Winter Solstice 2004
NO. 123 Solstice d'hiver 2004 Winter Solstice ISSN 0715-474 A publication of CASCA Une publication de la Casca Special Issue Celebrating 25 years of Science at CFHT
Potential Astronomical Sites in the Canadian Arctic
Events at NRC's HIA (2004 Sept.- Dec.) / Du neuf à l'IHA du CNRC (sept.-déc. 2004)
Legacy Survey Plans for the JCMT
Towards a National Science Data Archive
Gemini News
An ALMA Update
Reports
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A montage of stunning CFHT On the images. For more images visit Cover the CFHT web site at this link.
(return to front cover)
CASCA ● From the Editor ● From the President Soap Box
Features ● The Scientific Impact of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope by Dennis Crabtree (NRC-HIA) and Liz Bryson (CFHT) ● QSO imaging with the CFHT by John Hutchings, HIA ● « The seeing at the CFHT is very good. » by René Racine ● 25 years of spectacular discoveries with the CFHT coudé spectrographs - it was all in the detail by Gordon A.H. Walker ● Towards a National Science Data Archive by Elizabeth Griffin and David Schade
Reports
● CTAC report for Gemini & CFHT for semester 2005a / Rapport du CATC de Gémini & TCFH pour le semestre 2005a ● JCMT CTAG Semester Report 2005a / Rapport Semestriel du GATC du TJCM 2005a ● Coalition for Canadian Astronomy - Report on Recent Activities by Gretchen Harris
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News ● An Alma Update by Chris Wilson ● Events at NRC's HIA (2004 Sept.-Dec.) / Du neuf à l'IHA du CNRC (sept.-déc. 2004) by Jacques P. Vallée ● Potential Astronomical Sites in the Canadian Arctic by Ray Carlberg ● Gemini Observatory Update/Mise à jour sur l’observatoire Gemini by Dennis Crabtree ● Legacy Survey Plans for the JCMT by Doug Johnstone
Briefly ● LOT/TMT secures first C$10M by Ray Carlberg
Noted ● 2005 Whistler Workshop on Planetary Sciences June 5-10, 2005 by Doug Johnstone
In the Classroom get PDF version of this issue go to past issues of E-Cassiopeia...
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From the editor
President's report
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/soapbox/soap.html [12/21/2004 10:02:31 PM] editor's note
A special Christmas Season thanks to all of the many contributors to the Winter Solstice 2004 issue of E-Cassiopeia! I received a generous response from many of you. It is also a pleasure to devote the current issue to a reflection on 25 years of science done at CFHT. The articles provide insights into not only the importance of the work done at CFHT but also remind us of the science that remains to be done at this great site.
So, as the term comes to an end and, hopefully you find a chance to relax with family and friends take a few moments to sip and eggnog (or nogg of your choice!) and peruse the Winter Solstice issue of E-Cass.
Merry Christmas!
Brian Martin ([email protected])
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/soapbox/ed/ed.html [12/21/2004 10:02:32 PM] President's Report From the President ...
As the Winter Solstice approaches, the Le solstice d’hiver approchant, la version English-language version of the Mid-Term anglaise du rapport du Comité d’examen Review Committee (MTRC) Report has mi-mandat (CEMM) a été affiché sur le site appeared on the CASCA Web site, where Web de la Société canadienne it will be joined by the French-language d’astronomie (CASCA), où l’on y publiera version once it is translated and readied for la version française une fois qu’elle aura printing. I encourage all CASCA members été traduite et préparée pour l’impression. to read with care this Report, which J’encourage tous les membres de la documents accomplishments to date CASCA à lire soigneusement ce rapport, towards implementing the Long Range qui documente les progrès faits jusqu’à Plan (LRP). We owe Ernie Seaquist, présent dans la mise en oeuvre du plan à Chairman, and his committee - Hugh long terme (PLT). Nous sommes très Couchman, Gretchen Harris, Vicki Kaspi, reconnaissants envers Ernie Seaquist, George Mitchell, and Harvey Richer - deep président, et son comité - Hugh gratitude for their Report, whose potential Couchman, Gretchen Harris, Vicki Kaspi, impact on our collective futures cannot be George Mitchell, et Harvey Richer – pour underestimated. CASCA is grateful to leur rapport, dont l’impact potentiel sur Greg Fahlman (NRC-HIA) and Kate Wilson notre avenir collectif ne peut être sous- (NSERC) for their critical financial support estimé. La CASCA est reconnaissante of our MTR initiative. envers Greg Fahlman (IHA-CNRC) et Kate Wilson (CRSNG) pour leur soutien The MTRC’s careful analysis is already financier crucial de notre initiative à l’égard guiding the Coalition for Canadian du rapport mi-mandat. Astronomy in their quest for the funding required to complete the next seven years L’analyse très soignée du CEMM sert déjà of LRP activities. As reported elsewhere in de guide pour la Coalition pour this issue, the Coalition, led by Co-chairs l’astronomie au Canada dans sa recherche Gretchen Harris (CASCA), Pekka Sinervo du financement nécessaire pour compléter (ACURA) and Michael Joliffe (AMEC), held les activités du PLT pendant les sept a series of meetings in November and prochaines années. Comme on le December with decision makers in Ottawa, mentionne ailleurs dans ce numéro, la with more to come in the New Year. The Coalition, dirigée par Gretchen Harris Coalition will soon be approaching (CASCA), Pekka Sinervo (ACURA) et individual CASCA members to secure the Michael Joliffe (AMEC), avait organisé une support of your MPs for their campaign. série de réunions en novembre et décembre avec des décideurs à Ottawa, et At the Board’s 4 December meeting in d’autres réunions auront lieu dans la Toronto we reviewed Society activities nouvelle année. La Coalition s’adressera prochainement aux membres individuels file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/soapbox/prez/prez.html (1 of 4) [12/21/2004 10:02:32 PM] President's Report since Winnipeg. We heard of the exciting de la CASCA pour obtenir l’appui de leur plans for CASCA 2005 in Montreal, which campagne par votre député fédéral. promises to be a rich meeting, both scientifically and culturally. We held in- Nous avons examiné les activités de la depth discussions with Ernie about the Société depuis Winnipeg lors de la réunion MTRC’s Report, its publication and its du Conseil le 4 décembre dernier, à implementation. As well, we explored with Toronto. Nous avons pris connaissance de John Percy how to sustain financially the plans excitants pour CASCA 2005, à strong initiatives of the Education and Montréal, une réunion qui promet d’être Outreach Committee, whose grant funding enrichissante, tant sur le plan scientifique expires towards the end of 2005. que sur le plan culturel. Nous avons discuté en profondeur du rapport du Indeed, throughout much of our December CEMM, sa publication et sa mise en œuvre meeting, discussion focused on the avec Ernie. De plus, nous avons discuté, increasing pressure arising from avec John Percy, des façons de soutenir meritorious CASCA activities on our financièrement les bonnes initiatives du modest finances. Supporting the Coalition Comité d’éducation et de diffusion, dont les and MTRC activities is placing significant subventions prennent fin vers la fin de demands on CASCA reserves. The value 2005. of our prizes and awards is being eroded by inflation. The workload in our office has Pendant une grande partie de notre increased to the point where the Board réunion de décembre, les discussions decided to compensate Roslyn Hanes for portaient principalement sur la pression the hours she actually works on our behalf grandissante que nos activités méritoires (closer to 0.4 FTE than the 0.2 FTE in her de la CASCA ont sur nos finances contract) to prepare the Directory, improve modestes. Le soutien de la Coalition et des and update our Web site, collect dues and activités du CEMM demande beaucoup de chase down those of us who are tardy in réserves de la CASCA. La valeur de nos paying them, etc. We anticipate prix et récompenses est érodée par presenting a case to the membership next l’inflation. La charge de travail dans notre Spring for a dues increase that more bureau a augmenté au point où le Conseil accurately reflects current realities. a décidé de rémunérer Roslyn Hanes pour les heures qu’elle travaille pour nous (plus In response to comments from members, près de 0,4 temps plein, que de 0,2 temps the Board is making efforts to facilitate the plein, comme le mentionne son contrat) rotation of members into Society positions pour préparer le répertoire, améliorer et by developing written duties, expectations mettre à jour notre site Web, percevoir les and procedures. To that end we have droits et courir après ceux de nous qui les been for some time documenting the tasks remettent en retard, etc. Nous prévoyons of the Board positions, and are initiating an demander aux membres au printemps effort with our committees to capture brief, d’imposer une augmentation des droits qui clear terms of reference supplemented by reflète mieux les réalités que nous vivons. a summary of the mechanics of each file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/soapbox/prez/prez.html (2 of 4) [12/21/2004 10:02:32 PM] President's Report committee’s operation. Pour répondre aux commentaires de certains membres, le Conseil tente de We also began exploring whether the time faciliter la rotation des membres dans les might be right to consider some evolution postes de la Société en élaborant des of our operations. The LRP’s success tâches, des attentes et des méthodes arises from its clear focus on the écrites pour les postes. À cette fin, nous complementary observational and documentons depuis un certain temps les theoretical tools required to answer tâches rattachées aux postes du Conseil, fundamental science questions, while et nous avons mis sur pied un projet, en some of our committee structures and collaboration avec nos comités, pour saisir activities tend to be wavelength and/or un cadre de référence court et clair, ainsi technique orientated. Is CASCA’s basic qu’un résumé de la dynamique du committee structure appropriate to future fonctionnement de chacun des comités. needs? (Indeed, does the community require all the committees we have when Nous avons également commencé à those associated with CSA, NRC, NSERC, étudier la possibilité de modifier nos and our international facilities are opérations. Notre plan à long terme réussit included?) Is it perhaps time to rethink our parce qu’il se concentre clairement sur les organization in anticipation of the next LRP outils d’observation et les outils théoriques launch in late 2008? We are encouraging complémentaires nécessaires pour our committees to consider such répondre à des questions scientifiques questions, and invite your thoughts, as fondamentales, tandis que quelques-unes well. des structures et activités des comités ont tendance à porter sur les longueurs With best wishes to you and your families d’ondes et les techniques. La structure de for the holidays and in 2005! base des comités de la CASCA répond- elle à ses besoins futurs? (La communauté a-t-elle besoin de tous nos comités quand ceux liés à la ASC, au CNRC, au CRSNG et à nos installations internationales sont inclus?) Est-ce le temps de repenser notre organisation en fonction du lancement du prochain PLT vers la fin de 2008? Nous encourageons nos comités à examiner ces questions, et nous vous invitons d’ailleurs à nous faire part de vos idées à leur sujet.
J’aimerais profiter de cette occasion pour souhaiter de joyeuses fêtes à vous et à vos familles.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/soapbox/prez/prez.html (3 of 4) [12/21/2004 10:02:32 PM] President's Report
Jim Hesser
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/soapbox/prez/prez.html (4 of 4) [12/21/2004 10:02:32 PM] features Feature Articles
The Scientific Impact of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope by Dennis Crabtree (NRC-HIA) and Liz Bryson (CFHT)
QSO imaging with the CFHT by John Hutchings, HIA
« The seeing at the CFHT is very good. » by René Racine
25 years of spectacular discoveries with the CFHT coudé spectrographs - it was all in the detail by Gordon A.H. Walker
Towards a National Science Data Archive by Elizabeth Griffin and David Schade
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/features/feature.html [12/21/2004 10:03:40 PM] The Scientific Impact of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope The Scientific Impact of the Canada-France- Hawaii Telescope
Dennis Crabtree (NRC-HIA) and Liz Bryson (CFHT)
Introduction
The Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope has had a tremendous positive effect on the Canadian astronomical community since its inception 25 years ago. The telescope has also had a remarkable scientific impact over these past 25 years. These two ‘impacts’ are of course linked. In this article we will summarize the productivity and impact of the CFHT as measured by paper and citation counts.
First, a few words about the use of citations as a measure of scientific impact. Citations are a measure of the relevance of a particular paper and not necessarily a measure of the quality of that paper. Citations are not a perfect measure of impact but they are the best quantitative measure that is available. Measuring the scientific impact of major facilities, or of a whole nation, is very important. The stature of Canadian astronomy was documented in the Long Range Plan for Astronomy in part by the use of bibliometric studies, i.e., the use of citations.
Methodology
One of us (Liz) tracks the publications based upon CFHT data. Papers are identified from many sources such the paper’s authors, scanning the journals and observing proposals. To be included as a “CFHT” paper the following criterion must be met:
“A paper must include results based on observational data obtained at
CFHT or based on archival data retrieved from the CFHT archive."
The bibliographic information is loaded into a Microsoft Access database. This database also stores publication data for several other major telescopes. We use the NASA Astrophysical Data System (ADS) for several aspects of this work. Once the papers are in the database custom software within the database accesses the ADS to:
● Verify the bibliographic information ● Retrieve the full author list and complete title ● Retrieve the number of citations
Data from the publication database is retrieved into Excel for further analysis. Further details
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/features/crabtree/CFHT%20E-Cass.htm (1 of 12) [12/21/2004 10:03:42 PM] The Scientific Impact of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope can be found in Crabtree and Bryson (2001).
In this paper we will use the terms productivity and impact. Productivity is measured by the number of papers while impact is measured by the number of citations. Comparing the impact of papers of different ages is difficult as the citations count for a paper naturally increases as it ages. We use a metric we call RelativeToAJ to avoid this problem. RelativeToAJ is the ratio of the number of citations for a paper to the average citations per paper published in AJ for the same year. Thus the impact of a paper with a RelativeToAJ index of 1.0 is equal to that of the average AJ paper of the same year.
Twenty-Five Years of CFHT Papers
The very first CFHT paper was published by Sidney van den Bergh in 1980 (van den Bergh 1980). The paper consisted of one paragraph and one ‘Plate’. The abstract: “A 3.6-m plate taken in excellent seeing shows that NGC 3928 is not an E0 or S0 galaxy but a miniature spiral galaxy”; foreshadows what was to one of CFHT’s greatest strengths – it’s image quality. This paper has received 16 citations, the most recent in 2003, and for the curious it is only the last citation that is a self citation.
Here are a few interesting pieces of trivia about certain CFHT papers:
● In one ApJ paper an (over-)eager editor changed the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope to the California-France-Hawaii Telescope in the abstract (Davidge and Harris 1985) ● The “shortest title award” goes to Stevenson, McCall and Welch (1993) with a title of only 4 characters (Ar/S – be careful how you pronounce that).. Interestingly this equals the number of citations to the paper. ● The “longest title award” goes to Emsellem et al. (1994) with a title of 195 characters, almost as long as the complete first paper by van den Bergh. ● The “largest number of authors” award goes to Foing et al. (1994) with a staggering 21 authors. ● The average number of authors on a CFHT paper is now 6, up from about 3 in the early 1980s.
A somewhat sobering piece of information for those operating new telescopes is that it took CFHT 10 years to reach a steady plateau in terms of paper production (see figure below). From this chart it appears as if CFHT’s “Golden Years” were from 1990 – 2000 when the paper production was over 60 papers per year.
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In fact, this 10-year timescale may be quite normal for the productivity of telescopes to develop. This is shown in the following graph which shows the number of papers per telescope a function of age for CFHT, Keck, the VLT, Gemini, Subaru and VLA.
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In terms of personal productivity two individuals stand well above other CFHT authors. For many years John Hutchings was CFHT’s most prolific author. He has now slipped to second place behind Tim Davidge. Tim has 44 first author papers based on CFHT data with John close behind at 43. Jean-Luc Nieto is third with 16 papers while Anne Boesgaard, David Crampton, John Kormendy, Olivier Le Fevre, and Harvey Richer all have 14 CFHT papers.
We have also looked at the productivity of CFHT instruments. Identifying the instrument(s) used in CFHT papers is a daunting task. We identified over 50 different instruments, or instrument types (e.g. speckle), that have been used at CFHT. The most productive instrument has been direct CCD imaging with contributions to 270 papers. Note this does not include papers using HRCam, UH8K or CFH12K as we identified as unique instruments. The second most productive instrument has been the original coude spectrograph CF8. A graph showing the productivity of the top instruments is shown below.
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It is interesting that “Plates” (direct imaging with photographic plates) is the 4th most productive instrument even though the last paper using plate material was published in 1995 (yes that late!)
CFHT’s Scientific Impact
What has been CFHT’s scientific impact over the past 25 years? CFHT’s total impact, as measured by RelativeToAJ is shown as a function of year in the figure below. The total impact is the sum of the impact factors for all papers published in a given year. CFHT’s total impact more or less rose steadily to a peak in the mid-1990s and has been declining since then. Recall that RelativeToAJ is a measure of impact that is independent of the age of the papers included.
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If we look at the impact per paper as shown in the following figure we see that the average impact of a CFHT paper has averaged slightly above that of the average AJ paper over its history. There are some significant “bumps” that we suggest can be identified with certain instrumentation. Namely, we suggest that the increase in average impact centered on 1987 is due to the introduction of CCD imaging at CFHT in late 1983. The second “bump” in 1995 and1996 is likely due to a number of MOS papers specifically the CFRS and CNOC papers.
The total and average impact by instrument, for the most productive instruments, is summarized in the following figure. For each instrument the number of papers produced in indicated by the blue line while the purple line represents the total impact. The average impact per paper is the number. Less than half of the most productive instruments have average impacts greater than one. These are: CCD imaging, CF8, MOS, Plates, CFH12K, UH8K, and SIS.
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The following table lists the number of papers, average impact per paper and total impact for each instrument (class) identified.
Instrument Papers Average Impact Total Impact
CCD 271 1.35 365.61
CF8 148 1.11 164.58
MOS 120 1.75 210.06
Plates 68 1.02 69.68
FTS 67 0.71 47.43
HRCAM 56 1.03 57.59
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PUEO 40 0.91 36.38
Herzberg 37 0.89 33.09
Gecko 33 0.72 23.83
Speckle 24 0.81 19.33
Redeye 23 0.62 14.20
UH8K 23 1.89 43.51
GRENS 22 0.72 15.84
SIS 22 1.07 23.62
FP 18 0.62 11.12
TIGER 17 0.70 11.95
EC 16 0.49 7.86
? 15 1.61 24.14
CIRCUS 13 0.34 4.48
PCD 12 0.40 4.81
UHTI 12 2.27 27.27
MARLIN 9 1.28 11.53
MONICA 9 0.86 7.75
UHAO 9 1.18 10.62
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/features/crabtree/CFHT%20E-Cass.htm (8 of 12) [12/21/2004 10:03:42 PM] The Scientific Impact of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope CAMIRAS 8 0.32 2.55
Other 8 0.64 5.14
WET 8 0.88 7.02
NICMOS3 7 2.53 17.68
SILFID 7 0.30 2.10
CIGALE 6 1.06 6.35
LAPOUNE 6 0.79 4.75
OASIS 6 0.78 4.67
PUMA 6 0.75 4.50
HIFI 5 1.29 6.45
MOCAM 5 0.73 3.64
PALILA 5 0.74 3.68
RVS 5 0.99 4.97
UHFOS 5 2.27 11.33
ARGUS 4 0.36 1.46
InSb 4 1.83 7.32
Bolometer 3 0.99 2.97
C10 3 0.05 0.16
CASSHAWEC 3 1.28 3.83
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Garrison 3 0.33 0.98
GriF 3 0.35 1.05
MUSICOS 3 0.61 1.82
Solar 3 0.38 1.14
Submm 3 1.24 3.73
UVPRIME 3 0.23 0.69
SPI 2 0.41 0.81
BEAR 1 1.33 1.33
FOCAS 1 1.00 1.00
Genoble-Lyon 1 0.63 0.63
ISOCAM 1 0.46 0.46
Another common measure used in bibliometric studies is the concept of high impact papers. For example, this can be the top 125 cited papers of each year (Benn and Sanchez 2001). We call any paper that has a RelativeToAJ index of more than five as a high impact paper. CFHT has produced 33 high impact papers in its history. MOS leads the way with 7 such papers. This is followed by CCD with 6, CFH12K with 4 and CF8 with 3. Simon Lilly is the author of 5 CFHT high impact papers.
Finally, we would like to refer to the very beginning of the process that creates a CFHT paper – the Time Allocation Committee (TAC). Since there are proposals for more time than is available the TAC process ranks the received proposals in order of scientific merit and top third or so (depending on the subscription rate) actually get on the telescope. So how well does the TAC ranking of the proposal match with the scientific impact of the resultant paper?
To look at this question we identified CFHT papers that were based upon observations between semesters 1996B and 1999B. These are the semesters for which we have the TAC
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/features/crabtree/CFHT%20E-Cass.htm (10 of 12) [12/21/2004 10:03:42 PM] The Scientific Impact of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope rankings for each CFHT program that made it to the telescope. In the following figure a lower number indicates a higher TAC ranking, i.e. higher ranked proposals are to the left.
While at first glance this looks like a scatter diagram, there is some indication that the TAC process works in the way you want it to work – higher ranked proposals have higher impact papers. This is shown in the figure below where the data has been binned.
The TAC ranking is more important now that we are in the era of queue scheduling In classical scheduling the TAC decided who was on the telescope and who wasn’t. After that the weather plays a significant role.
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References
Benn, C.R. and Sanchez, S.F. 2001, PASP, 113, 385 Crabtree, D.R and Bryson, E.P. 2001, JRASC, 95, 259 Davidge, T.J. and Harris, W.E. 1995, ApJ, 445, 211 Emsellem, E., Monnet, G., Bacon, R., Nieto, J.-L. 1994 A&A, 285, 739 Foing, B.H., et al. 1994 A&A, 292, 543 Stevenson, C.C., McCall, M.L. and Welch, D.W. ApJ, 408, 460 van den Bergh, S. 1980, PASP, 92, 409
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/features/crabtree/CFHT%20E-Cass.htm (12 of 12) [12/21/2004 10:03:42 PM] QSO imaging with the CFHT QSO imaging with the CFHT
John Hutchings, HIA
The CFHT became famous for excellent image quality long before other large telescopes paid much attention to achieving sub-arcsecond imaging as a regular expectation. As a result, it was natural to consider QSO imaging as a program in which the CFHT should produce unique results, from its earliest days of operation. This did indeed turn out to be an important scientific niche, which was exploited extensively by myself and a number of colleagues over many years. In particular, I would mention working with Bruce Campbell, David Crampton, and Susan Neff.
The earliest observations were taken on photographic plates in the prime focus cage. Exposures were 2-3 hours long, so that the nights could be spent entirely in the cage (depending on endurance) guiding on 4 fields literally by hand – moving the camera by keeping the guide star on a crosswire. This would yield images of maybe 0.7” FWHM on a good night, but the quality would not be known until after dawn in the darkroom (before the one-person rule was enforced!). By means of a good eyepiece it was usually possible to see that the QSO was fuzzy, compared with nearby stars. The large plates generally contained only one QSO, but we did have a lot of stars to use for PSFs!
A later development was an image tube of more suitably-sized field, that allowed us to obtain plates of similar depth in about 15 minutes. This helped enormously in expanding the sample, but at the price of some image degradation by the `chicken-wire’ pattern of the image tube fibre optics. Plus a lot more time in the darkroom. Data reduction was done by scanning the plates with the PDS, producing digital images of limited dynamic range but enabling us to do stacked PSF removal, and then some quantitative measures on the images.
The earliest samples were QSOs of redshifts up to about 0.3, which were relatively simple to resolve and measure. In 1983, our sample of 45 were featured in a full Nature article (vol 303, p584), and in 1984 we published a sample of 78 QSOs (ApJ 280, 41), and had some fairly interesting statistical conclusions - the subject of many talks and conferences. It was clear that QSOs are indeed located at the centres of galaxies, with no real exceptions. Investigations elsewhere, with poorer image quality were much less definitive, and also led to claims that radio- louds live in ellipticals while radio-quiet QSOs are in spirals, based more on extrapolation from radio galaxies than unambiguous evidence. Indeed, we found that the majority of host galaxies do not have such simple morphology, and many show clear evidence of tidal disturbances and distortions, leading to the suggestion that tidal events are a common way to trigger QSO activity in a galaxy. A few good cases of off-nuclear spectroscopy showed that star-formation is active in those QSO host galaxies, and hence the scenario that the observed blue colours indicate that this is common. We obtained radio maps from the VLA to investigate the relationship between radio and optical properties, and later related the host galaxy images to the mid-
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/features/hutchings/QSO.html (1 of 4) [12/21/2004 10:03:43 PM] QSO imaging with the CFHT infrared fluxes from IRAS (e.g. AJ 101, 434, 1991). These investigations further elaborated the AGN connections with tidal triggers and host morphology changes.
Fig 1. Photographically resolved low z QSO in two colours. ~20” FOV
In due course, CCDs became the default detectors, but the early ones were small, noisy, and had serious cosmetic flaws, although their sensitivity and linear response more than compensated for these. The subsequent rapid evolution of CCD detectors left us with a wide range of data quality that made it hard to put together uniform samples. But the power of CCDs allowed us to move to fainter and more distant QSOs - out to z=0.6, and even higher for a few objects. The final step of technical development was image improvement, starting with the tip-tilt corrected HRCam, which improved FWHM by about 0.2” (see AJ 104, 1, 1992), and allowed the most detailed views yet of the host morphologies. Finally, we had the first CFHT AO system (PUEO), which produced images close to 0.1’ resolution under the best conditions (e.g. AJ 117, 1109, 1999). The necessary higher pixel sampling now began to extend the observation times back to the several hours we first needed on the photographic plates!
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Fig 2. HR Camera 10”FOV image of z=0.21 QSO
In the midst of this, HST became operational, and I was able to use early GTO time to point it at QSOs. John Bahcall decided HST was his telescope of choice for QSO imaging, and went for a number of the objects we had previously observed with CFHT. This led to his dramatic announcement that QSOs were unresolved and `naked’, which took some time and more careful data processing to convert to the now-famous HST QSO images, and resolution of this apparent contradiction. From my work using both telescopes, I knew the drawbacks of each, and tried to make this clear, sometimes in the face of the awesome HST publicity machine. HST has excellent and uniform resolution, but has small aperture and low throughput, and a very complex and varying PSF. CFHT has much more effective area, enabling it to detect faint outer parts of the host galaxies that contain many of the signatures of distortion and tidal disturbances, but has poorer resolution, and image quality that changes from night to night. PUEO allowed images better than HST, but only for objects with bright nuclei or nearby stars for good image correction.
Nowadays, we can resolve and study QSO hosts with redshifts up to ~5 with Gemini-Altair, and HST’s new cameras, but samples are small and the signals very weak. The thrust of current work is at higher redshifts, where we hope to see how galaxies and their central black holes form and co-evolve, and other statistical changes with cosmic time. CFHT is no longer central
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file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/features/hutchings/QSO.html (4 of 4) [12/21/2004 10:03:43 PM] The Image Quality Obsession « The seeing at the CFHT is very good. »
René Racine
Directeur du TCFH, 1980-1984.
1- Motivation
Thus, with the title quote, did I begin my invited talk on “Seeing at Mauna Kea and at the CFHT” at the 1984 ESO Colloquium on Very Large Telescopes, their Instrumentation and Programs. (Yes! a 3.6-m was then a Very Large Telescope). Re-reading the abstract below, I can still feel the immense satisfaction we all had at CFHT for having finally reached the sub-arc second domain, and our excitement at the perspective of still better things to come.
The astronomical seeing at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea is evaluated. The telescope has an average FWHM of 0.90 arcsec, and a mean image spread of 0.6 arcsec appears achievable given further efforts to minimize turbulence inside and around the dome and the optomechanical imperfections of the instrument. Natural Mauna Kea seeing would then offer images with less than 0.4 arcsec resolution on 25 percent of the nights, corresponding to a Fried parameter of more than 30 cm at 500 nm. Removal of rapid image wander due to the varying mean tilt of the wave-front would produce images with a resolution of 0.2 arcsec.
“Propaganda!” shouted from the front row a vocal Mount Graham advocate. For sub-arc second seeing was unheard of in those days. Even the regretted Chairman of the CFHT Board privately advised me at the time “de ne pas dire de telles sottises”.
Comme les pionniers C, F et H du Télescope Canada-France-Hawai’i, je suis de ceux qui croient que la puissance d’un télescope se mesure d’abord par le rapport de son diamètre D à celui w des images qu’il donne. C’est pourquoi ils choisirent un site à 4 200 m, au milieu du Pacifique, loin de la France et du Canada. Et durent convaincre ceux qui craignaient les effets de l’altitude et les impacts financiers et logistiques. Mais qu’on puisse faire mieux que la seconde d’arc en moyenne avec un 3.6-m, peu osaient alors y croire. J’ai grandi au David Dunlap Observatory où « good seeing » était ~3”. Et aux monts Wilson et Palomar où on frôlait rarement « seeing 5 » ou ~1”, la moyenne étant plutôt ~1.5”. Au Chili, Campanas et Tololo m’avaient souvent fait entrevoir ~1” mais au foyer du télescope de 60 cm du UTSO, les « gros » n’y arrivant pas. Le sérieux mal de tête qui marqua ma première visite au Mauna Kea en 1974 inspira la conviction qu’avec si peu d’atmosphère au sommet des performances spectaculaires y étaient possibles. Et l’équipe des premières années du CFH en eu tôt ras-le- bol de se faire rappeler, comme un collègue de Caltech me disait encore lors du lancement de
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IRAS en janvier 1983, que 3,6 m était « rather small, Monsieur le Directeur » face au 200-inch (5,08•m) de Palomar. La table était mise : si D ne nous faisait pas « les plus gros », D/w nous fera les meilleurs.
2- Petit historique
Les premiers mois de fonctionnement régulier du télescope, début 1980, montrèrent rapidement qu’il y avait loin de la coupe aux lèvres. La qualité d’image, qu’on relevait avec un zèle quasi religieux, était guère meilleure sinon pire qu’ailleurs ! On se rendit rapidement compte que le seeing était dans la coupole. Le premier indice fut le « day crew effect » : meilleures images en fin de semaine, congé de l’équipe. Les grands luminaires de la salle du télescope restaient éteints, personne n’y soudait ni chauffait la salle pour « y mieux travailler » et les portes des escaliers venant des espaces chauffés du 4e demeuraient fermées. " Discipline, discipline ! devint le mot d’ordre, auquel on se plia, parfois en grognant. La chasse aux chaufferettes, aux huiles tièdes des paliers hydrauliques, à l’opto-mécanique encore imparfaite du télescope, etc. du se poursuivre pendant 5 ans avant de pouvoir clamer faire mieux que la seconde d’arc en moyenne en toute saison. Et on savait que mieux encore était possible.
L’évolution historique de la qualité d’image produite par le TCFH est illustrée par le graphique suivant. Les points sont les moyennes trimestrielles. La ligne oscillante rouge est un modèle contenant des perturbations thermiques locales qui s’atténuent sur une échelle de temps de 5,5 ans et ayant, à 1980.0, un « fond » de 1,0” et une variation annuelle atteignant 1,6” aux premiers trimestres…lorsqu’il fait plus froid dehors ! Les données, dont la dispersion en seconde d’arc par rapport au modèle est de 12% pour 1980-90, indiquent que ces perturbations sont demeurées importantes au moins jusqu’en 1987.
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La valeur asymptotique du modèle est 0,70” (bande R, zenith). Or on sait que l’optique du télescope contribue ~0,35”. Puisque aberrations instrumentales résiduelles, petites erreurs de foyer et de guidage, etc. doivent aussi étaler un peu les images, on peut conclure que le seeing naturel intrinsèque au site du TCFH est inférieur à 0,60”. Une étude détaillée des corrélations entre la qualité d’image et les différences de température au TCFH (Racine et al. 1991) l’estime à 0.43 ±0.05”.
Les données sur le seeing au TCFH deviennent plus difficiles à glaner après ~1992. Elles sont parfois mentionnées dans les Rapports d’activité, ou à l’occasion de réunions du SAC traitant de tentatives d’amélioration – refroidissement du primaire par exemple – mais m’ont échappé au cours des cinq dernières années du XX siècle. Avec la venue d’Elixir, une base de données accumulées en temps réel à été mise en route. Les archives sont disponibles à http://cfht.hawaii.edu/Instruments/Elixir/seeing/home.html mais sont très fragmentaires. À en juger par ce qu’on y trouve, le seeing au site du TCFH s’est détérioré au début du XXI siècle. Dommage.
3- Impacts
Les performances du TCFH en qualité d’image ont eu des impacts psychologiques, technologiques et scientifiques importants.
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Première à faire si bien, l’équipe technique CFH en retirait une fierté énorme et bien méritée. « The best telescope on or around the Earth ! » s’exclama un technicien d’observation lors d’une nuit de 0,3-0,4” quelques semaines après le lancement du HST. Un peu gros peut-être, mais révélateur de l’esprit qui régnait dans l’équipe. Et nous avons tous clamé dans nos demandes de temps que notre projet exigeait une qualité d’image que seul le TCFH pouvait offrir. Toujours de bonne guerre, bien sur, mais souvent exact.
Une fois les doutes de la communauté surmontés, suite à la parution des premiers articles CFH faisant état de résultats remarquables, la course aux « sub-arc second images » s’ouvrit. L’expérience CFH, et les leçons qu’on y avait apprises, avaient convaincu la « compétition » que la partie était jouable et guidaient les efforts pour la gagner. La clé étant, à l’évidence, l’élimination du seeing local, accompagnée de réglages optiques hautement peaufinés, le NTT de l’ESO avec l’optique active de Ray Wilson et son bâtiment abondamment ventilé – deux outils manquant au TCFH ! – prenait la tête du peloton côté technologique. Au UKIRT, au Mayall du KPNO et au Blanco de Tololo on perça de larges ouvertures dans les coupoles pour que l’air de la nuit vienne rafraîchir salles et structures des télescopes. On fit de même plus récemment à Mégantic et autres télescopes de moindre envergure. Et les nouveaux géants, VLT, Subaru, Gemini, ont tous optique active et bâtiments ventilés. La contribution du TCFH à cette révolution aura été de montrer, de façon éclatante, les bénéfices possibles même si sa propre conception, d’une autre époque, ne lui permettait de les atteindre que difficilement. Il demeure que les 4 200 m du Mauna Kea lui sont un avantage certain. A ce jour, que je sache, la qualité d’image obtenue au TCFH au début des années 1990 n’est dépassée, au sol, que par celle de son voisin Subaru.
Avec des images meilleures que la seconde d’arc, la possibilité de faire encore mieux par des artifices simples, tel un guidage rapide, devenait intéressante. D’où naquit HRCam, la « camera haute résolution » (McClure et al. 1989) rendue possible grâce à la collaboration du Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (DAO). HRCam fut le tout premier système d’optique adaptative (OA) moderne à voir les étoiles. OA modeste, ne compensant que deux modes, les basculements en X et Y, mais source de grand apprentissage. On compris bien vite, par exemple, que HRCam corrigeait autant les oscillations du télescope que les basculements atmosphériques. Entre sa mise en service en 1987 et sa retraite en 1994 avec la venue de MOS-SIS qu’on jugeait équivalent, HRCam permit une qualité d’image moyenne de 0,52” avec des pointes vers 0.25”. (Ces statistiques ne sont pas incluses dans la Figure plus haut). Les utilisateurs de HRCam publièrent une centaine d’articles sur les planètes, les amas globulaires locaux et extragalactiques, les populations stellaires des galaxies voisines, la structure des cœurs galactiques, des lentilles gravitationnelles et des quasars…et sur les leçons pratiques apprises de son usage. Le projet permit aussi de développer et de faire valoir l’expertise canadienne en OA, le DAO se voyant ensuite confié la réalisation de PUE’O, un « vrai » système OA mis en service au TCFH en 1996, et plus tard celle du système OA Altair pour Gemini.
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Réflexions
L’amélioration de la qualité d’image fut une réelle obsession au TCFH dès son inauguration. Elle a marqué toute son histoire. Les performances atteintes ont été sources de fierté pour l’équipe et d’excellente scientifique pour les utilisateurs. Elles ont permis le rendement exceptionnel de tous les instruments dont le télescope a été équipé. Et elles ont contribué à motiver une révolution dans la perception de ce qui est possible au sol et dans la mise en oeuvre des moyens pour y arriver.
L’optique adaptative est capable de corriger les aberrations atmosphériques, le seeing local et les imperfections opto-mécaniques des télescopes contemporains. La tentation pourrait être grande de faire fi de toutes ces précautions qui ont valu au TCFH sa réputation de chef de file et de s’en remettre à l’OA pour nettoyer les dégâts qu’une telle incurie engendrerait. « Et pourquoi pas ? » demandait justement quelqu’un suite à ma présentation à Garching en 1984. Je n’ai su alors que répondre qu’il me semblait préférable de régler les problèmes à la source lorsque c’est possible. Je comprends mieux aujourd’hui qu’un système OA bénéficie aussi, et plus que tout autre instrument, de conditions excellentes au départ. Les leçons apprises grâce au TCFH demeureront précieuses tant qu’il y aura des télescopes sur Terre.
Références
McClure, R. D., Grundman, W. A., Fletcher, M. J., et al. 1989, An Image Stabilizing High- Resolution Camera for the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope, PASP, 101, 1156-1165
Racine, R., Salmon, D., Cowley, D., & Sovka, J. 1991, Mirror, Dome and Natural Seeing at the CFHT, PASP, 103, 1020
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/features/racine/Good_Seeing-1.htm (5 of 5) [12/21/2004 10:03:43 PM] 25 years of spectacular discoveries with the CFHT 25 years of spectacular discoveries with the CFHT coudé spectrographs - it was all in the detail
Gordon A.H. Walker
INTRODUCTION
A coudé laboratory was considered `de rigeur'l by all three partners when planning the Canada France Hawaii Telescope (CFHT). The University of Hawaii 2.2-m telescope, completed in 1969, has an enormous coudé spectrograph classically aligned with the telescope polar axis. In France, Fehrenbach had developed a series of superb spectrographs at the coudé focus of the 1.8-m at l'Observatoire de Haute-Provence while, at the DAO, Victoria, Harvey Richardson had introduced remarkable improvements in the transmission of the McKellar spectrograph on the 1.2-m telescope with grating mosaics, small coudé mirrors with high reflectivity, and a novel pupil slicer.
It is truly a challenge to inject sufficient starlight from a large telescope into a high dispersion spectrograph. As long as seeing defines the image size and not the telescope diffraction pattern, the linear dimension of the star image increases with the telescope and so therefore must the scale of the spectrograph. Choice of a site, such as Mauna Kea, with good seeing helps and the production of large, quality, reflection gratings with fine groove spacing made large scale spectrographs feasible. For bright stars, the introduction of image slicing led to a major improvement in transmission.
In order to access the whole sky, a triple, 5-mirror transfer system was adopted to feed a horizontal spectrograph in a laboratory in the hollow support cylinder below the telescope. A second coudé laboratory, one floor below, has never been used as such. The mirrors were all highly reflecting for one of three complementary spectral regions.
THE f/8 SPECTROGRAPH
An exact replica of the DAO f/8 spectrograph was one of the first instruments ready after the inauguration of the telescope in 1979 thanks very much to the efforts of enthusiasts like Bruce Campbell and Carol Christian, then staff astronomers. Although designed for use with photographic plates these were quickly superseded by signal generating detectors of high quantum efficiency such as the Reticon and then the CCD. The nominal resolution was 40,000 or 7.5 km s-1 and it was not decommissioned until 1995 . In the intervening 15 years it produced some quite remarkable science of which I can only touch on a sample in this review.
In all of these results, it was the careful attention to detail when extracting the optimum information from the spectra which paid off with such spectacular discoveries.
Lithium
Francois and Monique Spite (A&A, 1982 115, 357) deduced a baryonic density of the Universe from their detection the 6707Å 7Li resonance line in a number of halo dwarf and old disk stars. Together with existing density values for primordial Helium and Hydrogen, they concluded that the Universe could not be closed by such nucleons. For this work they were awarded the Muhlman Prize in 1984.
In 1999, Roger Cayrel with the Spites and others (A&A, 343, 923) detected 6Li in the spectrum of the metal poor star HD84937 at a resolution ~100,000 with a S/N~1000 per resolution element with the f/4 Gecko on CFHT.
Still with Li, Ann Boesgaard and Tripicco (1986 ApJ 302L, 49) discovered a narrow range of effective temperature in members of the Hyades where Li is dramatically depleted suggesting a significant change in physical conditions which destroys fragile Li by transport to deeper stellar layers.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/features/walker/25yrsCFHThighres.html (1 of 6) [12/21/2004 10:03:48 PM] 25 years of spectacular discoveries with the CFHT
Extra-solar Planets
From the outset, Bruce Campbell vigorously pursued a program begun at the DAO with Gordon Walker and Stephenson Yang to look for the small perturbations in radial velocity induced by planetary companions around solar-type stars. The accelerations were expected to be just a few m s-1 per year. The concept was simple - light from the star was passed through an absorption cell before the spectrograph slit thereby imposing a comb of fiducial absorption lines against which the Doppler motion of the stellar lines could be measured. The expected displacements corresponded to less than a thousandth of a pixel.
Careful calibration was essential. The experiment was also dangerous since our chosen gas was HF! The program was pursued for twelve years and, arguably, produced the first planetary detection around a solar type star, γ γCephei - although at the time, we suggested that stellar rotation more likely caused the variation. The combined monitoring by ourselves and colleagues at the University of Texas eventually demonstrated the presence of the planet in a 2.48 y orbit with Msini = 1.7 MJ (Hatzes et al., 2003 ApJ 599, 1383). There was similar confirmation for a planet around another of our program stars, ε Eri (2000 ApJ 544L, 145).
The imposed fiducial technique (mostly using I2 vapour) has been adopted by most other planet hunters and some 120 extra-solar planets have been detected to date. In the picture the shows the coudé comes vertically down through a focal ratio converting lens to the fifth diagonal mirror and then passes horizontally through the 90 cm HF absorption cell which is heated to 100 C. The gas handling equipment is on the right.
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Doppler Imaging
John Landstreet and his group (1989 ApJ, 384, 876L) were able to model the magnetic field geometry of Babcock's star (HD215441) and the distribution over one hemisphere of the elements Si, Ti, Cr, and Fe from nine spectra spaced around the star's rotation cycle. They estimated both the inclination of the magnetic field axis to the star's rotation axis and the inclination of the rotation axis to the line of sight. The progression of Zeeman splitting seen above in the Silicon lines could be reproduced by an axisymmetric superposition of dipole, quadrupole, and octupole fields with polar strengths of +67, -55, and +30 kG, respectively. A remarkable achievement.
Wolf-Rayet stars
Tony Moffat, Laurent Drissen, Robert Lamontagne, and Carmelle Robert (1988 ApJ 334, 1038) detected narrow emission bumps superimposed on the broad smooth background wind profile of the 5411Å He II line of the WR star HD191765. The bumps accelerated from the stellar surface in unison with the wind, on a time scale of hours and seem to correspond to blobs being ejected from the surface. The left hand figure shows the spectral series and the mean absolute deviation of individual profiles from the mean which highlights the wavelengths of greatest activity. The right hand figure shows the residuals from the mean profile allowing one to track the acceleration of each blob.
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f/4 GECKO
The f/4 échellette spectrograph, Gecko, was commissioned in 1994. It has a resolution of 120,000 or 2.5 km s-1 and, although restricted to single orders, its roughly 60Å panchromatic coverage, very high throughput and the stability of the CAFÉ fibre feed installed in 2000 have made it a most powerful instrument for the study of interstellar lines and sharp-lined stars.
Interstellar OH
Paul Felenbok and Evelyne Roueff (1996 ApJ 465L, 57) benefiting from the low ozone extinction on Mauna Kea and the high UV sensitivity of Gecko, recorded five transitions of OH near 3072.0, 3078.4, and 3081.7 Å toward ζ Per and HD 27778. They also detected lines at 3072.9 Å which they ascribed to Ti II in two different clouds.
Interstellar C3
ζ ζ John Maier, Nick Lakin, Gordon Walker, David Bohlender (2001 ApJ 553, 267) identified the spectrum of the carbon chain, C3 toward Ophiuchi, 20 Aquilae, and Persei through detection of the origin band near 4052 Å. They were able to resolve individual rotational lines up to J=30, which allowed the rotational-level column densities and temperature distributions to be determined.
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More Doppler imaging
John Rice and Klaus Strassmeier (1998 A&A 336, 972) generated a Doppler image of the surface of the young K2V star LQ Hya (vsini = 25 km s-1) based on Gecko spectra taken in 1995 . The Doppler image shows a pattern of dark spots concentrated in the equatorial region either as a continuous wide band of features only ~ 600 K cooler than photospheric or perhaps a double band symmetrically located either side of the equator as on the Sun. They only found a weak polar spot , whereas one normally expects to see a pronounced polar dark spot in such a young star and which is significantly less massive than the Sun.
Raman-scattered He II 6545 Å
Lee and his colleagues from Korea (2003 ApJ 598, 553) demonstrated with the symbiotic star V1016 Cyg, how to measure the covering factor of the neutral scattering egion around the giant stellar component with respect to the hot emission region around its white dwarf companion by isolating Raman-scattered He II 6545Å. They unblended it from the [N II ] 6548Å emission line taking the [N II ] 6584Å line as a template for the 6548Å line. The dashed line is the [N II ] 6584Å line translated to the 3 location of [N II ] 6548Å . The dotted line is a single Gaussian fit to the residual Raman-scattered He II 6545 Å feature. The peak value, f0 = 1.0 × 10 , and the width, 6.4 times that of He II 6527Å and 6560Å, are exactly what are expected from incoherent Raman scattering.
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Planet induced chromospheric activity
Evgenya Shkolnik and her colleagues (2005 ApJ in press) monitored the Ca II H&K reversals of eight solar-type stars (including the Sun) for three years. Six of the stars have Jupiter-mass companions with orbital periods of a few days. Two stars, HD179949 and ν And displayed periodic chromospheric activity synchronised to the planetary orbital period in each case for two out of the three years. All of the planets almost certainly lie within the Alfvén radius of the star and the differential between the rates of planetary revolution and stellar rotation may well provide free energy for heating. In a larger sample of stars which included observation with UVES on VLT, there is a clear correlation between general chromospheric activity and the minimum mass of the companion planet (Msini) except for τBoo, the one case of apparent synchronous rotation.
Porb = 4.6 d
THE FUTURE
These are but a handful of the many highly successful programs with the CFHT coudé and I have, naturally, tended towards those with which I was familiar or best understand. The coudé astronomers have come from all of the countries associated with CFHT and, by and large, they are a modest group. The results have been marked by great attention to proper calibration and careful reduction. While Gecko may continue to be used - its small multiplex gain puts it at a disadvantage and the future almost certainly lies with ESPaDOnS with its échelle format and ability to perform simultaneous polarimetry. We can expect even more exciting results while CFHT remains in place.
Gordon A.H. Walker, 1234 Hewlett Place, Victoria, BC, V8S 4P7 [email protected]
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/features/walker/25yrsCFHThighres.html (6 of 6) [12/21/2004 10:03:48 PM] Towards a National Science Data Archive Towards a National Science Data Archive
A Report on the National Consultation on an Archive for Scientific and Research Data Ottawa, November 22--23 2004.
Elizabeth Griffin and David Schade Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, HIA, Victoria Canadian Astronomical Data Centre, HIA, Victoria, BC
One month ago the Library and Archives Canada in Ottawa (previously the National Library of Canada) hosted an extraordinary meeting of 60--70 high-level researchers, directors, presidents and managers of projects ranging from lexicography to oceanography, and representing organizations both nation-wide and individual concerns from coast to coast. Convened under the auspices of CODATA Canada, the meeting examined the need, the will and the feasibility to create and operate a comprehensive national archive of scientific and science-related data. Delegates heard from the Government Advisor for Science, from the sponsoring organizations (NSERC, the National Research Council, the Canadian Institute for Health Research and the Canadian Foundation for Innovation), with in-depth presentations by the SSHRC, Genome Canada and Industry Canada as well as from representatives within academia.
The Consultative Process
Support for the tabled endeavour was unequivocal and enthusiastic, but the presentations merely set the scene for the work which the delegates were then to carry out. The Forum was seeking as input a consensus vision of a national data archive; the delegates were divided among 8 tables and set were posed questions, from dawn till beyond dusk, that required answers in various forms and in fairly short order. In formulating their recommendations for what would need to be achieved, the resources required and the time-scales involved, the delegates first designed their consensus vision for 10--15 years hence. They then worked backwards through the steps necessary to arrive there, and lastly -- and most importantly of all -- they identified the barriers that would need to be overcome at all junctures.
The Canadian Situation
If intentions could be as easily translated into deeds, then this initiative should have no problem in getting launched, though the most practical ways of proceeding were not necessarily agreed on by everyone, nor was the vision of a National Science Data Archive equally clear in
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/features/griffin/Griffin_report.htm (1 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:03:48 PM] Towards a National Science Data Archive everyone's mind. Funding for the project, and initially for pilot projects to prepare convincing proofs of concept, was clearly a key barrier. But Canada is not without strong precedents in a number of areas already; oceanographic science is measuring and sharing worldwide profiles of local oceanic temperatures and salinity; the power of data accessibility is beginning to make itself felt in genomics and health research, while the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre in Victoria is already a dynamic tool in astronomical research and the supporting pillar of the Canadian Virtual Observatory. The rescue of heritage (historic) data, not only in astronomy but in earth sciences, bio-informatics and even in linguistics is also a topic that needs to be addressed under this project with sensitivity and resoluteness.
The Vision
The vision of a national data archive of data for scientific research can be likened to a 3-D letter `X'. The widespread feet of the symbol depict the many disparate but linkable facets of data and knowledge whose research could fall under the umbrella of "scientific". Where they are drawn together in the centre represents the channelling of that information through a central clearing house (the Science Data Archive). Once there, it can be accessed, used, re-used, shared, copied, distributed and federated for and by an immense realm of new or existing research projects, increasing the value within individual disciplines in a manner not previously experienced, and enriching very substantially the potential for Canadian (and thence international) collaborations. Even so, selection is an important element in the design: whether to include all data, warts and all, and whether to incorporate within the same data-base the facts derived subjectively from a given set of data (with the risk of thereby compromising the objectivity of the original observations).
Getting Started
Just how all this could be achieved is still a matter for further debate. Experience indicates that a sensible way forward is to encourage and promote (and that means fund) relevant projects that are already in progress or in an advanced state of design, and to build a superstructure around just those projects as a first step, enhancing their commonalities and pursuing an agreed common goal. Here, however, is where theory and practice part company; while the Forum was required to form the vision first and then enumerate the necessary formative stages, in practice we need to assess what knowledge and experience in these fields we already have (some are already mentioned above), discuss the nuts and bolts among all likely (and even unlikely) partners, and begin studying the feasibility of merging interdisciplinary archives, with very careful consideration of all the possible barriers along the way. Some of those barriers are obvious; delegates repeatedly emphasized the need for trans-disciplinary agreements on meta-data and quality control, and warned of the risks if uniformity was not ensured.
Free access to data was also felt to be indispensable. Even though some organizations
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/features/griffin/Griffin_report.htm (2 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:03:48 PM] Towards a National Science Data Archive such as Statistics Canada currently charged for some of their data, the pure sciences -- mainly in academia, and in astronomy in particular -- are so accustomed to operating within policies of free access that it would create insurmountable problems, especially for collaborations, if retroactive cost recovery were to be instigated. The concept of free access is likely to present an initial challenge to medical data on grounds of privacy, and to some chemical or pharmaceutical data on commercial grounds, so extra work will be required in those quarters before we are all on the same level and ready to run trial projects. However, to judge from the mood of the meeting the extra pain will be well worth it. Everyone has so much to gain from a National Science Data Archive for Canada.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/features/griffin/Griffin_report.htm (3 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:03:48 PM] brief Briefly Noted
LOT/TMT secures first C$10M
2005 Whistler Workshop on Planetary Sciences June 5-10, 2005
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/brief/brief.html [12/21/2004 10:05:23 PM] LOT LOT/TMT secures first C$10M
Ontario approved its $2M match to the CFI award of $4M at the close of Friday, December 17. A proposal is before BCKDF for a second $2M with a decision expected in the next few months. In the meantime ACURA and HIA will use internally available funds to guarantee the entire match so that the funds can begin to flow into the project. With the Canadian funds, the TMT project now has about US$45M in hand, which is sufficient to undertake work up to conceptual design and cost review, in the summer of 2006. Construction proposals will be prepared at that time, with a proposed construction start in 2008 and first light in 2014, about nine years from now. With ALMA, JWST and other new facilities coming online around that time (such as TPF-C, the coronagraphic terrestrial planet finder) TMT will reap a rich harvest of scientific results.
The full entry fee for the detailed design phase is C$25M, with a critical deadline for the remaining $15M of Canadian funds in April of 2005. The Canadian partnership has both a major interest and a major responsibility to ensure the success of this effort. We are the sole international partner at this time.
We are currently working on detailed planning with TMT of our contributions to design work for the enclosure, adaptive optics, instruments, software and other aspects of the telescope and observatory. There will be a flood of requests for proposals and work packages from TMT in the next few months. We'll be sure to widely publicize these and to help organize responses.
Prof. R. Carlberg Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics 60 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S 3H8 Canada 416-978-2198 fax: 416-946-7287 cell: 647-886-5991
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/brief/carlberg/lot.html [12/21/2004 10:05:23 PM] 2005 Whistler Workshop on Planetary Sciences
First Announcement
2005 Whistler Workshop on Planetary Sciences June 5-10, 2005 in Whistler, British Columbia
An intense 5-day introduction to planetary sciences, intended for finishing undergraduate and beginning graduate students in astronomy, atmospheric sciences, geology, geophysics, or physics. Extended mini-courses will be given over 6 days by a small number of speakers. Some participation by professionals will be possible.
For more information, see: www.astro.ubc.ca/wwps05 or contact [email protected], after Jan. 10/2005. The first application deadline will be Feb. 28/2005.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/brief/gladmann/gladman.htm [12/21/2004 10:05:23 PM] news News
An Alma Update by Chris Wilson
Events at NRC's HIA (2004 Sept.-Dec.) / Du neuf à l'IHA du CNRC (sept.-déc. 2004) by Jacques P. Vallée
Potential Astronomical Sites in the Canadian Arctic by Ray Carlberg
Gemini Observatory Update/Mise à jour sur l’observatoire Gemini by Dennis Crabtree
Legacy Survey Plans for the JCMT by Doug Johnstone
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/news.html [12/21/2004 10:06:08 PM] ALMA Update ALMA Update 1 Recent news
The ALMA Project continues to be heavily occupied with issues relating to the antenna contract, which has not yet been signed. Antenna costs are a large fraction of the ALMA budget and so it is critical to get this right. In addition, the ALMA Board has decided to re-open the search for an ALMA Project Scientist. This is the one remaining position to be filled at the Joint ALMA Office Construction is well underway in Chile, with a temporary but liveable building already constructed at the Operations Support Facility at an elevation of about 11000 feet (see picture).
Figure 1: Temporary facilty at the Operations Support Facility - click to enlarge image.
In the area of outreach, there will be an ALMA Town Hall meeting at the AAS meeting in San Diego in January and I encourage anyone who is at the AAS meeting to consider attending. The nascent North American ALMA Science Center (NAASC) has set up a web site at http://www.cv.nrao.edu/naasc/ which has lots of interesting information and links, including links to the Canadian ALMA page at HIA and the page run by the Canadian ALMA Science Steering Committee at Lethbridge.
2 ALMA Science Advisory Committee
The ALMA Science Advisory Committee met September 27-28, 2004 in Charlottesville, Virginia. The main focus of the meeting was on five charges from the ALMA Board. The ASAC was asked to: (1) recommend science-based criteria that could be used by the project in preparing tradeoff studies should the budgetary situation require them; (2) consider recommendations on how to facilitate joint projects between scientists from the different ALMA partners, large proposals, and legacy projects; (3) advise the Science IPT on which
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/alma/alma.html (1 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:06:16 PM] ALMA Update projects are the most challenging from a calibration point of view; (4) consider how the choice of projects for demonstration science might be made and how the broader ALMA community could be involved; and (5) consider the draft plans for science verification. The ASAC is still waiting for a response from the Board to our report, so I will have to summarize the main conclusions of the report in my next update.
3 ALMA Developments in Canada
3.1 Band 3 Receiver Development
The Band 3 receiver team is passing a significant milestone right now. The first deliverable Band 3 cartridge (cartridge #1) is being assembled at HIA Victoria. Exacting quality assurance procedures are being followed at each assembly step. Each component was required to be fully qualified individually before the final assembly. Once completed, cartridge #1 will go through an exhaustive series of acceptance tests at HIA before its scheduled shipment to the North American Front End Integration Centre at NRAO in April 2005. Progress has also continued on the cartridge test set, which was commissioned during the Fall in manual mode using the prototype Band 3 cartridge (see the two accompanying pictures).
As well, the mixer test set is in the process of being commissioned. Negotiations between HIA and NRAO on the Band 3 Statement of Work have successfully dealt with all outstanding issues, and we expect it to be signed in the very near future. This signing will formally conclude the requirements of the Band 3 Preliminary Design Review. Figure 2: Band 3 cartridge - click on images for closeup.
HIA is now working closely with a Canadian company in the production of the low noise cryogenic IF amplifiers needed for the eight pre-production cartridges. A recent development is the expression of interest by the Japanese ALMA project in buying these IF amplifiers from Canada. This is a perhaps rare instance of Japan coming to Canadian industry for high-tech assistance.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/alma/alma.html (2 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:06:16 PM] ALMA Update
On a personal note, the Band 3 Project Manager, Keith Yeung, has been away on medical leave since the summer, and in his temporary absence, Stephane Claude has ably doubled up as Project Engineer and Project Manager. We all wish Keith a full and quick recovery. For more information on the ALMA Band 3 receiver project contact Doug Johnstone (Project Scientist - [email protected]) or Stephane Claude (Acting Project Manager -stephane.claude@nrc-cnrc- gc.ca).
3.2 Software
Chris Wilson was heavily involved in organizing and participating in the second test of the ALMA Pipeline software. James di Francesco and Brenda Matthews (HIA) and Debra Shepherd (NRAO) were the other testers involved. The test focused on evaluating the heuristics (or logic) used to flag bad data for calibrators. The test used spectral line data sets from the VLA and Plateau de Bure and did not include any imaging or calibration steps. The actual testing is completed and Chris is in the process of finalizing the report. She also attended the meeting of the ALMA Science Software Requirements committee in October. David Fugate and Gary Li (University of Calgary) and Raymond Rusk (HIA-DRAO) attended the ALMA Computing All-Hands meeting held Dec 6-9, 2004. The meeting began with a software release 2.0 integration demo and discussion on the morning of Dec 6 at ESO in Garching, Germany and then moved to the Palace Hotel in Merano, Italy for the remainder of the week. Major discussion items for the Offline group to which Gary and Raymond belong included the Alma Science Data Model, the Data Capture process and Release 2.1 deliverables. The Alma Common Software (ACS) group to which David belongs gave several demonstrations and presentations and provided individual support to software developers attending the meeting. There was extensive discussion of features to be included in ACS 4.0. David stayed on at ESO in Garching after the All-Hands Meeting for an additional week of consultation with co-workers in the ACS group. In conjunction with the All-Hands Meeting, there were two other meetings that touched upon areas of Canadian participation in ALMA software development. The first was a pre-meeting session on science pipeline heuristics and second was a post-meeting NGAST/Archive review. Chris Wilson participated in the heuristics meeting via video. Chris Wilson [email protected] Canadian ALMA Project Scientist (with input from Stephane Claude, Jim Hesser, Doug Johstone, and Raymond Rusk)
File translated from TEX by TTH, version 3.40. On 18 Dec 2004, 11:57.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/alma/alma.html (3 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:06:16 PM] E-Cass - 2004 Dec. - NRC HIA Happenings - Du neuf a l'IHA du CNRC
Events at NRC's HIA (2004 Sept.-Dec.) Du neuf à l'IHA du CNRC (sept.-déc.
edited by: 2004)
édité par: Dr. Jacques P. Vallée
This Fall, Ken Tapping travelled far and wide to protect astronomical Cet automne, Ken Tapping a voyagé en plusieurs endroits pour frequencies in the infrared (above 3000 GHz; below 100 micrometers) protéger les fréquences astronomiques dans l'infrarouge (> 3000 GHz, and in the radio (above 10 MHz; below 30 meters), in order to meet with <100 micromètres) et en radio (>10 MHz, <30 mètres), dans le but de spectrum managers, atmospheric environment advisors, satellite parlementer avec les agents du spectre, les aviseurs en environnement downlink providers, electricity power distributors, space broadcasters, atmosphérique, les fournisseurs de liens satellites-terre, les distributeurs and the likes. d'énergie électrique, les émetteurs TV en orbite, etc. On 24 November, a major milestone has been reached: the ACSIS Le 24 novembre, un important jalon fut atteint: notre spectromètre spectrometer left HIA in Penticton, bound for Seattle, then Honolulu, ACSIS est sorti de l'enceinte de l'IHA à Penticton, en route pour Seattle, then Hilo, then the Mauna Kea summit. The JCMT will thus received a Honolulu, Hilo, et le sommet du Mauna Kea. Tout un cadeau de fin long-awaited year-end present! d'année, tant attendu au TJCM! In September, NRC HIA proceeded with the public release of the En septembre, l'IHA du CNRC a mis à la disposition du public les Gemini Science Archive (interfaces & catalogues). This was the fruit of Archives scientifiques de Gémini (interfaces & catalogues). C'était le one year of development by the CADC working group headed by fruit d'une année de développement par le groupe de travail du CCDA Séverin Gaudet. dirigé par Séverin Gaudet. In 2004, HIA's Canadian Astronomy Data Centre delivered each month En 2004, le Centre canadien de données astronomiques a délivré on average 1.6 Terabytes of CFHT Legacy Survey data to users over chaque mois environ 1.6 térabytes de données du Relevé du Leg TCFH the internet. Congratulations to Luc Simard, CFHT Archive scientist, aux utilisateurs sur la toile. Félicitations à Luc Simard, Scientifique des and to the team members. The previous record was set in 2002 with 1 archives TCFH, et à son équipe. L'ancien record établi en 2002 était de Terabytes per year, achieved after 15 years of operations! 1 Terabytes par année, après 15 ans d'opérations! NRC HIA held an Open House and Trade Show at DRAO in Penticton, L'IHA du CNRC a tenu une journée 'porte ouverte' avec exposition spearheaded by Tom Landecker. The Large Adaptive Reflector surface commerciale à l'OFRA de Penticton, dirigée par Tom Landecker. La was a crowd pleaser. The unadvertised event attracted 1400 people on faveur du public fut la surface du Grand Réflecteur Adaptable. Sans Saturday Sept. 25. NRC is now emblazoned on bedroom walls of young aucune annonce payée, 1400 personnes sont venues ce samedi 25 kids throughout the Okanagan. septembre. Le CNRC est affiché sur les murs de chambres à coucher de beaucoup d'enfants dans l'Okanagan. FOCUS magazine published in September a lengthy public overview of Le magazine FOCUS a publié en septembre un exposé sur les travaux the scientific work done at HIA in Victoria by Stéphanie Côté & Luc scientifiques de Stéphanie Côté & Luc Simard à l'IHA de Victoria, et Simard, and of their "human passion for discovery". sur leur propre "passion de découvrir". On the 2nd of October, HIA's Centre of the Universe [CU] held an Le 2 octobre, le Centre de l'Univers [CU] de l'IHA a eu une journée Open House in Victoria, and the guest speaker, Gordon Walker (UBC), 'porte ouverte' à Victoria, et le conférencier principal, Gordon Walker spoke eloquently on "The first 25 wonderful years of the CFHT", which (UBC), a parlé éloquemment sur "Les fabuleux premiers 25 ans du was followed by a birthday cake in honour of the positive impact the TCFH". Ceci fut suivi d'un gateau d'anniversaire pour honorer l'impact CFHT has had on Canadian astronomy. On Oct. 16, the CU hosted positif du TCFH sur l'astronomie canadienne. Le 16 du mois, Jaymie Jaymie Matthews (UBC) who gave a public lecture on "Small Matthews (UBC) a donné un discours public au CU sur le thème "Small telescope, big questions: the story of Canada's first space telescope and telescope, big questions: the story of Canada's first space telescope and the role of the RASC". the role of the RASC". In October, Canada Post issued a special commemorative stamp En octobre, Postes Canada a émis un timbre commémoratif spécial honouring Gerhard Herzberg as the Father of Molecular Spectroscopy. pour honorer Gerhard Herzberg comme le Père de la Spectroscopie moléculaire. Jason Fiege finished his 3-year term at HIA, working in submillimeter Jason Fiege a terminé un terme de 3 ans à l'IHA où il a travaillé en polarimetry, and accepted a position at the University of Manitoba in polarimétrie sousmillimétrique, et il a accepté une position à l'Université Winnipeg. Linda Sparke returned to the University of Wisconsin, after du Manitoba à Winnipeg. Linda Sparke est retournée à l'University of spending a 4-month sabbatical at HIA. After 2 years working with the Wisconsin, après une sabbatique de 4 mois à l'IHA. Après 2 ans de instrument group at HIA in Victoria, on projects in optical astronomy travail dans le groupe des instruments à l'IHA de Victoria, sur des such as VLOT, TMT, and WFOS, Denis Laurin returned to the projets en astronomie optique comme VLOT, TMT & WFOS, Denis Canadian Space Agency as a scientist in the newly restructured Space Laurin est retourné à l'Agence spatiale canadienne en tant que Science group in St-Hubert. Scientifique dans le groupe nouvellement restructuré des Sciences spatiales à St-Hubert.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/hia/hia04dec-cass.html (1 of 2) [12/21/2004 10:06:17 PM] E-Cass - 2004 Dec. - NRC HIA Happenings - Du neuf a l'IHA du CNRC
In December, Dmitry Monin joined the HIA DAO staff, in support of the En décembre, l'OFA de l'IHA a recruté Dmitry Monin pour le soutien 1.8m and 1.2m optical telescopes in Victoria. Dmitry held a PDF at de ses télescopes optiques de 1.8m et 1.2m à Victoria. Dmitry avait une Université de Moncton before coming here. His areas of expertise position postdoctorale à l'Université de Moncton avant de venir include magnetic fields in stars. s'installer ici. Ses travaux antérieurs incluent les champs magnétiques dans les étoiles. NRC web contains a FAQ section on Astronomy, dealing with La toile du CNRC contient une section sur l'astronomie dans sa Foire questions about Sunrise/sunset, leap year, reporting of meteorites and aux questions, touchant les levées et couchers du soleil, les années UFOs, and the well known Time clock. bissextiles, comment faire un rapport sur les météorites et les OVNIS, et aussi la fameuse Horloge.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/hia/hia04dec-cass.html (2 of 2) [12/21/2004 10:06:17 PM] Potential Astronomical Sites in the Canadian Arctic
Potential Astronomical Sites in the Canadian Arctic
Ray Carlberg
The Canadian high Arctic, in particular Ellesmere Island, has a number of mountain ranges that potentially offer some of the best astronomical sites in the world. The extreme cold of the arctic winter (the mean winter temperature at Alert, near sea level, is about minus 35C) is the key new quantity. However, in common with other superb sites there are fairly high coastal mountains, a desert (less precipitation than the Sahara) with the bonus of fairly moderate wind speeds. Together these all suggest potentially very good observing conditions. That is, the astronomical image quality may be very good above the inevitable ground layer of turbulence and the thermal and water vapour backgrounds are very low. It also turns out that there is very little radio interference in the high Arctic, so the interest is not exclusively for optical or infrared astronomy. Site testing at Dome C (elevation 3500m, -76 latitude) has found that it may be a very good site, far superior to the South Pole itself. Ellesmere north of +80 latitude may be equal or superior. The Ellesmere mountains at 2000+ meters are not quite as high as the Antarctic, but they offer considerable numbers of peaks that are not glaciated which will be important for any eventual observatory.
Satellite imaging has been used to establish that the winter clear sky fraction, about 60% at selected peaks, is comparable to similar measures in northern Chile and Hawaii. Weather records are kept for Alert and Eureka, but there are no measurements of the astronomical properties of the atmosphere at mountain sites. Accordingly a group of Canadian astronomers, collaborating with an astronomer at ESO (Ivanescu) and the
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/carlberg/Cassiopeia_WS.htm (1 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:06:17 PM] Potential Astronomical Sites in the Canadian Arctic TMT project (Travouillon, who was part of the Dome C team) have proposed that we undertake a program of site testing to establish the qualities of high Arctic sites in a program of modern site testing that will put the Ellesmere sites on the same basis as a number of Chilean and Mauna Kea, Hawaii sites. The Dome C group has experience with winter hardening sophisticated modern site testing devices.
The high arctic is a daunting environment. Recall the soldiers from Alert who went on a two hour summer hike and were rescued when the sudden blizzard broke a few days later. However, the basic infrastructure to support the minimal logistical needs of research groups working in the north is in place and the world famous Ken Borek Air operates a year round charter air service in the north. The groups need to be self- sustaining in all senses should the weather degrade or polar bears become too interested. Looking to the future, many of the most attractive sites are close to the coast so that if construction ever was to take place, it would be possible to bring in large equipment. There are also a number of docks in place, as remnants of oil exploration programs. So, although difficult and doubtless expensive, Ellesmere is a feasible location for a sophisticated science facility.
How would site testing work? The first step is to use maps and satellite imaging to select a set of reasonable sites for more detailed examination. We hope to go up next summer to select two or three sites to be intensively monitored with remote equipment. The equipment can be powered over the winter and have a computerized datalogger. Normally these download via satellite phone, but all are sites are north of Eureka (+80), the most northerly place where even large dish antennae satellite communication with geostationary satellites can be made to work.
At this time we have no idea how this proposed program of research will work out in this particular round of applications. However, it appears sufficiently scientifically promising and in the interests of Canada that
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/carlberg/Cassiopeia_WS.htm (2 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:06:17 PM] Potential Astronomical Sites in the Canadian Arctic Arctic site testing should be pursued to establish the value and feasibility for anyone to establish an observatory in the high Arctic. Venturesome ideas for what eventually could go in the high arctic cover the full gamut from sub-mm telescopes (as currently being mounted at the South Pole), to specialized infrared telescopes at the current scale of 5- 10m, to some future giant telescope. It is far too early to tell how this will develop. We only know that all developments depend on taking the first step to open up options for astronomy.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/carlberg/Cassiopeia_WS.htm (3 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:06:17 PM] Gemini Observatory Update Gemini Observatory Update
Dennis Crabtree (NRC-HIA)
The Gemini Board had an “intense and rewarding” retreat in September to address their vision for the future of the Gemini Observatory. Following the Board retreat and the November Board meeting:
● The Board re-affirmed its endorsement of the scientific goals of the Gemini community as expressed in the Aspen program and remains committed to finding the required resources. ● The Board encouraged Gemini to pursue arrangements with other observatories to provide instrumentation capabilities beyond those available or practical for the Gemini telescopes. To this end the Board approved the principle of pursuing a collaboration with Subaru on a wide-field optical spectrograph to address the wide-field optical science that came out of Aspen. ● Noting the high demand for queue-scheduled time by the Gemini users, the Board approved an operations budget that will allow Gemini to increase its scientific staff to a level required to support 100% queue-scheduled observations. The increased operational budget will also Gemini to develop enhanced data reduction pipeline software, add additional office space in Hilo and build a small dormitory at Cerro Pachon.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/gemini/gemini_english.htm (1 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:06:18 PM] Gemini Observatory Update
Figure 1 A view of SOAR from Genmini South (center background) in November. The seeing monitor and weather tower are on the left and the SOADAR is seen on the right. This was not a typical November night in Chile as we did not open due to high humidity.
In Semester 2005A, Gemini initiated a time exchange with the Keck Observatory. Gemini users have access to 5 nights of HIRES time in exchange for 5 nights of Michelle time. HIRES has been recently upgraded (see the Keck webpages) so this is a very exciting opportunity for the Gemini community. In 2005A, a Canadian proposal was allocated 3 of the 5 nights with HIRES.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/gemini/gemini_english.htm (2 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:06:18 PM] Gemini Observatory Update
Gemini has changed the process for populating the queue. The overall size of the queue has been reduced. It was felt that too much effort by PIs, NGO and Gemini staff was being put into Phase II proposals that would never be executed. In addition, the size of SRB 1 and 2 have been slightly reduced and SRB 4 has been eliminated. Each country will still have at least one proposal in SRB 1. The better observing condition bins will not be overfilled as they have in the past. PIs in SRB 3 are being asked to consider relaxing their observing conditions and consolidating their program (as if they were classically scheduled and had non-optimal conditions) in order to increase the chances of their program being executed.
The Canadian Gemini Office has provided significant support for the Gemini queue in the last few months. Stephanie Côté supported a GMOS-S queue shift in September, Tim Davidge a NIRI-Altair shift in October and Dennis Crabtree a GMOS-S shift in November.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/gemini/gemini_english.htm (3 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:06:18 PM] Gemini Observatory Update Mise à jour sur l’observatoire Gemini Dennis Crabtree (IHA-CNRC)
Le Conseil de l’observatoire Gemini a organisé une séance de réflexion « intense et enrichissante » en septembre afin d’aborder la question de sa vision de l’avenir de l’observatoire Gemini. À la suite de la séance de réflexion et de la réunion du Conseil en novembre :
● Le Conseil a affirmé de nouveau son appui des buts scientifiques de la communauté Gemini exprimés dans le programme d’Aspen, et demeure engagé à trouver les ressources nécessaires. ● Le Conseil a encouragé l’observatoire Gemini à faire des arrangements avec d’autres observatoires pour fournir des capacités en instrumentation plus poussées que celles qui sont disponibles ou pratiques pour les télescopes Gemini. À cette fin, le Conseil a approuvé en principe la poursuite d’une collaboration avec Subaru pour mettre au point un spectrographe optique à grand champ pour étudier les questions de la science de l’optique à grand champ découlant du programme d’Aspen. ● Prenant note de la grande file d’attente de temps d’observation des utilisateurs de l’observatoire Gemini, le Conseil a approuvé un budget des opérations qui permettra à l’observatoire d’augmenter son personnel scientifique à un niveau pouvant assurer le soutien à 100 % des observations mises au calendrier. Ce budget des opérations majoré permettrait également à l’observatoire Gemini de développer des logiciels de pipeline améliorés pour la réduction de données, d’ajouter des bureaux à l’administration centrale Hilo et de construire un petit dortoir à Cerro Pachon.
●
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/gemini/gemini_french.htm (1 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:06:18 PM] Gemini Observatory Update
Figure 1 Le télescope SOAR de l'observatoire Gemini Sud (arrieère plan au centre) en novembre. Le moniteur d'observation et la tour météorologique sont situés à la gauche est a la droite. Cette nuit de novembre au Chili n'etait pas typique parce qu'on n'a pas ouvert l'observatoire en raison de l'humidité trop élevée.
Au semestre 2005A, l’observatoire Gemini a organisé un système d’échange de temps d’observation avec l’observatoire Keck. Les utilisateurs de l’observatoire Gemini ont accès à cinq nuits de temps d’observation avec l’appareil HIRES en échange de 5 nuits avec l’appareil
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/gemini/gemini_french.htm (2 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:06:18 PM] Gemini Observatory Update
Michelle. L’appareil HIRES a récemment été mis à jour (consulter les pages Web de l’observatoire Keck) et, par conséquent, il s’agit d’une occasion excitante pour la communauté de l’observatoire Gemini. On a accordé 3 des 5 nuits avec l’appareil HIRES à une proposition canadienne pendant le semestre 2005A.
Gemini a modifié la méthode de population de la file d’attente. La grandeur globale de la file d’attente a été réduite. On croyait que les chercheurs principaux, le personnel du bureau national de Gemini et le personnel de Gemini mettaient trop d’efforts pour élaborer des propositions de projets de Phase II qui ne seraient jamais exécutés. De plus, la grandeur de SRB 1 et 2 a été quelque peu réduite et SRB 4 a été éliminé. Chaque pays aura toujours au moins une proposition dans SRB 1. Les casiers des meilleures conditions d’observation ne seront pas trop remplis comme ils l’étaient par le passé. On demande aux chercheurs principaux dans SRB 3 d’envisager la possibilité de réduire leurs conditions d’observation et de consolider leur programme (comme s’ils avaient un calendrier établi classiquement et des conditions moins qu’optimales) afin d’augmenter les chances que leur programme soit exécuté.
Le bureau canadien de l’observatoire Gemini a fourni un soutien considérable pour la file d’attente du Gemini au cours des quelques derniers mois. Stephanie Côté a appuyé une modification de la file d’attente pour le projet GMOS-S en septembre, Tim Davidge pour le projet NIRI-Altair en octobre et Dennis Crabtree pour le projet GMOS-S en novembre.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/gemini/gemini_french.htm (3 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:06:18 PM] Legacy Survey Plans for the JCMT Legacy Survey Plans for the JCMT
If you have any interest in large surveys with the JCMT, now is the time to get involved! In October 2004, the JCMT Board issued a formal call for Legacy Survey Proposals to exploit the wide-field mapping capabilities of JCMT's new generation of submillimetre instrumentation, principally the SCUBA-2 bolometer array (+ FTS, Pol) and HARP-B (+ Pol) heterodyne array, due in 2005-6. Letters of Intent, received by 5th November 2004, suggest an unprecedented level of interest, running to 5 years of clear nights by several hundred astronomers from the partner countries. Canadian participation in this process was extremely strong.
The Letters of Intent received by the JCMT Surveys Steering Group are available on-line at: http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/JCMT/surveys/. All interested Canadian astronomers are encouraged to join the relevant survey mailing lists. A Survey Guidelines document, linked from the above URL, will re-iterate and/or update the proposal rules and instrument specifications. It should be considered the definitive source of information for proposals. The Board wishes to encourage broad participation amongst the partner countries. It is expected that, at the very least, membership of survey groups will remain open during the period leading up to the submission deadline for Legacy proposals, March 1st 2005. The potential for new survey ideas to emerge before the deadline is acknowledged; these should be brought to the attention of the community via the mailing lists or Wiki.
A workshop `Legacy Surveys with the JCMT' will take place at the Lorentz Centre in Leiden from the 24th to 26th January 2005. A link to the registration information is available at the Surveys web site (URL above).
JCMT Legacy surveys must address a number of important scientific questions and yield archived data of sufficient quality to remain useful for unforeseen future research. They must be large, coherent science investigations, typically involving hundreds of hours of observing time, not reproducible by any reasonable number of ordinary proposals.
In March, proposals will be sent to around a dozen expert reviewers, chosen by the Director JCMT and JCMT Board Chair. These reviewers will be external to survey groups and will include astronomers from non-partner countries. They will assess the science, legacy value, feasibility and management plans. The JCMT Survey Steering Group will, based on the comments of the reviewers, present a coherent Legacy survey programme to the JCMT Board at its summer meeting in 2005.
Given the extremely enthusiastic response from the submillimetre community the JCMT Board intends to ask the funding agencies in the UK and Canada to provide further funds for SCUBA- 2 and to consider extending JCMT operations beyond 2009 to ensure full exploitation.
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/jcmt/jcmt.html (1 of 2) [12/21/2004 10:06:19 PM] Legacy Survey Plans for the JCMT
The JSSG currently consists of the following members: Rob Ivison, Gilles Joncas, Antonio Chrysostomou, Douglas Scott, Derek Ward-Thompson, Frank Helmich, Ian Smail, Paul van der Werf, and Tim Jenness.
For more information, or to get on the Canadian SCUBA2 or millimetre surveys email exploders, contact Doug Johnstone ([email protected]) or James Di Francesco ([email protected]).
Doug Johnstone
National Research Council Canada Tel (250) 363-8108 Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics Fax (250) 363-0045 5071 West Saanich Road [email protected] Victoria, B.C. V9E 2E7 www.hia.nrc.gc.ca Government of Canada
Conseil national de recherches Canada Tel (250) 363-8108 Institut Herzberg d'astrophysique Fax (250) 363-0045 5071, chemin West Saanich [email protected] Victoria (C.-B.) V9E 2E7 www.iha.cnrc.gc.ca Gouvernement du Canada
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/news/jcmt/jcmt.html (2 of 2) [12/21/2004 10:06:19 PM] reports Reports
CTAC report for Gemini & CFHT for semester 2005a / Rapport du CATC de Gémini & TCFH pour le semestre 2005a
JCMT CTAG Semester Report 2005a / Rapport Semestriel du GATC du TJCM 2005a
Coalition for Canadian Astronomy - Report on Recent Activities by Gretchen Harris
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/reports/reports.html [12/21/2004 10:07:17 PM] E-Cass 2004 Dec. - CTAC Report: Gemini+CFHT
CTAC report for Gemini & Rapport du CATC de Gémini & CFHT TCFH pour le semestre 2005a for semester 2005a
CTAC Voting Members Membres votants du CATC
Current members of CFHT/Gemini CTAC Les membres du CATC pour les télescopes are: Gémini & TCFH sont: Bohlender, David (CNRC-IHA Victoria) English, Jayanne (U. Man. - Winnipeg) Ellison, Sara (Univ. Victoria) Mitchell, George (St.Mary's Univ., Halifax), Chair /Président Patton, David (Trent Univ., Peterborough) Stetson, Peter (NRC-HIA, Victoria) Richer, Harvey (Univ. BC - Vancouver) van Kerkwijk, Marten (Univ. Toronto)
The CTAC Technical Secretary, Dr. Le Secrétaire Technique du CATC est le Dr. Jacques P. Vallée (NRC-HIA, Victoria), Jacques P. Vallée (IHA, Victoria), supervisant le supervises computer processing and processus informatique et la mémoire provides corporate memory. corporative.
The observing season starts on 1 Feb. La saison des observations débute le 1 fév. 2005 2005 and ends on 31 July 2005. et se termine le 31 juillet 2005. Proposal Statistics Statistiques des demandes de temps
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CFHT: For this semester, 24 Canadian TCFH: Pour ce semestre, 24 demandes de proposals were received, requesting 72 temps canadiennes ont été reçues, et un total de nights. In addition, the Cdn commitment for 72 nuits furent demandées. De plus, l'imposition the Legacy Survey was 27 dark nights. The canadienne pour le Relevé du Legs fut de 27 allocated time for Canada was 27 dark nuits noires. Le temps alloué pour le Canada fut nights for the Legacy Survey, and 32.5 de 27 nuits noires pour le Relevé du Legs, et de nights for the regular proposals. The 32.5 nuits pour les demandes de temps. Le Canadian over-subscription factor (the ratio facteur de pression canadien (temps of requested time to available time) was 2.2 demandé/temps disponible) fut de 2.2 pour les for CTAC proposals alone, and 1.67 overall demandes de temps seulement, et de 1.67 au (including the Legacy Survey). total (incluant le Relevé du Legs).
Gemini: For Gemini North, CTAC received Gémini: Pour le télescopes Gémini Nord, le 29 proposals requesting 544 hours, and for CATC a reçu 29 demandes pour 544 heures, et Gemini South CTAC received 21 proposals pour Gémini Sud le CATC a reçu 21 demandes requesting 248 hours. Given Canada's pour 248 heures. Comme la part du Canada est share of 162 hours on GN and 174 hours de 162 heures sur GN et de 174 heures sur GS, on GS, the Canadian over-subscription was ceci done un facteur de pression de 3.4 sur GN et 3.4 for GN and 1.4 for GS. de 1.4 sur GS.
Peer Review: Two external referee reports Arbitrage: Pour chaque demande TCFH ou were requested by email for each CFHT Gémini, on a fait participer par courriel deux and Gemini proposal, with both national arbitres externes, choisis parmi les communautés and international reviews sought and nationale et internationale. Un seul rappel a été received. Only 1 reminder was sent to late envoyé aux arbitres en retard. Le taux de referees. The referee's email response rate réponse des arbitres a été très bon: 83% pour le was very good with 83% for CFHT, and TCFH, et 73% pour Gémini. Les arbitres avaient 73% for Gemini. Close to 4 weeks were environ 4 semaines (TCFH) et 2 semaines given to CFHT referees, and close to 2 (Gémini) pour retourner leurs rapports. weeks for Gemini referees.
The CTAC Meeting for Gemini La réunion du CATC pour Gémini & & CFHT TCFH
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The CTAC meeting was held on 6 & 7 Nov. La réunion du CATC a eu lieu les 6 et 7 Nov. 2004 at the Univ. of Toronto (hosted by 2004 à l'Univ. de Toronto (avec l'amabilité de Marten van Kerkwijk). As always, CTAC Marten van Kerkwijk). Comme d'habitude, le ranked proposals according to their CATC a classé les demandes selon le mérite scientific merit and technical feasibility. scientifique et leur faisabilité technique.
CTAC discussed the following issues : Le CATC a discuté les points suivants: 1. For the 3rd semester in a row, the value 1. Pour le 3e semestre en ligne, le CATC a of external referees was discussed again discuté encore and encore de l'importance des and again. It remains the general view of arbitres externes. L'opinion générale du CATC CTAC that external referee reports are very demeure que les rapports d'arbitres externes sont valuable. très importants.
2. CTAC noted a continuing problem with 2. Le CATC note le problème continuel avec les proposal figures for Gemini. Figures are figures des demandes pour Gémini. Les figures submitted as attachments and the final sont soumises comme attaches et la demande Gemini proposal is assembled in Victoria. finale Gémini est assemblée à Victoria. Avec With the current PIT, it is not possible for l'outil PIT, il n'est pas possible au demandeur de the proposer to review the assembled voir la demande assemblée et de l'approuver proposal and approve it before submitting it. avant de la soumettre. Comme résultat, il y a un As a result, there were again a number of nombre de figures tronquées ou partiellement truncated or partially illegible Figures. lisibles.
CFHT & Gemini TAC summaries and L'IHA envoie aux chercheurs principaux par copies of referee reports (names withheld) courriel depuis Victoria les rapports des arbitres are sent from HIA in Victoria by email to the (anonymes) et le sommaire du CATC. PIs of the proposals.
The International TACs Les CAT Internationaux
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/reports/ctac/octac5a-cass.html (3 of 5) [12/21/2004 10:07:21 PM] E-Cass 2004 Dec. - CTAC Report: Gemini+CFHT
At these international meetings, joint À ces rencontres internationales, on discute les proposals and potential duplicate sources demandes conjointes et les cas de duplication de are discussed, and time assignments and sources, et on finalise les allocations de temps et scheduling are finalised. The final observing l'horaire. schedules can be seen on the CFHT and Gemini web pages. Le CAT International pour le TCFH s'est réuni pendant la rencontre du Comité Scientifique les The CFHT International TAC met at the 11,12,13 nov. 2004. Le CATC était représenté SAC meeting held on 2004 Nov. 11,12,13, par son Président. and CTAC was represented at this meeting by its Chair. Le CAT international pour Gémini s'est réuni le 29 nov. 2004. Le CATC était aussi représenté par The Gemini International TAC met on 2004 son Président. Nov. 29, and CTAC was again represented by its Chair.
George Mitchell George Chair, Canadian Mitchell Time Allocation Président, Committee Comité (CTAC) for d'Allocation Gemini and de Temps CFHT Canadien (CATC) pour George Mitchell Gémini et le is Professor at TCFH. St.Mary's University in George Halifax, NS. He Mitchell est is also Chair of professeur à the Dept. of l'Université Astronomy & St.Mary's de Physics and of Halifax. Il est the Burke- aussi Gaffney directeur du Observatory. département Much of his d'astronomie research & physique, involves the ainsi que de interstellar l'Observatoire medium and star Burke-
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file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/reports/ctac/octac5a-cass.html (5 of 5) [12/21/2004 10:07:21 PM] E-Cass 2004 Dec. - CTAG Report: JCMT
JCMT CTAG Semester Rapport Semestriel du Report 2005a GATC du TJCM 2005a
Submission and refereeing Soumission et arbitrage
Thirty-two proposals were submitted to the Le Groupe d'Allocation de Temps Canadien Canadian Time Allocation Group (CTAG) (GATC) a recu 32 demandes de temps au for James Clerk Maxwell Telescope Télescope James Clerk Maxwell (TJCM) pour le (JCMT) time in the coming semester. semestre qui vient. Les demandes sont Proposals were received via e-mail to envoyées par courriel à [email protected] [email protected] at HIA in Victoria. à l'IHA de Victoria. Pour chaque demande, deux Two referees were requested for each arbitres furent sollicités. Comme d'habitude, proposal, and, as usual, there was a high environ 80 % des arbitres ont répondu (1 rappel percentage (80 %) of responses from seulement). referees (only 1 reminder was issued). CTAG Statistics Statistiques du GATC
The amount of Canadian time requested Le temps canadien demandé (1211h pour les (1211h for regular proposals, 43h for demandes normales, 43h pour repaiement previous student payback, 98h for étudiant, 98h pour anciennes demandes avec previous rollover status, 16h for CanServ) transfer automatique, 16h pour CanServ) a greatly exceeded the 540h available, surpassé les 540h disponibles, donnant un taux resulting in a Canadian oversubscription de sursouscription de 2.53, ce qui démontre un of 2.53, demonstrating a continuing grand intérêt continuel par la communauté healthy interest by the scientific scientifique. community. CTAG meeting Réunion du GATC
The voting members of CTAG are: Les membres votants du GATC sont: Beaulieu, Sylvie (Univ. Laval, Ste Foy) Matthews, Henry (NRC HIA, Penticton), Chair/Président Plume, René (Univ. Calgary), Welch, Gary (St.Mary's Univ., Halifax) Yee, Howard (Univ. Toronto)
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/reports/ctag/rctag5a-cass.html (1 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:07:22 PM] E-Cass 2004 Dec. - CTAG Report: JCMT
The NRC CTAG is ably assisted by Le GATC du CNRC reçoit l'aide compétente de Jacques Vallée for the technical Jacques Vallée pour le secrétariat technique, secretarial duties, computer processing, l'analyse computationnelle et la mémoire and the corporate memory. corporative.
On this occasion, the CTAG met in Le GATC s'est réuni les à Victoria (IHA-CNRC) Victoria (NRC HIA) on Nov. 13/14 to les 13/14 nov. pour évaluer les demandes de discuss proposals to use the JCMT. The temps canadiennes. Le Directeur du TJCM, JCMT Director, Gary Davis, was in Gary Davis, était présent et a donné un aperçu attendence and gave an overview of the de la situation au TJCM. Le GATC a ordonné JCMT situation. Taking into account les demandes de temps selon le mérite comments from referees, technical scientifique, tenant compte des commentaires assessors, and the CTAG's own des arbitres, des évaluateurs techniques, et de assessments, the proposals were ranked l'évaluation du GATC, et une distribution in order of overall merit and a provisional provisoire du temps a été faite. allocation of time was made. CTAG issues Points d'intérêt du GATC
1. CanServ is limited to 'urgent' proposals. 1. CanServ est restreint aux demandes The maximum time is 4h, and the 'urgentes'. Le temps maximum est de 4h, et 'urgency' must be explained. l'urgence doit être expliquée.
2. CTAG absolutely needs external 2. Le GATC a absolument besoin de rapports referee reports, to cover all areas (many d'arbitres externes, pour couvrir tous les being outside our combined areas of champs (plusieurs étant en dehors de nos expertise). In response to a query, Gary domaines conjoints d'expertise). En réponse à Davis, JCMT Director, commented that no une question, Gary Davis, Directeur du TJCM, a one has ever documented a case to him commenté que personne ne lui a jamais where ideas where stolen by a referee, démontré un cas où ses idées furent volées par and many countries do use external un arbitre, et plusieurs pays utilisent des referees such as the UK and CSO. arbitres externes comme la Grande-Bretagne et le CSO.
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International TAC CAT International
ITAC members met by telecon on Nov.23. Les membres du CATI se sont rejoints via The ITAC includes representatives from télécon le 23 Nov. Le CIAT est composé de Canada (CTAG Chair), the UK, and the représentants du Canada (Président du GATC), Netherlands. It overseas the division of du RU, et des Pays-Bas. De plus, le CIAT divise time between the partners and also le temps entre les partenaires et évalue les assesses all purely international demandes 100% internationales, c-à-d sans un proposals, i.e. those without a PI or a co-I PI ou un co-I d'un pays partenaire du TJCM. from a JCMT partner country. On pourra voir sur la toile du TJCM à Hawaii la Allocations for successful proposals are liste des demandes de temps fructueuses. Des posted on the JCMT Web pages in informations plus détaillées sont envoyées par Hawaii. In all cases, further information is le GATC aux chercheurs principaux. sent to the PI's in the form of feedback from the CTAG.
Dr. Henry Matthews Dr. Henry Matthews Chair, Canadian Time Allocation Président, Groupe d'Allocation de Group (CTAG) for JCMT Temps Canadien (GATC) pour le TJCM Dr. Matthews is at NRC HIA, where his research concentrates on the physics of the Dr. Matthews est à l'IHA du CNRC, Ses ISM. recherches portent sur la physique du milieu interstellaire. [email protected] [email protected]
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/reports/ctag/rctag5a-cass.html (3 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:07:22 PM] Coalition for Canadian Astronomy - Report on Recent Activities Coalition for Canadian Astronomy - Report on Recent Activities
Members and representatives of the Coalition for Canadian Astronomy met in early December with senior ministry officials from both Finance and Industry and ~20MPs. To reach this many people it was necessary to have some overlapping meetings and so two groups were often in action at the same time. Coalition reps were: Gretchen Harris, Russ Taylor, Gilles Joncas (CASCA), Michael Jolliffe (Industry), and Pekka Sinervo (ACURA). Temple Scott Associates also attended the meetings and provided us all with an extensive briefing package which included: a full schedule of the meetings and identification of the participants for each meeting, background information on all of the MPs, and guidelines on how to present ourselves and desired outcomes for each session.
The meetings ran for three days (Dec. 7-9) and were normally 30 minute sessions. The majority of the MPs we met were from the liberal party and most of those had supported the Coalition’s previous efforts. We also met with several conservatives along with members from the NDP and Bloc Quebecois. At every meeting we provided our audience with a copy of the pre-release report of the Mid Term Review (as authorized by CASCA Board), a scorecard detailing how the $63.8M already received has been used, a background document on the LRP and past lobby efforts, and a summary of what funding is required over the next seven years and how that funding will be spent. We will be posting all of these on the CASCA website in the New Year.
Our goal for each meeting was to raise awareness that further money was required for the LRP since the previous funding that was allocated by the federal government in 2001 and 2003 would begin to run out as early as mid 2005, thus there is a need to assign new funds beginning in fiscal year 2005/06. The meetings generally began with the astronomer (Russ, Gretchen, Gilles) speaking briefly about the LRP and MTR, excellence in Canadian astronomy and the broad community support for this initiative. Michael Jolliffe spoke about the evidence of economic benefits both past and present. Pekka Sinervo talked about ACURA: its uniqueness in Canada as a university based coalition and the work that ACURA has
file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/reports/harris/ecasswinter2004.htm (1 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:07:23 PM] Coalition for Canadian Astronomy - Report on Recent Activities done so far. The questions asked both during and after these brief presentations varied widely but always came down to what money we needed and a time line for the funding. The materials prepared provided a breakdown in terms of the full 7 year ask based on the MTR Report as well as what was needed in the first year and the first three years.
The people we met with were generally interested and supportive. Those who had been supporters in the past remain so and new MPs ranged from very supportive to neutral (very few here). Several agreed to write letters to or speak to ministers Emerson (Industry) and Goodale (Finance). Others agreed to raise it in caucus or even in Question Period. The two Quebec MPs with whom Gilles Joncas met were among the strongest new supporters and we owe him our thanks for these two meetings alone. Pekka Sinervo’s presence was also enormously valuable because he is an academic, but not an astronomer, and a Dean whose job involves overseeing 32 different departments. When he spoke to the uniqueness and value of ACURA he was listened to. Michael Jolliffe continued what he has been doing for the Coalition for several years in speaking to the economic benefits of supporting the LRP. I was normally not in the meetings with Russ Taylor but it was clear from comments by the others that he is continuing his very effective championing of the LRP.
As for me, I learned a lot, had some fun in the process and came home exhausted. Overall I am pleased with the results and am optimistic that we will continue to be supported by the federal government. However, the process of funding the LRP remains a complex one and, until a better process comes along, we will need to do this again and again. We are already planning meetings for the New Year which will include the agency Presidents (or VPs) in January; and we will likely be in Ottawa again in early February for a second round of meetings with both MPs and ministry staff. Keep alert for more from the Coalition in the next week or two. We are looking for your help in raising the LRP with your local MPs and during the break is an ideal time to get in touch. There will be an email with information on how to get in touch with MPs and some ideas of what you file:///C|/kings/public_html/astro/ecass/issues/2004-ws/reports/harris/ecasswinter2004.htm (2 of 3) [12/21/2004 10:07:23 PM] Coalition for Canadian Astronomy - Report on Recent Activities might say – by letter, on the phone, or in person.
Gretchen Harris Co-Chair: Coalition for Canadian Astronomy
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