru, and the Keck Ob- servatories) and of the upcoming TMT. Most of these organizations have had a dedicated staff position devoted exclusively to outreach for over a decade, and many of them organize small and large-scale programs. One example is Journey Through the Universe, run by Gemini, which places astronomers into classrooms for one week, while also providing teacher workshops and a family science day. To enhance our Big Island presence, in 2003 IfA brought on Gary Fujihara as a Science Education and Public Outreach Officer, and he coordinates the annual AstroDay in Hilo, attracting thousands of families to Kuhio Mall, where observatories and organizations put on astronomy-related exhibits and demonstrations. The IfA has also played a major role in the ad- vancement of K–12 robotics on the Big Island, and offers informal inquiry-based programs in school classrooms. Since the last report, the major new outreach and education provider on the Big Island is the ‘Imiloa Astronomy Center, which is part of UH Hilo and opened its doors in 2006. Its iconic building houses exhibits and programs with the mission to “honor Maunakea by sharing Hawai- ian culture and science to inspire exploration.” About 60,000 people visit the Center annually, including over 10,000 K–12 students from local schools. Their exhibits highlight astronomy as well as indigenous culture, and they run programs with UH, the observatories, local businesses and schools to increase astronomy awareness, provide educational opportunities, and improve workforce development. In addition, many impressive activities are hosted by the Mauna Kea Visitor Information Station, located at the 9300 foot level of the mountain. The nightly public observing program at the Mauna Kea visitor center draws an estimated 50–100 attendees each clear night. While the IfA is heavily engaged in outreach on the Big Island, it is clear that we need to do more both to engage the general public and to raise awareness of what we as an Institute are doing. We are working closely with all of the other stakeholders through the MKAOC to define the biggest outreach demands and determine how we can best meet them without duplicating the efforts of others. One example is a proposed development of a teacher workshop for the west (Kona) side of the island, which has historically received much less attention since most of observatories and ‘Imiloa are located in Hilo. With a new level of cooperation among all of the astronomy entities, and the arrival of TMT, IfA is positioned for a new level of community involvement.

A3. Other Outreach Activities IfA’s public outreach programs have developed organically over the past decade, spurred by individual faculty, staff and students. We now have annual Open Houses at our Maui and Oahu locations, with 300 and 1250 attendees, respectively. The Friends of the IfA support the Frontiers of Astronomy Community Lectures, held quarterly on the UH Manoa campus. These have grown to 200–250 attendees and are a source of new contacts for friend-raising. Our astronomers regularly give talks to Rotary and other civic clubs and participate in events like the Hawaii Book & Music Festival. On Maui, we launched the monthly Maikalani lecture series in 2008. These are typically attended by 50 visitors as well as being broadcast on the web and in Second Life. IfA faculty and staff often mentor Hawaii State Science Fair projects, and faculty also serve as judges for the fair. The graduate students have formed the Graduate Education and Public Outreach Committee (GEPOC), through which they engage in a variety of activities. They primarily take our portable StarLab planetarium to K–12 schools; about 25 school visits happen each year. They also utilize a suite of telescopes for school stargazing events as well as a summer evening series at the Hono- lulu Zoo. The demand for this type of outreach is extremely high, and we cannot currently fulfill all of the requests. We are seeking to fund a graduate outreach TA-ship, which would double our capacity for StarLab shows.

74 Many groups are taken on tours of Haleakala and Mauna Kea, and our astronomers participate in many STEM career days and events around the state. We also strive to take advantage of unique opportunities. In 2005, over 10,000 people on Waikiki Beach watched the Deep Impact spacecraft hit Comet Tempel 1 in 2005. In 2011 the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit was held in Honolulu, and IfA took part in a science and technology exposition at the Honolulu Convention Center. This provided an opportunity to highlight some of our achievements to the governor, legislators, and the international community. Our display is now featured in a year-long exhibit in the Center. We just had major events for the June 2012 Venus Transit, with about 15,000 guests on Waikiki Beach, at the Pacific Aviation Museum and Ko Olina resort, and hundreds on Haleakala and Mauna Kea. Using special donor funds, we purchased over 25,000 handheld solar viewers which feature the IfA and UH logos, and have been distributed free for this event. Webcasting of the transit by NASA was supported by the IRTF, headquartered at IfA.

Figure 8.1. Venus Transit at Waikiki Beach. Specific projects within the IfA also have their own outreach programs. The UHNAI, in addition to funding ALI‘I and HI-STAR, co-sponsors public talks and graduate-level summer and winter schools. The Pan-STARRS project has multiple programs involving K–12 students in asteroid discovery. The computation heliophysics group ran a 2-year program for science education centered on the Sun and magnetic fields. The IfA is also expanding its presence on the Internet and through social media. The IfA web page is continuously updated by our Publications Office with the latest event information and press releases. In 2010 the website was redesigned to provide a more streamlined and attractive user experience, and we continue to seek ways to make it more interactive and informative. We have also established a presence on Facebook and Twitter, allowing us to communicate with interested people and improve our fundraising base. In other media, we are striving to improve our relations with local print news, radio, and television stations. Recent years have seen numerous interviews with our astronomers, a series of TV news segments on our Maui research, and a

75 growing number of press releases. We are also emphasizing the importance of public communication within the IfA. Our Publications Office is staffed with a scientific editor and a graphics de- signer, who are responsible for press releases, parts of the website, advertising materials for events, and helping with posters for conferences.

A4. Outreach Funding IfA’s outreach is funded from two main sources: federal grants for both formal programs (HI- STAR, ALI‘I, Akamai, etc.) and individual astronomers’ programs through their own grants, and through donations. The latter support most of our informal but highly successful programs like StarLab visits, stargazing, and public events. Growing our outreach and education activities will require increases in both funding sources. We are increasing our interaction with other schools and departments within the University that have very successful outreach programs, including the College of Engineering and the math department. Leveraging that expertise, and with the potential appointment of an outreach “czar” reporting to the Director’s Office, we will compete for federal and private grants for specific outreach initiatives. We are also examining the feasibility of developing a small number of Insti- tute-wide outreach programs, which can be used within NASA and NSF funding proposals. These projects would incorporate the EPO funding from voluntary participants’ federal grants to achieve significant impacts, beyond those achievable by an individual investigator. Donor support is an essential ingredient of our outreach programs. Donations can provide both discretionary funds as well as underwriting specific projects. Since the previous self-study report, the Friends of the IfA have become an integral part of the IfA’s outreach and fundraising strategy. Anyone interested in the IfA or astronomy is invited to become a Friend; to date we have ~1500 Friends. From these, we cultivate donors, who give any amount from a few dollars to major support. All Friends receive email notifications of our public events, while Donors are invited to special functions like lab tours, pre-talk receptions, and summit tours, and receive a quarterly newsletter, Na Kilo Hoku, highlighting recent IfA achievements. The Friends are led by a faculty chair (Dr. Roy Gal) and a Council consisting of about a dozen of our most active and interested supporters. We are also seeking more private sponsorships for outreach activities. As an example, this year we will have the inaugural Sheraton Waikiki Explorers of the Universe lecture, the first in a series showcasing some of the world’s best known astronomers, held at the University’s Kennedy Theater. More details about fundraising are provided in Section D below.

B. Community Relations Astronomy is typically considered a low-impact enterprise in terms of the environment and resource utilization. In Hawaii, however, the summits of both Haleakala and Mauna Kea are considered by some groups to be sensitive sites for cultural, environmental, and religious reasons. Resistance to new development may have peaked with the opposition to the construction of the Keck outriggers. The new Mauna Kea Comprehensive Master Plan aims to address many of the issues raised in the past years related to use of this valuable resource. Nevertheless, both the TMT and ATST have faced challenges in public hearings as well as the courts. Although we can never satisfy every possible constituency, the significant reduction in vocal opposition to these projects, and an increase in support from many segments of the local community, demonstrates a major improvement in community relations by a proactive campaign to explain our mission and accomplishments. As these major projects begin construction, and other planned programs like Pan- STARRS unfold, it is essential that IfA proves itself to be a valuable member of the community and an excellent steward of public resources. Mike Maberry has been serving as head of the IfA’s community relations program. His expertise resulted in the “painless” approval for the Faulkes project by both the BOR and DLNR. Maberry was also active in helping UH win the operating contract for the Maui Supercomputer Center. In

76 contrast, the failed approval process for the “outrigger” telescopes for Keck, including opposition from the state’s Office of Hawaiian Affairs, made it clear that there remains much work to be done. Even non-observatory events like the eventual cancellation of the Hawaii Superferry have clearly shown that excellent public relations, a clear explanation of the project, serious attention to opposing arguments, meaningful attempts to address public concerns, and proper management of the Mauna Kea Science Reserve and the Haleakala facilities are crucial to the success of future projects. To this end, a new Mauna Kea Comprehensive Management Plan was completed in 2002, although it continues to face some court opposition. Recently the TMT and ATST projects have made significant investments in public relations, community development, and education as part of their efforts to gain approval. Although they both face legal challenges to their Conservation District Use Permits, their efforts have paid off by garnering broad support and reducing the opposition to a small minority. There remains a concern that IfA in particular suffers from lack of a clear image and even a negative connotation among community audiences. This is in contrast to some of the observatories, which are looked upon more favorably. Part of this dichotomy is in IfA’s (and the University’s) dual role as both stewards and users of the land. IfA is sometimes viewed as benefiting (in observing time) from the major investments by the observatories, and that therefore we must invest some of that “benefit” in the broader community. Addressing this requires careful consideration within the IfA in consultation with University of Hawaii and current and future observatories, because IfA, as a research institute, does not have the resources to mitigate all of these concerns. These complex relationships pose a challenge to the IfA. It is obvious that we must be much more proactive in not only outreach and education, but in raising awareness of IfA’s contributions to the community as well. This requires a mix of new programs and especially new marketing and branding strategies to highlight the enormous amount of community engagement already under way.

C. Media Relations At the time of the previous self-study report, media relations were seen as a significant challenge, with little in-house expertise and poor performance from the University’s press office. Since then major improvements within the IfA have resulted in an effective media presence. IfA’s Publica- tions Office, staffed by a scientific editor (Louise Good) and graphic artist (Karen Teramura) routinely work with astronomers to craft attractive, well-written press releases, a number of which have garnered national and international attention. The publications office and our events coordinator enjoy good relations with the press as well as radio and television stations, so that direct communication with these outlets is better able to produce media exposure. Currently, IfA produces about one scientific press release monthly. We believe that this could be doubled, and that we have the internal capacity to produce the necessary materials. The biggest challenge now is finding the right stories, which currently requires an astronomer to bring their discovery to the attention of the Publications Office. We are working to encourage this type of activity, which is not seen by everyone as part of their mission. In addition to scientific discoveries, the same mechanisms are now working to disseminate information on our public events. Our quarterly Frontiers talks are broadly advertised; the Manoa Open House receives good press attention, and awareness of major events like the Deep Impact and the Transit of Venus viewings is high in many segments of the community. Our recent Face- book and Twitter presence has enabled new communication opportunities with a global presence. We have had success in highlighting IfA and its role in Hawaii in special media stories, such as television news segments on our solar research and our presence at the APEC summit. One aspect of media relations that requires improvement is spreading awareness of our nearly daily community involvement. Very few people know that we are regularly in schools providing astronomy education, training teachers, and developing a high-tech workforce, all at no cost to

77 the citizens of Hawaii. Our Publications Office, along with those involved in outreach and education, are exploring ways to utilize our relationships with local media and other organizations to improve recognition of IfA’s role in the community. This is an area that requires a cohesive and comprehensive strategy, one that remains to be developed.

D. Fundraising Raising funds from private sources has a long and successful history in U.S. astronomy, as evidenced by some of the observatories atop Mauna Kea. Historically, fundraising was not a focus of the IfA, but took on a larger role under its previous Director, Dr. Rolf-Peter Kudritzki. The current Director is heavily engaged in fundraising activities, especially in the cultivation of potential major donors. All fundraising within the University of Hawaii system is coordinated by and conducted through the University of Hawaii Foundation (UHF). UHF has assigned a part-time development officer to the IfA for many years, but the person assigned to this task is often rotated to another position, and it is a challenge for UHF personnel to understand the unique characteristics of the IfA. Addi- tionally, UHF has exerted control over which University units could solicit specific donors. Be- cause IfA has only produced graduate students, it does not have many alumni, which are UHF’s natural constituents. Recently, IfA has been given some leeway in seeking its own donors, although UHF retains its role in the donor process. The current IfA Director recognizes the need for long-term relationships with potential major donors. As such, a new program of special events for these prospects is under way, with a forward- looking goal of directed donations for specific IfA projects. Such an undertaking may take years to reap rewards, and it is important that the IfA and UHF remain committed to this goal. In addition to soliciting major gifts, the IfA has created a successful Friends of the IfA program. At the time of the last self-study report (2001), the Friends, under the leadership of a development officer from UHF, raised $22,000 in a one-year period. Unsatisfied with this performance, responsibility for the Friends was brought within the IfA, and is now headed by a faculty member (Dr. Roy Gal). Annual donations range from $40,000–$100,000, a major improvement. These funds are available for discretionary use, and typically underwrite equipment and travel for outreach and education, such as our APEC display, telescope components, and the like. Friends have provided major support for IfA initiatives, including the purchase of a minivan for transporting equipment to outreach events, and funding for prospective graduate students to visit IfA. A “wish list” of modest items was recently developed, resulting in targeted donations for classroom and lab equipment, and a special appeal for donations funded the purchase of more than 25,000 solar viewers for the Venus Transit. We have an annual appeal for donations, coordinated with UHF. Increasing the breadth of this appeal has been a goal for some years. The IfA must find ways to cooperate with UHF while growing its donor pool. Astronomy is a field that excites much of the public, and many individuals and corporations have supported both research and outreach. It is vital that the IfA improve its fundraising performance by identifying clear priorities and seeking new opportunities. Increases in media exposure, public awareness of our achievements, and recognition as a leading research facility, along with exciting opportunities and a commitment to engaging with potential donors, will be needed to achieve significant progress.

78 9. Funding and Budget

As is clear from preceding sections, the IfA is a complex organization. This same complexity ex- tends into the Institute’s funding and budget.

A. Funding Sources The University operates on a July through June fiscal year, as does the State of Hawaii. The In- stitute derives its funding from four distinct sources: A1. State Appropriated Funds Through the Hawaii State Legislature, the University is appropriated State general funds annually. In addition, the Hawaii State Legislature has allowed the University to retain tuition revenues earned, and through Hawaii Revised Statutes Chapter 304-8.1, the University is allowed to keep all indirect funds generated from extramural awards. All these funds are considered “appropriated” funds and have averaged a total of $9.6 million per year over the last four years. Following is a further discussion of each. General Funds (G funds) G funds can only be used to pay salaries for G-funded personnel, per University policy. The IfA has G funded personnel amounting to 64.5 FTE with an annual salary cost of approximately $7,000,000. The associated fringe benefit costs for G funded personnel (payroll taxes, health insurance, temporary disability, pension, etc.) are paid by the Hawaii State Department of Ac- counting and General Services and not through an allocation to the University/IfA. Other associated G funded personnel costs, such as computer services recharge costs and administrative recharge services costs, have to be paid from other sources. Since IfA has significant costs other than G funded personnel salaries, IfA negotiates with the University an exchange of G funds for T funds. Tuition Funds (T funds) The IfA does not “earn” much tuition revenue. However, T funds are needed to pay expenses other than G funded salaries. IfA negotiates an exchange of G funds for T funds with the University so that IfA can pay for non-G funded personnel costs, telescope costs, computer services recharge costs, administrative recharge, CFHT contract, etc. Research and Training Revolving Funds (R funds) At the end of the fiscal year, the University calculates the indirect costs collected on extramural awards by unit and then by principal investigator and distributes 50% of the indirect costs earned to the respective units the next fiscal year as R funds. The University retains 50% of the indirect costs earned to pay for indirect costs such as sponsored project administration, department administration, student services, etc. The University usually expects each unit to provide the necessary start-up funds for new faculty as well as “matching funds” for grants from its RTRF allocation. The Institute’s RTRF allocation for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2012 was $1.5 million.

A2. Private Funds The Institute has a modest endowment, the Parrent Endowment ($600 K), which provides an in- come stream to support the Parrent Postdoctoral Fellowship program. The Lumb Family Tele- scopes Fund ($680 K) has supported telescope development over the years and has $450K remaining for this purpose. The Institute also receives smaller gifts through its Friends program. Private funds are the only funds that the Institute may use for entertainment expenses.

79 A3. External Funds External (extramural) funds are derived from grants and contracts that the Institute receives. Al- most all of these come from Federal agencies (principally NASA and NSF) and are generally referred to as F funds. Unlike Institute funds, external funds are almost always restricted to a specific purpose. As explained above, external funds bring with them a reimbursement of indirect costs, a portion of which are returned to the Institute through the RTRF allocation. External awards have generally been around $22 million per year (see Figures 9.1-9.2 and Appendix 9.1).

Total Extramural IfA Funds

1996-2011 - $292.9M

Total Research

EPO

Instrumentation

Facility/ Operations

Figure 9.1. Distribution of extramural funds over different categories.

Total IfA Research Funding 1996-2011 - $71.9M

Extragalactic Galactic/Stellar

Star Form/ISM

Solar Planetary

Figure 9.2. Distribution of research funding over different fields at IfA.

The National Science Foundation has recently published a report entitled “Academic Research and Development Expenditures: Fiscal Year 2009” that lists all US universities (http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/nsf11313/content.cfm?pub_id=4065&id=2). This report also spells out the R&D expenditures for the physical sciences of all universities and separates out astronomy funding in 2009. According to this information, IfA (Astronomy at UH Manoa) ranks number five in extramural funding among all US universities with astronomy programs (see Table 9.1). It also shows that UH Manoa R&D in physical sciences is dominated by astronomy.

80 Table 9.1. NSF Ranking of Extramural Funds in Physical Sciences & Astronomy Rank Institution All physical sciences Astronomy 1 U. AZ 177,776 143,829 2 U. CA, Berkeley 99,763 50,524 3 U. CO all campuses 86,538 42,056 4 Johns Hopkins U. 146,274 40,342 5 U. HI Manoa 43,051 36,421 6 U. CA, Santa Cruz 41,074 24,640 7 MA Institute of Technology 114,870 22,423 8 U. MD College Park 82,747 21,334 9 U. TX Austin 101,864 17,510 10 U. Chicago 51,984 15,250

A4. Funds Summary Figure 1.2 (left) presents a 10-year history of the Institute’s General, RTRF and Tuition funds. Figure 1.2 (right) provides a similar diagram for the total funds, including the external (F) funds. IfA faculty have on average brought in a total of ~$22M in extramural research grants annually to the University of Hawaii over the past five years. Averaged over the past ten years, the ratio of extramural funds to internal funds (G, RTRF and Tuition) is 2.6. The total extramural funds over a 15 year time span are broken out in different categories in Figure 9.1. According to this diagram, external funding for instrumentation took the largest share, followed by the operation of telescopes and basic research funding. The research funding is further broken out in Figure 9.2 in its distribution over the main IfA research areas.

B. The Institute Budget The Institute Budget includes in its scope all activities that are funded by G, T, R and Private funds. The FY 2012 Institute Budget, totaling $10,397 K, is presented in Figure 9.3. Faculty salaries include Director and Associate Director Salaries. CFHT support includes the UH contribution to the operating budget, the CFHT Resident Astronomer salary, and CFHT MKSS road costs. The UH 2.2 m telescope budget also has extramural support not reflected above. Research support includes expenses for the Faculty Chair, instrumentation, library, colloquium, etc. The Manoa operations includes the balance of the Director and Assoc. Director office budget, plus the Graduate Chair budget. Manoa does not pay utility bills or janitorial services. Public information and Outreach are discrete costs in the Associate Director's office budget. Distributed Services costs are budgeted at 10% of Modified Total Direct Costs to support secretaries, additional administration, publications/graphics, etc. CSRS costs are budgeted on a per capita basis; rates are established yearly for faculty/postdoc, administrative, technical employees and others.

FY 2012 Institute Budget $K % Research Activities 1% 1. Faculty Salaries 5406 52% 4% 2. CFHT Support 850 8% 5% 3. Haleakala Development 656 6% 4. 2.2-meter Telescope 407 4% 7% 5. Research Support 406 4% 1% 7725 74% Base Operations 2% 6. Maui Operations 396 4% 2% 7. Manoa Operations 197 2% 4% 8. Hilo Operations 173 2% 52% 9. Public Info and Outreach 130 1% 4% 896 9% Administrative and Other Ser- 4% vices 10. Distributed Services (ARS) 765 7% 6% 11. Central Administration 566 5% 12. Computing/Networking Ser- vices (CSRS) 384 4% 8% 1715 16% Contingency 60 1% Total 10397 100%

Figure 9.3. FY 2012 Institute budget.

82 10. The Future of the Three-Island IfA The distribution of IfA staff and associated teaching and facility commitments by island is illustrated in Table 10.1 (see also Table 1.1). Over the last decade the variances illustrated here have evolved considerably. Differences in scientific focus, perceived infrastructure support, and perceived detachment from Institute priorities contribute to a diversity of opinion on the effectiveness of our multi-island programs. The IfA T/T staff retreat touched on a few of these issues. 1. How can we effectively engage graduate students in research programs on the neighbor islands? Some progress was made with Manoa support for 699 students to travel and work on Maui in 2012. A similar model can also work for Hawaii Island. Should it be a priority that REU students are placed on all islands for summer research programs? In the near term we plan to accept masters students into our graduate program for specific projects (e.g. instrumentation) on the neighbor islands. Agreements with UH Hilo and UHMC to fund TA- ships for our graduate students teaching on their campuses are under discussion. 2. Teaching commitments of neighbor island faculty are complicated by their lack of proximity. Is Polycom an adequate teaching medium for graduate classes? What resources are needed to productively engage neighbor island instructors in a, perhaps less centralized, IfA Manoa graduate program. Can these resources be programmed to accomplish the long-term goal of integrating neighbor island expertise with Manoa graduate students? How to fairly fold institutional astronomy and instrumentation teaching commitments at UHMC or UH Hilo with central IfA teaching requirements? The new Astronomy and Astrophysics undergraduate programs in Manoa will cooperate and share resources with the Astronomy undergraduate program in Hilo. 3. IfA facility growth in the last decade has been on the neighbor islands (new buildings and telescopes). Should IfA scientific staff continue to expand there or are these most efficiently operated centrally and as remote facilities. 4. IfA outreach and broader teaching activities have had a different role on each island. Should these activities have a higher priority IfA-wide, and how can their outcomes be tracked, sus- tained, or possibly expanded? 5. IfA connections to local industry and industry-academic partnerships have had a different role in each island’s IfA program. Should these be centralized and should support continue for such activities? Table 10.1. The Distributed Three-Island IfA Island Staff/TT Mountain Teaching Facilities IfA Telescopes Commitments Hawaii 84/5 see Table 2.2+ TMT Manoa Office, Labs, Summit Hilo Maui 36/2 AEOS, Mees, PS1, Manoa Office, Labs, TLRS, LCOGT, UHMC Summit, Waiakoa SOLARC, ATST Oahu 177/33 Manoa Office, Labs

11. The Mauna Kea Observatory (This section has been prepared as input to the NSF portfolio review in Jan 2012) Mauna Kea is a tremendous asset to the US community representing a site with decades of investment. Building on this investment in the next decade is critical to retaining a competitive US position in ground-based astronomy. The Telescope System Instrumentation Program (TSIP) has been a widely recognized success in providing community access to unrivaled private facilities as well as enabling those facilities to develop in a manner that is coordinated nationally. The Mid- scale Innovation program was highly ranked in the Decadal Survey, and its realization is key to maintaining front-line capabilities on our observatories. Mauna Kea offers the potential for cost- savings at a time of financial hardship through new international partnerships, shared instrument development and better coordination of operations.

A. Background Mauna Kea hosts the largest astronomical observatory in the world. The exceptionally dry and stable atmospheric conditions at its 4200 m altitude combined with its dark sky make this the Northern Hemisphere’s premier site for ground-based astronomy. Currently there are thirteen telescopes operating on Mauna Kea, enabling observations of the universe from the radio to the ultraviolet part of the electromagnetic spectrum. In terms of collecting area of optical and infrared (OIR) telescopes, Mauna Kea is quite comparable to the facilities of the other major player in ground-based astronomy, the European Southern Observatory in Chile. This similarity may extend well into the future, if both the European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) in Chile and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) on Mauna Kea are built. However, it will be a decade or more before this next generation of large telescopes is available. In the meantime it is imperative that we keep the most powerful US 8–10 m telescopes at the international forefront of research, in particular with upgraded instrumentation capabilities. The governance and funding organization of the telescopes on Mauna Kea is substantially more complex and internationally diversified than that of ESO. This presents challenges but also opportunities for future development on Mauna Kea. In particular, the international scene is changing rapidly. The new economies around the Pacific Basin are aspiring to become major players in science and technology, including astronomy. Mauna Kea is in an excellent position to embrace and capitalize on this emerging interest. We suggest that strategic cooperation among the optical/infrared telescopes on Mauna Kea, enabled by appropriate seed funding for competitive instrument development, could help US astronomy to achieve some of the highest scientific priorities laid out in the Astro2010 Decadal Survey despite the highly constrained budget conditions. A key element of our plan is the intelligent combination of public, private and university resources with international partnerships to provide the US community with enhanced observational capabilities.

B. Building on Existing Structures: The Observing Time Exchange Program For almost one decade now there has existed an observing time exchange program between the 8–10m telescopes on Mauna Kea: Keck, Subaru and Gemini. This program provides access to these large telescopes and provides links between the various distinct communities. In particular it allows access to unique capabilities on the individual telescopes. This program, although kept at a rather modest level, has been a great success, and it has the potential to expand considerably in the future. No exchange of funds is involved, and each observatory uses its existing Phase 1 proposal system to support proposals. As a result the management overhead is small. The oversubscription from the Gemini and Subaru communities for access to each other’s telescope has been very healthy in the last few years, sometimes reaching factors of 5–6. The number of nights offered has been capped at 5 per semester to ensure minimal disruption to baseline operations. Both

84 observatories place no restrictions on which instruments are offered through this program. The exchange time program between Keck and the 8 m telescopes is somewhat more restricted and consequently has been less in demand. The scope of observing time exchange on Mauna Kea could be expanded significantly in the future, involving more nights, and perhaps also other telescopes. This would allow US astronomers access to unique capabilities. It would become particularly attractive if the cooperative strategic planning and joint instrument development concepts discussed below were instituted.

C. Strategic Planning for Major New Instrumentation Modern-day astronomical instruments are far more capable, complex and expensive than those of 20 or 30 years ago. Today, the cost of a competitive instrument can easily be 20% or more of the cost of the telescope on which it is used. This is a qualitative change in relative cost, and it calls for a qualitative change in how we do strategic planning for instrumentation. Astronomers have long abhorred the thought of a telescope sitting idle on a clear night, but nowadays an idle instrument should elicit a similar reaction. In the strategic planning for new instrumentation, we must avoid duplication and must arrange for these expensive instruments to be used as much of the time as possible. Such a strategy of course meshes perfectly with the time-exchange programs introduced above—in fact the two are interdependent. Given the variety of organizations on Mauna Kea, and the different international funding bodies, it is impossible to harmonize the long-term strategic planning for new instruments in the same way as ESO can. However, some coordination and specialization has already been going on among the Mauna Kea 8–10m telescopes, as each has been developing its own special capabilities. Subaru, for instance, has the unique aspect of wide-field imaging and spectroscopy, with the new instruments HyperSuprimeCam (HSC) and the fiber-fed Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) coming online in the near future. Keck is exploiting faint multi-object spectroscopy with the pioneering instruments LRIS, DEIMOS and MOSFIRE. Gemini is optimized for the infrared and is the only 8 m telescope performing efficient queue observing, with ~25% dedicated to targets of opportunity. Each observatory community has its own traditions and procedures for the strategic planning for new instrumentation, and also its own funding boundary conditions. Here we propose to harmonize these processes in two different ways. First, we will hold larger grassroots community meetings exchanging views about future scientific priorities at regular intervals. Second, we will include a strategic planning element in the regular meetings of the Mauna Kea observatory directors. One could start by attempting to coordinate the design and construction of major new instrument capabilities and ensuring that they will be commissioned on the telescopes that can best accommodate and operate them. Eventually, consideration should be given to shared services to reduce operations and maintenance costs. This will introduce an additional incentive for coordinated instrument development. One positive concrete example can be seen in the Joint Astrometry Centre in Hilo, which is responsible for operating both JCMT (governed by the UK, Canada, and the Netherlands) and UKIRT (a telescope governed by the UK alone). Substantial cost savings have been achieved in recent years through coordination of JAC resources supporting both telescopes. This has been essential to continued operation of UKIRT and demonstrates that such arrangements are possible even with multinational funding and governance logistics. NSF could play a major role in persuading and funding the US observatories on Mauna Kea to investigate more efficient, coordinated development and operation in return for funding upgrades and new capabilities. A well-organized federation among the different telescopes on Mauna Kea will also allow a more efficient inclusion of new partners and potential new funding sources ultimately paving the way to an international Pacific Observatory Federation.

85 D. Cross-Observatory Instrumentation Cooperation Beyond the observing time exchange program, a number of other highly successful inter-observatory cooperative efforts already exist on Mauna Kea, e.g., the Hale Pohaku mid-level facility, which provides food and lodging for all observatories, and the extremely important Mauna Kea Weather Center (http://mkwc.ifa.hawaii.edu/), which gives crucial atmospheric information and summit forecasts to all observers using sensors from nearly all observatories. Looking ahead, there is great potential for inter-observatory instrument development. This is crucial to avoid duplication of efforts, to maximize return from a given instrument, and to optimally support time exchange programs. Arguably, the Gemini-Subaru idea of building the WFMOS wide-field spectrograph at the prime focus of Subaru, using joint Gemini and Subaru funding, has been the most ambitious attempt at inter-observatory collaborative development to date. In addition to developing the technical studies for WFMOS, an extensive draft inter-observatory agreement was negotiated between Gemini and NAOJ, which included terms for joint surveys using this remarkable system. Unfortunately, the cost for WFMOS proved to be too large for the Gemini Partnership, so the project was terminated after the design study phase. To be better prepared for future opportunities, it is important to understand why this project did not succeed. The basis for this collaborative development came from observatory staff in response to science initiatives that were broadly supported by the user communities of Gemini and Subaru (e.g., dark energy and galactic archeology). It was recognized that the same wide-field corrector and prime-focus facilities that were being developed for HSC could also support WFMOS, representing considerable cost savings and scientific synergy. On that basis WFMOS was supported at the agency level but in a funding environment that, in the end, proved to be un- realistic and unable to support a price tag of more than $70M for the instrument. Grounding such major new initiatives in realistic levels of funding from various agencies will be crucial to ensure their success in the future. Nevertheless Japan, in a new international partnership, is going ahead with a new version of the wide-field spectrograph concept via the PFS project for the Subaru telescope. If the CFHT Corporation succeeds in upgrading its telescope to a 10 m next-generation telescope (ngCFHT), uniquely dedicated to wide-field spectroscopy, this spectrograph could con- ceivable be the workhorse of this new facility. So while WFMOS may have been too ambitious in its time, we can see that future international collaborations are a powerful and natural means to realize the next generation of facilities. On a smaller scale, a new inter-observatory collaboration currently underway between Gemini and CFHT serves as a good example of innovative resource sharing. The GRACES project will fiber feed the CFHT high-resolution optical spectrometer ESPaDOnS from Gemini-N. A deploy- able fiber feed module will be built into the Gemini GMOS-N spectrograph, feeding a ~300 m run of high performance optical fiber that will be coupled to the ESPaDOnS entrance image slicer at CFHT. The first implementation of this hybrid telescope/instrument system will be used to demonstrate the anticipated performance of the system before it is further developed into a full facility-class system. Gemini is funding this new capability, at a cost which is an order of magnitude below what Gemini would spend to develop its own comparable system. This type of innovative collaboration yields millions in cost savings for new instrumentation, while opening up new avenues of research for the broader international community on Mauna Kea, including Gemini’s community.

E. TSIP and Mid-Scale Funding for Future Instrumentation The NSF TSIP program has had a major positive impact on the Keck telescopes in the past decade, having partly funded OSIRIS, MOSFIRE, KCWI, etc. The users of Keck benefit from new instruments, which have a huge reach and new capabilities while the broad US community gets access to a leading edge facility. Unfortunately, the TSIP program has been cancelled because of funding pressure at NSF. We argue here, that an adapted NSF funding scheme is essential to keep

86 the telescopes on Mauna Kea at the leading edge of research in the coming decade to the benefit of the US community. We discuss here the use of cross-observatory, next-generation adaptive optics (AO) development systems as an example of how large synergies could be exploited. Next-generation AO systems are one of the highest priorities in the Astro2010 Decadal Survey. Adaptive optics systems are commonplace on all of the large aperture ground-based astronomical telescopes in the world with no fewer than five first-generation “classical AO” systems on Mauna Kea. A wave of next generation approaches is being developed to address key deficiencies in the classical approach: aniso- planatism that leads to the variation of the point-spread function across the field of view with the resulting inability to access large portions of the sky and the relatively modest corrections that current systems achieve that are insufficient for very high contrast studies. On Mauna Kea: (1) Subaru has deployed a 188-element curvature system along with an extreme-AO system coronagraph, (2) Keck’s next-generation AO system (NGAO) will bring better correction, sky coverage, point-spread function uniformity, sensitivity and contrast, and (3) CFHT, Gemini and Subaru are exploring seeing improvements via ground-layer AO with on-sky tests and characterization planned on the UH 2.2 m telescope. The collaborative use of the UH 2.2 m as a technology development platform, as part of a coordinated strategy for demonstrating and prototyping new AO technologies, illustrates the type of resource leveraging possible across the Mauna Kea observatories. An approach that would enable new AO systems, with considerable benefit to the broader community, would involve the use of “mid-scale” funding from the NSF. Under this approach the University of Hawaii would offer to coordinate the cross-observatory development of these systems, providing lab, shop, on-sky demonstration with the 2.2 m telescope, and administrative infrastructure in their existing building on the UH-Hilo campus. Although the general concepts of next-generation AO systems have substantial differences, there are many common elements and needs for technology development, e.g., photon-counting NIR wave-front sensing arrays, adaptive secondary mirrors, advanced Raman fiber lasers, etc. It is obvious that for the Keck NGAO most of the development is being done by strong groups in California (e.g. UCSC/Lick/CfAO and Palomar/JPL/ Caltech), with a small but strong contingency at the Keck headquarters in Hawaii. However, almost all of the first generation AO systems on Mauna Kea required a significant period of commissioning and optimization. That expertise has been developed in the observatories, since it was largely done by the observatory teams and not the instrument build- ers. Maintaining a team of experienced AO instrumentalists across the observatories in Hawaii therefore would be beneficial to all the groups. Participating Mauna Kea observatories would exchange technical expertise to help implement a number of advanced AO systems at different facilities. In exchange for financial support, participating observatories would agree to provide access to the US community in a program akin to the TSIP program specifically tailored to AO development, consistent with the US AO Roadmap (http://www.noao.edu/system/aodp/AO_Roadmap_2008_Final.pdf). This win-win strategy would capitalize on the exceptional AO talent and singular investments in Hawaii now, while yielding exciting new capabilities and enabling access to all US astronomers. It is fair to say that no other site is better positioned today to leverage past investments and unique expertise in adaptive optics than the Mauna Kea observatories. This approach would make a large range of instruments on Mauna Kea available to the entire US community at an unprecedented level and in a cost-effective manner.

F. Summary The National Science Foundation should play a major role in enabling a strategic cooperation among the Mauna Kea telescopes and funding upgrades and new capabilities for the US community. Appropriate seed funding for a TSIP-like competitive instrument development, e.g., using the midscale funding scheme, is necessary to keep the telescopes on Mauna Kea at the leading

87 edge of research in the coming decade and would allow the US astronomy community to achieve some of the highest scientific priorities laid out in the Astro2010 Decadal Survey despite the highly constrained budget conditions. Ultimately, NSF could lay the foundation for a truly international Pacific Observatory Federation on Mauna Kea.

88 12. Future Telescope Projects

A. The Pan-STARRS PS1+2 Observatory The PS2 telescope is scheduled for delivery to the Haleakala site adjacent to PS1 in January 2013 and is expected to be fully commissioned and operational by the end of 2013. This would coin- cide roughly with the completion of the PS1 survey funded by the PS1 Science Consortium (currently secured funds expire 10/2012, but there is hope that a further year of operations funding will be found from a combination of NASA, NSF and from the PS1SC partners). While construction funds from the USAF were cut off by the ban on earmarks, funds for the construction of the telescope (under contract to AMOS in Belgium) and devices for the second Gigapixel detector (from MIT Lincoln Labs) had already been encumbered. The outstanding unfunded activities needed to deliver a fully functional telescope are the civil construction involved in renovation of the site and manpower costs associated with remaining software development and commissioning. Various options are being pursued to find the approximately $5M currently needed to complete PS2. After PS2 commissioning the PS1+2 system will, like PS1, be a UH/IfA-owned asset, but as with PS1, external funding sources will be needed for operations. One promising opportunity for operational support is to exploit the dependence of the European Euclid dark energy satellite project on PS1+2 for photometric redshifts (letters of understanding have been exchanged between the IfA and the Euclid Consortium Lead Yannick Mellier). Based on PS1 performance, it is estimated that to reach the required depth over the required 7,500 square degree Northern galactic cap survey region in g,r,i and z would take approximately 7 telescope years of operation. The baseline strategy is to devote roughly 50% of the time over the 7 years 2014–2020 to carry out these observations, which would result in the needed photometric redshifts in place at the start of the Euclid survey (launch is currently predicted to be late 2019). In this vision, a major fraction of the PS1+2 operations cost would be provided under the auspices of Euclid. To fund the rest it is anticipated that the IfA will form a new consortium, similar to that formed to finance PS1 operations, which will define how the remaining time will be allocated to support numerous other science goals. It is also likely that dedicated observing time will be made available for wide w-band observations needed to support near-Earth object searches under the NASA NEOO program. Similar possibilities involve providing dedicated support for microlensing to augment the OGLE project. Other NASA projects for which PS1+2 may provide critical support are FERMI, if extended, and WFIRST, if indeed this eventually becomes a reality. The science focus of PS1+2 will, over the rest of this decade and most likely beyond, be well aligned with the highest priority science goals identified by Astro2010 and other recent review panels. The data collected by PS1+2 will be complemented by other very wide field optical observatories (in the Southern Hemisphere: DEcam, Skymapper and VST; in the North HyperSuprimeCam on Subaru and PTF), by ground-based wide-field surveys in the infrared (VISTA and UKIRT), and space missions including Euclid and the upcoming all-sky X-ray survey eROSITA, which is due to launch in 2013. Another critical synergy will be with all-sky radio surveys using the Australian ASKAP and the Dutch upgrade to Westerbork, which are expected to become operational around 2014. IfA scientists will be able to exploit the survey data generated by PS1+2 for a wide range of science goals, and will also be able to benefit, through partnerships and memoranda of understanding, from association with these other surveys.

B. Pan-STARRS PS4 The scientific potential to the IfA from replacing the aging 2.2 m telescope with a much more powerful wide-field imaging system as envisaged in the original PS4 proposal remains very strong. While LSST emerged from Astro2010 as the highest ranked ground-based mission, there are still questions about the funding timescale, and even if ultimately successful there will still be

89 a need for wide-field imaging of the Northern Hemisphere. With PS1 now proving to be highly productive scientifically and with the anticipation of further science and improved performance from PS1+2, the case for a new system on Mauna Kea will be further bolstered. This vision, however, faces several major hurdles: The first is finding a suitable funding source. While ground- based wide-field imaging is central to both the space- and ground-based science goals recognized as of highest priority, federal funding is under threat and the chances of federal funding at the level required seems for the moment to be rather slim. The other is the question of support from within the IfA. Wide-field imaging of the kind pioneered by SDSS and being carried forward by Pan-STARRS and other projects mentioned above is recognized nationally and internationally to be essential to addressing the big questions in astronomy and physics, and these projects are providing massive return in terms of quantity and breadth of science output. While this motivated a number of the IfA faculty to contribute to building PS1 and PS2, many of the IfA faculty were drawn here primarily by the attraction of access to facility observatories on Mauna Kea to support their individual science interests, and they are not particularly interested in large-scale survey science, which more and more involves large collaborations. If wide-field survey science is to prosper at the IfA beyond PS1+2, then it will require a greater level of support from the IfA faculty and Director than currently exists. (At our recent retreat it was clear that there would be more support for a new “facility” telescope than for further extension of our survey capabilities.) However, many applicants for our recent faculty hires expressed strong interest in being involved in Pan-STARRS, and similar sentiments are often expressed by those applying to attend for graduate school here. Now that the early technical problems faced by PS1 have been overcome, and with the prospect of even better data from PS2, there is some hope that the level of support will increase. Even if these issues can be satisfactorily addressed, there still remains the question of what form a new survey system should take. Wide-field imaging is led by technological advances; much has changed in the decade since PS4 was conceived, and further advances are on the horizon. Much has been learned from the experience of PS1, so it would be highly desirable to take stock and carefully reconsider the design options before pushing ahead. Carrying this forward will also require an injection of new blood on the faculty to lead it.

C. ATLAS The ATLAS project (PI Tonry) seeks $4M from NASA to build a pair of observatories that will monitor half the sky to m = 20 for killer asteroids and all other phenomena of interest. Key projects beyond the solar system include a search for white dwarf planets, large-scale flows at z < 0.1 using SNIa, and a search for optical counterparts of gravitational wave events. ATLAS is also intended to be a Sky Atlas, providing 1000 observations per year of 1011 pixels over the entire sky. One million dollars of this proposal is for two years of operation, and ATLAS could create a $0.5M/yr stream of funding for continued operations. The extension of ATLAS to a worldwide network comprising many, many observatories is a real possibility, with the IfA hosting the data center that coordinates observations and extracts science. Such a data center would have an additional revenue stream and would employ a dozen people, and as much of the construction of new units could be managed by the IfA as makes sense. The expansion to a worldwide network (essentially doing a sky-wide discovery patrol, as opposed to LCOGT, which is designed for time-continuous follow-up), is also an idea whose day will be dawning in the minds of many people around the world. Finally, the concept of a data center that coordinates worldwide facilities and fuses their outputs is being implemented by LCOGT and the various microlensing, planet occultation, and GRB surveys, and will prove to be a productive way to do science in coming decades (as well as being lucrative for the hosting institution). It is particularly important because its value per unit dollar depends on Moore’s law, not optics and rockets, which will always be expensive per unit area and mass. Although the current budget climate in Washington is very difficult, NASA NEOO has agreed to fund the project, and at the current instant we are providing them with a revised budget.

90 D. The Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) The Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (Figure 12.1) is only a 4.2 m aperture optical/IR telescope, but it is the most expensive ground-based optical telescope ever constructed. It also represents the largest jump in solar observing capability since Galileo’s time and the largest “off- axis” optical telescope ever built. It has no pupil obstruction and is designed as a Lyot coronagraph for suppressing scattered light. The University of Hawaii is, and has been, critical to all phases of this novel instrument and facility. The current largest reflecting coronagraph (the off-axis 0.5 m SOLARC instrument) was built by the IfA in 2007 and was used to directly measure the Sun’s coronal magnetic fields. This technical demonstration became a key part of the ATST design decision, and provided practical proof that a large aperture coronagraph could achieve the scattered light suppression needed to see far above the limb into the solar atmosphere. The ATST design proposal was submitted to the NSF late in 2000. The lead institution was the National Solar Observatory, but the UH, University of Chicago, High Altitude Observatory, and Big Bear Solar Observatory (NJIT) were co-investigators for this $300M project. An extensive two-year, worldwide site selection activity followed, and IfA was heavily involved in it. This process ended in 2004 with the selection of Haleakala as the best site for ATST out of more than 72 that were initially considered. Haleakala was chosen based on its unrivaled daytime seeing conditions. The ATST construction proposal was submitted to the NSF the same year. In December 2009 the NSF agreed to fund the construction of the ATST.

Figure 12.1. The Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST). First-light instrumentation for ATST is complex and expensive by other 4 m telescope standards. By some measures the ATST is more of a polarimeter than a telescope, and each of its 4 NSF- funded first-light instruments has many operation modes to sample the 5-dimensional space of wavelength, diffraction limited spatial coordinates, time, and polarization state. The required polarization sensitivity surpasses any other optical system approaching this aperture, and the wavelength coverage at first light spans one and a half decades. The IfA was selected for two of these instruments, a diffraction-limited near-IR spectropolarimeter (DL-NIRSP, Lin PI) and a

91 cryogenic near-IR spectropolarimeter (CryoNIRSP, Kuhn PI). Each of these instruments is at or near the CDR stage and will be ready for construction in about one year. Even though ATST is a federal project, the IfA has guided and advised the NSO and NSF throughout the complex environmental and State permitting process. State and federal Environment Impact Studies were started along with National Historic Preservation Act and Endangered Species consultations in 2005. In December 2009 the Director of the NSF issued a Record of Decision for the construction of the ATST on Haleakala. The state application to allow Conservation District land use on Haleakala for ATST was then filed in March 2010. This was contested by a Hawaiian group that organized to manage this challenge (Kilakila ‘O Haleakala), and after several hearings, a recommendation to the DLNR board in favor of allowing construction and against Kilakila was obtained in March 2012. Due to irregularities in the hearing officer’s treatment of the case, the board vacated his recommendation, and a new officer was appointed in May of this year with a 60-day soft deadline to render a new recommendation. The UH as owner of the Haleakala summit land and our experience with telescopes and the State of Hawaii process have kept IfA involved as a key consultant throughout these legal actions. The ATST is the first large-aperture optical telescope the NSF has built which is expressly designed for scattered light suppression. It will be unique, and while most of its scientific focus is on expanding our understanding of the magnetized solar atmosphere, it seems likely that it could play a key role in a range of other astronomical problems that require high photometric dynamic range. While the mission of the ATST is currently limited to the study of the Sun, this could change once the telescope is commissioned and the community realizes its broader potential. CryoNIRSP is the only first-light instrument that has the necessary sensitivity for nighttime applications, which are, e.g., required for calibration purposes.

E. Partnership Role in the W. M. Keck Observatory IfA has started to discuss with the CARA Board ways in which we could enhance the collaboration between the University of Hawaii and the W. M. Keck Observatory. One such possibility would be for UH to participate in TSIP and other similar community access programs by contributing a pro-rata share of its observing time. In conjunction with this, we feel that an expanded UH role in observatory governance and instrument development would benefit our partnership. During the Institute for Astronomy faculty retreat in September 2011, and in subsequent discussions, we have developed the following proposal put forward to the CARA Board. Beginning 1 February 2013 (semester 2013A) for an initial period of 3 years, UH shall contribute from its share of observing time 12.5% of the time allocated to the TSIP program and to other similar programs. UH shall have one representative on the CARA Board. UH shall have the opportunity to participate in current and future instrumentation developments, and especially in those that are funded through TSIP or similar programs to which UH has contributed observing time. UH shall have two representatives on the Keck Science Steering Committee, one of whom would be the Board representative. IfA is enthusiastic about expanding UH’s involvement in the continued success of the Keck Observatory and hopes that this cooperation will naturally lead into a partnership with the TMT.

F. The Thirty Meter Telescope The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is a 30 m ground-based telescope with a collecting area of 650 m2 planned for construction on Mauna Kea. It will observe through the atmospheric windows from 0.31 to 28 μm. Advanced adaptive optics capabilities will allow highly sensitive, diffraction-limited observations beyond 1 μm over most of the sky. A 20 arcmin diameter field- of-view facilitates the deployment of wide-field, multi-object spectrographs. These capabilities will enable groundbreaking advances in a wide range of scientific areas, from the most distant

92 reaches of the universe to our own solar system, addressing many of the most fundamental questions in modern astrophysics. For more than a decade now, the Institute has been deeply engaged in promoting Mauna Kea as the best site for a next-generation telescope, such as the TMT. The Mauna Kea Science Reserve Master Plan, adopted by the UH Regents in the year 2000, anticipated such a telescope and identified an area on the northwest plateau as the most suitable site. This area was believed to have good atmospheric conditions, based on tests done in the 1960s, at a location known as 13 North (referring to its elevation of 13,000 feet). Equally important is the fact that this location, away from the summit ridge will minimize adverse impacts on the natural and cultural resources of the mountain. Serious discussions between the IfA and the TMT Project began about 10 years ago, and the two organizations collaborated closely on a comprehensive site characterization campaign at 13 North over the three-year period from 2005 to 2008. The campaign confirmed the excellence of the site and was a key factor in the project’s 2009 decision to come to Mauna Kea. Since then the IfA has been working closely with the TMT and its consultants on the permitting aspects. We are currently in the final stages of this process, awaiting the outcome of a “contested case” challenge to our Conservation District Use Permit. We hope to have the permit in hand by the fourth quarter of this year. TMT has informed us that they foresee a start of site work in the spring of 2014. As mentioned earlier (section 2B), the IfA has developed the Mauna Kea Observatories over the past 40 years by forging scientific partnerships between the University and the observatory organizations. The first such partnership resulted in the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). CFHT is owned and operated by a Hawaii-based not-for-profit corporation, the CFHT Corporation, whose members are the National Research Council of Canada, the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique of France, and UH. CFHT has been spectacularly successful, for world-class astronomy in general and for UH in particular. The tremendous benefit that UH and IfA have derived from CFHT is due, in no small part, to the fact that UH, as a member of the CFHT Corporation, collaborates on a peer basis with NRC and CNRS. Unlike our situation with other Mauna Kea observatories, UH is a full participant in all aspects of CFHT governance and operations. Of particular importance is the full participation in establishing scientific policy and instrumentation priorities and in the forefront work of building the sophisticated instrumentation that is essential for all modern telescopes.

Figure 12.2. The Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT).

93 We are now eagerly looking forward to the partnership with TMT. Already, IfA technical teams are developing instrument concepts and doing feasibility studies (e.g., for the TMT instruments MOBIE, NIRES and MICHI, as well as Ground Layer Adaptive Optics). Our ultimate goal is to achieve the same level of scientific and technical engagement that we enjoy with CFHT. In its retreat discussions in September 2011, the IfA faculty identified a TMT partnership as their highest priority strategic goal. TMT is also a not-for-profit corporation (albeit California-based). One obvious way to achieve our strategic objective of full participation would be for UH to become a member of TMT, as it is with CFHT. This would require a substantial commitment on the part of UH and the State, in terms of capital cost, in-kind contributions and operating funds, but so did the bold initiative 40 years ago that brought CFHT to Mauna Kea.

94 13. Future Instrumentation Focus

A. Adaptive Optics Development (Chun, Ftaclas) Adaptive optics systems are now commonplace with no less than five first-generation “classical AO” systems on Mauna Kea. At the IfA Francois Roddier pioneered the development of “curvature” AO systems that form the basis for systems on facilities such as Subaru, CFHT, ESO, and Gemini South. This path, continued by the current IfA AO group, culminated with the delivery of the AO system for the Gemini South Near Infrared Coronagraphic Imager (NICI). Now a wave of second-generation AO systems is being developed/deployed: Subaru has deployed a 188-element curvature system along with an extreme-AO system and coronagraph, Keck’s next-generation AO system (NGAO) will bring better sky-coverage/correction with the possibility of a future “multi- object AO” upgrade, and Gemini and Subaru are both considering “seeing improvements” via ground-layer AO. The IfA AO group needs to position itself to be a leader in the next generation of AO systems on Mauna Kea. In the past few years we (Ftaclas and Chun) have focused on three paths: continuing to develop curvature systems by pushing into the visible (AEOS telescope on Haleakala), leading the development of a Mid-IR AO system concept for TMT, and developing wide-field partial correction ground-layer AO (GLAO). GLAO is a key science enabler for the current generation of telescopes from the mid-sized telescopes (e.g., CFHT), to the current large telescopes (e.g., Subaru, Gemini), and including the ELTs. On Mauna Kea the confluence of superb free-atmosphere seeing (FWHM ~ 0.35") and a very thin ground layer (h ~ 30 m) makes it an ideal site for ground- layer AO. The IfA AO group has led this push with the detailed characterization of these conditions and, as a follow on, is now developing extremely wide-field GLAO for CFHT (the ‘IMAKA project). All of the optical/IR telescopes on Mauna Kea share these ideal conditions, and we see development of GLAO on Mauna Kea as the central path forward for the IfA AO group. How do we develop our expertise? Our initial efforts are on multiple fronts. First, Chun (IfA) is the PI for the CFHT ‘IMAKA project. The team has completed a feasibility study for a one-degree visible-wavelength GLAO+OTCCD instrument that delivers FWHM ~ 0.3" over the full field of view. The team is now working on an on-sky demonstration of the image quality and corrected field size that can be obtained. This work is an extension of our optical turbulence characterization, but we have extended the group to include both the Subaru and Gemini GLAO studies. Second, we plan to develop a 10' × 10' GLAO science demonstrator for the UH 2.2 m telescope to demonstrate GLAO on fields of view about one-order of magnitude larger than current systems and to demonstrate the science enabled by such a system. While the field of view is comparable to those foreseen for the 8 m class telescopes, (1) we have the opportunity and the interest to capitalize, technically and scientifically, on the capability in advance of others, (2) we leverage, technically and financially, our AO and large-area optical and NIR detector developments, and (3) we provide an ideal platform for our photon-counting NIR Avalanche Photodiode (APD) array development whose first-generation arrays are ideally sized for (and indeed designed for) AO wave-front sensing in the NIR on the 2.2 m. The team is currently seeking funding ~$1M for this demonstrator. We are actively collaborating with the Subaru and Gemini AO teams and should either of these facilities pursue GLAO, we envision a role for the IfA AO group. Ultimately our goal is to bring GLAO to TMT. TMT, with its known ground-layer turbulence (arising from the fact that it will be situated ~200 m below the summit peak), could have a GLAO system providing a ~7–10 arcminute field of view at the free-seeing limit (FWHM ~ 0.35" at 0.5 µm). This combination would be unmatched by any other ELT.

95 B. IR Detector Development (Hall, Hodapp) The program is currently focused on two areas: (1) continued development of the HAWAII series of large-format conventional charge-integrating HgCdTe arrays, primarily the 16 megapixel 4k × 4k H4RG-10 and 15, and (2) utilization of the unique linear avalanche properties of HgCdTe to develop noiseless IR photon counting arrays for astronomy. Both efforts are currently funded through awards of $6.9 M and $2.1 M from the NSF ATI program. Hall is Co-I on a pending Goddard proposal to the NASA ROSES SAT opportunity to space qualify the H4RG-10 and also PI on a UH proposal to the NASA ROESE APRA opportunity to continue development of photon counting HgCdTe APDs for ultra-low-background space astronomy applications. He is also involved in collaborations involving more advanced technologies such as superconducting kinetic inductance, cryogenic quantum dot and carbon nanotube detectors, and in the broader application of advancing photonics and nanostructures to IR detection. The H4RG-15 development (with Teledyne Imaging Sensors and GL Scientific) is just now completing Phase-1, under which two bare readouts and six hybrid arrays were produced and evaluated. Over the next year an additional eight hybrids will be attempted in a pre-production demonstration run. The best of the Phase-1 hybrids saw first light in ULBCam at the UH 2.2 m telescope on Mauna Kea May 7 (the first-light image is shown in Figure 6.34) . Comprehensive laboratory characterization in the IfA Hilo facility has shown that the noise performance surpasses that of the venerable H2RG arrays and also confirmed the effectiveness of several new readout modes. The HILO-32 photon counting AO wave-front sensor development (with Raytheon Vision Systems and GL Scientific) is nearing the end of Year 1. Several alternate readout options are at the foundry, having successfully completed CDR, and MBE growth is underway. The program is on schedule to deliver the first hybrid readouts to UH in the fall.

C. ATST Instrument Development (Kuhn, Lin) CryoNIRSP is a 0.5-5 micron resolution 100,000 precision spectropolarimeter for the ATST. Its spatial resolution is diffraction limited at the long wavelength end of its performance, and it is optimized for low scattered light performance for coronal and solar disk long-slit observations (with an additional multislit mode). The instrument is thus cryogenically cooled and based around multiple HAWAII-2 detectors. Its cost (without detectors) is approximately $5M. It has passed its preliminary design review and is awaiting its critical design review and construction funding. DL-NIRSP is a spectropolarimeter for the ATST project with flexible spectral (R = 50,000 to 200,000) and spatial resolution (1", 0.08", and 0.04" per pixel spatial sampling). It is designed for high temporal resolution disk and coronal imaging spectropolarimetry using multiple-long-slit or fiber-optic integral field units. It operates in the spectral window from 500 nm to 2500 nm, and is capable of making simultaneous observation in four spectral lines. DL-NIRSP’s budget is estimated to be $5.7 M. It has passed the preliminary design review in June 2011. The Critical Design phase is expected begin in July 2012, with construction starting in early 2014.

96 14. Roles and Rights of IfA Faculty This is the final report of the retreat working group to discuss mainly the non-tenure-track faculty, but also the tenured/tenure-track faculty at the Institute for Astronomy. This report discusses the non-tenure-track faculty at the Institute for Astronomy. Perhaps the most fundamental issue regarding this topic is that there has been no institutional vision of the definition, value, rights, and responsibilities of these faculty. Our current situation and associated practices have resulted without any collective discussion about what we want, why we want it, and how it advances our institutional goals. The tenure-track faculty took the opportunity afforded by the Fall 2011 Retreat to improve the current situation. This report provides factual background and describes the decisions made during and after the Retreat.

A. Factual Background

A1. History In 1967 the Regents established the IfA. In 1970 the Hawaii Legislature, through HRS Chapter 89, established Bargaining Unit 07 to represent University of Hawaii faculty. In 1974 Don Mickey switched from a tenure-track BU 07 position to a non-tenure-track, project-funded BU 07 position. This is the earliest example of a confirmed non-tenure-track faculty member. Different communications and decision-making among subsets of the faculty started at least as early as that time.

A2. Hiring of Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Most of the non-tenure-track faculty began their appointments at the IfA as postdocs. There are four ways these positions are filled (but there are five names for them): • Non-UH employees are people receiving stipends. Most of the current NASA Astrobiology postdocs are hired in this fashion. Some named fellowships also require this method (e.g., Einstein Fellowship). • Junior Scientific Researchers are non-regular RCUH employees. This category was established in 1994. “Postdoctoral Fellowship” is the IfA name given to this category in 2006. Most ordinary (i.e., PI-funded) postdocs are hired this way, as are fixed-term Chandra and Hubble Fellows. • Postdoctoral Researchers are regular RCUH employees. This category was established in 2006. These positions are long-term (>3 years) non-tenure track. RCUH requires that any IfA Postdoctoral Fellow (category 2) who is here longer than 3 years must be converted to one of these positions. • UH BU 07 employees were established in 1970. Table 14.1 gives the different benefits accruing to the four categories. The main difference is that a stipend-based postdoc carries no fringe benefits and so is cheaper for a PI. The only people at UH who are allowed to write proposals for funding are those with Board of Regents appointments, i.e., those in BU 07. However a very simple workaround exists for all non- BU 07 employees: Non-compensated Board Appointments. The procedure is simple enough that currently there are approximately 15 IfA postdocs who have these appointments. The authority to make such an appointment at UH is usually delegated to the Deans/Directors upon request of a PI, with final approval by the Vice Chancellor for Research. However at the IfA, individual postdocs have written HST funding proposals, which were submitted only with the Director’s approval. Thus in practice almost any postdoc at the IfA can write proposals for their salaries except those being paid by stipends, which are explicitly excluded by UH rules.

97 Table 14.1. Fringe Benefits Provided to Different Postdoc Hires Stipend Postdoc Postdoc BU 07 Fellow (JSR) Researcher Medical/Dental — X X X Workers’ Comp — X X X Unemployment — X X X Group Life — X X X Retirement — — X X Vacation — (X) X X Sick Leave — — X X Long Term Disability — — X X UHPA/RCUH Salary Increase — (X) (X) X Note: (X) means there is no formal mechanism, but workarounds exist.

A3. Profile of the Current Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Table 14.2 summarizes the current set of the 16 non-tenure-track faculty, their funding sources, and their supervisors. (For comparison, there are 40 tenure-track faculty.) There are two types of non-tenure-track BU 07 positions. This distinction is very important. a) Project-Funded, Project-Supervised (10 people = 3 IRTF, 2 Computer Support, 2 Solar, 1 CFHT, 1 NASA Astrobiology Institute and 1 Pan-STARRS). These people provide direct benefits to IfA, and sometimes the IfA is contractually obligated to hire them (e.g., CFHT). b) Self-Funded, Self-Supervised (6 people). There is a clear benefit to these people to be in these positions, but the benefit to the IfA is less direct. Most of this paper will focus on them, because the associated issues are the most unsettled. Note that a few non-tenure-track faculty receive partial G-fund salary support. The reason for this arrangement is that someone cannot use F funds as salary support to write new proposals. How- ever, all the self-funded faculty write proposals for salary support, so this arrangement is not applied uniformly. Table 14.2. Summary of Current Non-Tenure-Track Faculty (1) Project-Funded (N=10) (2) Self-Funded (N=6) Name G1 F PI Name G1 F PI Bus 0% 100% Tokunaga (IRTF) Cieza 0% 100% Self (Sagan Fellow) Connelley 0% 100% Tokunaga (IRTF) Ebeling 5% 95% Self Hope2 0% 100% Jefferies Gal3 100% 0% Self (Spousal hire) Keane 0% 100% Meech (NAI) Haghighipour 0% 100% Self Magnier 2% 98% Kaiser (Pan-STARRS) Jefferies4 45% 65% Self Morrison 100% 0% Hasinger (CFHT) Schörghofer 0% 100% Self Raja 0% 100% Hasinger (IfA computers) Rayner 2% 98% Tokunaga (IRTF) Rhoads 0% 100% Hasinger (IfA computers) Scholl 0% 100% Kuhn (Solar) Notes: 1G includes all State Funds (G, R, S, I) 2Currently on Leave Without Pay 333% of salary was funded by Social Sciences, until 12/31/11 4Full support 6/11–3/12, as interim Associate Director of IfA-Maui. A4. How These Issues Are Handled Elsewhere Hoping to benefit from existing practices, we talked with knowledgeable colleagues at some peer institutions about their practices. These institutions are Caltech, CfA/SAO, University of Arizona, University of California, Lowell Observatory and Carnegie/DTM. There is a wide range in practices (and a recognition that the general issue is complicated). Overall, the IfA is among the least restrictive in the process available to postdocs to become non-tenure-track faculty and the most open in the available privileges after they do so. One of the institutions did not permit postdocs to stay longer than three years under any circumstances and had no long-term soft

98 money faculty positions at all. We do not give a detailed comparison of the various institutional practices since some of those we talked with requested we not do so.

B. Decisions Made B1. Conceptual Framework for Progress The tenure-track faculty or subsets thereof met approximately 15 times from July 2011 to Febru- ary 2012 to discuss these issues. Attendance at these meetings ranged from the entire faculty at the Retreat, to the Faculty Advisory Committee, to small subcommittees. The discussion was guided by a conceptual framework of a few key ideas: a) We should produce a policy that advances our institutional goals. Focusing on a single individual (e.g., “we can’t do that because it will affect Person X”) is unlikely to be productive, would only add to our current tangle of practices and could appear to be arbitrary or subjective. b) We should be forward-looking and not bound to oddities in past hiring. While precedent is important in legal matters, it should not be overriding when developing policies to advance the IfA in the future. c) We should avoid appealing to the lowest common denominator. Instead, we should consider our imperative to improve the IfA. With this in mind, the minimum qualifications for joining the faculty should be each new member is better than the median. We want to grow the top half of the faculty, not add to the bottom half, to make ourselves better.

B2. Summary of the Discussion That Led to the Decisions 1. Do we want long-term, self-funded, self-supervised faculty? Our current situation is characterized by a passive acceptance of the steady growth of self-funded faculty. This is distinguished from having thoughtfully considered and then endorsed a specific course of action. Some considerations in answering this question are as follows: (1) If all current project-funded BU 07 faculty seek to become self-funded, then 32% of all faculty will be in this class, and (2) BU 07 members who are 75% G funded for 7 consecutive years may request that their position be converted to tenure-track (UHPA Contract XIII B 2). These considerations suggest that the IfA should proceed cautiously down this path, lest the number of faculty grow significantly without any conscious choice on our part. Nevertheless, self-funded faculty can bring substantial benefits to the IfA if they are substantially better than the current median faculty member. In support of this conclusion are the examples of other UH departments (SOEST) and outside institutions (Southwest Research Institute, Lowell Observatory, UC Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory, University of Texas and University of Colorado), where the self-funded faculty include very accomplished astronomers.

2. Who decides who becomes one? Currently, an individual self-funded faculty member decides. This is highly incongruous with our own practices and those of the US astronomy community. Self-selection is not the means to become a tenure-track faculty member; instead there is a much higher bar both to being hired initially and to staying indefinitely. Likewise, self-funded faculty at other highly ranked institutions are not self-selected, but undergo a rigorous process. The Berkeley Space Sciences Lab, for example, has a national competition for their senior fellows, with letters of reference and onsite applicant interviews. Appointments to become a senior research fellow at Caltech require a divisional committee review that includes outside letters and approval of the Caltech Institute Academic Council; such appointments require faculty sponsorship and are very rare.

99 One idea that has emerged from the discussions would be for the IfA to nationally advertise self- funded faculty positions, akin to a regular tenure-track faculty hire. Such a mechanism (a.k.a. “hunting licenses”) would yield a more open and competitive process, thus in accord with our imperative to recruit high-quality staff. The expectation is that a national competition yields higher performing faculty than does self-selection, although it is not known whether this effect still holds if the national competition is for a non-tenure-track position. This process would also allow us to review any current non-tenure-track faculty who choose to apply. Another benefit is that since almost no one is denied tenure or promotion at the IfA, in practice our best opportunity for a rigorous review is at the initial hiring. Finally, such an approach could allow us to add excellent faculty at times when our own budget cannot afford it. While the idea has significant potential, there are also practical issues to consider before pro- ceeding: a) We should start slowly to assess interest in such a scheme, say 2 hires over 4 years. While we at the IfA recognize a self-funded faculty position would afford many benefits that can leverage funding (e.g., near unparalleled telescope access and access to graduate students), the level of enthusiasm from the US community is unknown. In contrast to some of the afore- mentioned places, the IfA does not have an established history of offering such positions. Significant encouragement and recruitment might be needed by us to produce a strong applicant pool. b) An inevitable prerequisite for such hires would be an assessment of the applicant’s ability to raise significant external funds, which may disfavor more junior applicants. c) To make the positions more attractive (and comparable to some other places with such arrangements), we might need to offer a small amount of G funds for salary support, e.g., 10– 20% annually or some form of “insurance” in the event of unsuccessful proposals. Of course, if we do offer such funding, it seems reasonable to attach some duties that benefit the IfA. d) The current non-tenure-track faculty are eligible (and presumably encouraged) to apply for one of the nationally advertised competitive positions. The question naturally arises what happens if these faculty are not selected. As a reference point, tenure-track faculty who are denied tenure are required to leave UH shortly thereafter, but adopting this arrangement seems extreme. At the same time, automatic “grandfathering” of the current population seems equally extreme, since they would gain rights that they do not already have and without the same rigorous hiring and screening process for tenure-track hires.

3. What are the rights and responsibilities of IfA astronomers? As a professional organization, one effective means to view every employee’s role at the IfA is to consider their rights and responsibilities. The rights and responsibilities of each BU 07 subset derive from the nature of their positions, their qualifications and how they were hired. As described above, there are three distinct subsets of BU 07 faculty at the IfA, readily defined by the selection process by which they were hired: tenure-track (N=40), project-funded (N=10), and self-funded (N=6). In addition, it is highly desirable to have an internal organization that is simple and easy to remember. If we proceed with the hunting license mechanism, it seems natural that successful applicants of such a competitive process would receive the full rights and responsibilities of the tenure-track faculty, except for the right to participate in tenure decisions. This would include participation at the highest level, e.g., IfA Director search committee. The corollary to this approach is that non- tenure-track faculty who are not selected by this process would not receive the same rights and responsibilities as the tenure-track faculty, as they did not undergo a competitive hiring review by the entire tenure-track faculty. In addition the promotion review of self-funded faculty is often not as rigorous as the corresponding review of tenure-track faculty, since many faculty on the As- tronomy Personnel Committee reason it does not cost the IfA anything to promote them. Consid-

100 ering the discussion above, it also seems sensible that both project-funded and self-funded faculty have the same rights and responsibilities. In the past (though not currently), non-tenure-track faculty at rank five automatically earned the same rights as tenure-track faculty concerning meeting participation, decision-making, etc. This is a noncompetitive process that also does not follow the “add faculty above the median principle” described above, so this process should only be revived if it affords clear benefits.

B3. Decisions Made At the IfA Retreat in September 2011, the following were agreed upon unanimously or nearly so: a) A new category of “licensed” non-tenure-track faculty will be created and filled by a competitive hiring process. These faculty will have the same rights as the tenure-track faculty, except they will not participate in faculty hiring and promotion decisions. b) BU 07 will no longer be used to hire postdocs or staff for PI-scale projects. This category will only be used for long-term staff of designated major IfA-scale projects, the IRTF being currently the only such project. The Pan-STARRS project has decided that it will hire only RCUH positions. c) The rights and responsibilities of IfA astronomers will be similar to those discussed at the Retreat, with final modifications proposed by a subcommittee and adopted by a tenure-track faculty vote. A post-retreat subcommittee consisting of Habbal, Henry, Kuhn, Liu and McLaren held five lengthy meetings and reached consensus on many issues but was at an impasse on five items. The tenure-track faculty voted in March 2012 to decide these five items. The vote also decided three housekeeping issues: a) How many “licensed” faculty should be recruited during the initial solicitation (up to one) b) When would any changes from current practice go into effect (May 1, 2012) c) Whether to adopt the consensus recommendations of the subcommittee (yes). We show the result of all these deliberations in Table 14.3.

Table 14.3. Rights and Responsibilities of IfA Astronomers

101 15. The IfA Faculty Review Process (FRC) Since 2002 the Institute for Astronomy has instituted an internal faculty peer review process to assess the accomplishments of all IfA faculty members and their recent contributions to IfA’s mission. This review is carried out, typically every two years, by the “Faculty Review Committee” (FRC), which is a body elected by all faculty augmented by one additional faculty selected by the IfA Director. All BU07 members at IfA are asked to submit self-assessment forms to the FRC detailing their achievements in four categories: Research, Teaching, Service and Support. Typically 90% of faculty participate in this process in every round. Faculty are graded numerically in these four categories by the FRC on a scale 0–10. The results of this peer review process provide a basis for the Director to hold a one-to-one discussion with each faculty member about performance, accomplishments and possible improvements, and is also used as input for the Director’s recommendations with regard to Special Salary Adjustment (SSA) and promotion requests. In our faculty retreat in September 2011 the faculty once again endorsed the FRC process as appropriate and very helpful. It improves the internal working atmosphere and creates a salary structure that ideally reflects accomplishments and performance much better than a simple assessment by the Director. As an example, Figure 15.1 shows the distribution of the FRC ranks in the four categories for the 2011 evaluation.

Figure 15.1. Distribution of the 2011 FRC scores in the four different categories.

A. Application to Special Salary Adjustments IfA faculty members cover a broad range of activities, from high profile research and teaching scientists (typically R+I faculty), to colleagues charged with specific service and support tasks (S, B faculty). In many cases, an individual faculty member contributes significantly to three or even all four FRC categories. The IfA BU07 faculty, however, currently also includes postdocs and some non-scientific staff members. To judge the achievements of a particular faculty member the director has therefore weighted the four individual FRC grades according to the self-assessed fractions of time this faculty members spends on the different categories. This produces a weighted rank number R between 0 and 10. The typical statistical error on this quantity is about 0.7 units. In order to reduce the noise, and also to take into account a longer period, during which SSAs were not possible, the FRC results from the reviews in 2008 and 2011 were averaged. This also made it possible to include information for some faculty members who were evaluated in 2008 but did not participate in the FRC in 2011.

102 To compare the salary of an individual faculty member with their performance rating, one can look at the salary structure as a function of job experience. As seen in Figure 15.2, there is a clear trend of higher salary with growing experience in the first twenty years of a faculty member’s career. Starting from a salary level around $70k as a postdoctoral researcher, the IfA salary roughly doubles in the first twenty years. Thereafter, no trend is visible, however, considerable scatter remains.

Figure 15.2. The salary of IfA BU07 faculty members as a function of years in service. In face-to-face discussions with the individual faculty members, the Director then explored whether their salary, compared to the mean in their experience group, correlates with their performance ranking. In most cases there is a reasonable concordance between the delta salary and the FRC ranking, allowing for the scatter inherent in process. If the salaries of high profile researchers rank significantly lower than their performance achievements, it is possible to ask for a special salary adjustment. This has been done in 2011 for a group of tenured researchers who belong to the top 10 of their class in the performance ranking, with weighted grades around 8–9, but whose salaries were in the second tier. Figure 15.3 shows the correlation between FRC ranking and delta salary for the subgroup of tenured R/I and S faculty members after the proposed salary adjustments.

B. Issues with the Review Process The FRC process is based on review of individual faculty members by their peers. This approach works well in most cases but has limitations. First, a small number of faculty with specialized roles (e.g., computer support and librarian positions) effectively have no peers within the IfA, and their job descriptions map very poorly onto the standard form faculty use to report their activities. Second, team efforts can be difficult to evaluate; team members may describe shared objectives in very different terms, and individual contributions can be “lost in the crowd” unless they produce easily identifiable results such as first-author publications. Some of these limitations can be addressed by encouraging faculty members to submit more detailed narratives, but no perfect solution exists.

103

Figure 15.3. Correlation between the weighted FRC grade, averaged between the 2008 and 2011 review, and the deviation of the salaries compared to the mean in Figure 15.1 after the proposed salary adjustments. Blue dots show R4&5 Research (R) and Teaching (I) faculty. Green squares show R4&R5 faculty on service tasks (S).

Instrument development is a case in point. This is typically a team effort; moreover, the benefits of developing an instrument are not apparent for many years, and scientific credit largely accrues to the users. To some degree, narrative detail can help clarify an individual’s contribution to the overall success of an instrument. Demand for an instrument, which could be measured by analyzing observing proposals, could serve as an additional metric to assess instrumentation work. The standard LaTeX-based form used to report activities is somewhat inconvenient, and compiling statistics on recent publications, citation counts, grant support, teaching assignments, student evaluations, and committee memberships is tedious and error-prone. With some investment in software development, this form could be replaced by a PDF which would automatically include the key statistical data; fillable regions would be provided to allow faculty members scope to describe their activities and place the data in context.

104