NOAO Newsletter NATIONAL OPTICAL ASTRONOMY OBSERVATORY ISSUE 107 — MARCH 2013 Director’s Corner Looking Forward, not Back ........................................................... 2 WIYN Instrumentation in 2013B ................................................. 17 Remote Observing Opportunities on Kitt Peak ............................. 18 Science Highlights SMARTS Consortium Enters New Era as “SMARTS III” .................... 19 The Dark Energy Survey Fires Up ................................................... 3 System-Wide Observing Opportunities for Semester 2013B: A Survey of Stellar Population Ages in the Halo of Andromeda ....... 4 Gemini, Keck, Subaru, and AAT................................................. 19 Kepler Photometry Plus KPNO 4-m Spectroscopy KPNO Instruments Available for 2013B........................................ 21 to Get Stars Right ...................................................................... 5 CTIO Instruments Available for 2013B ......................................... 22 Examining a Twin of SN 1987A before It Explodes .......................... 6 Gemini Instruments Available for 2013B ..................................... 23 Keck Instruments Available for 2013B ......................................... 24 System Science Capabilities AAT Instruments Available for 2013B .......................................... 24 Preparing for the Future: Blanco ƒ/8 Secondary Return to Service: January 2013 Update .... 25 The NOAO LSST Community Science Center .................................. 8 BigBOSS Status Update ................................................................. 8 NOAO Operations & Staff System Development Workshop: KPNO Director’s News ................................................................. 27 “Spectroscopy in the Era of LSST” ............................................... 9 Dedication of the Dark Energy Camera ........................................ 27 KOSMOS and COSMOS Updates ...................................................... 9 CTIO’s 50th Anniversary Celebrations .......................................... 28 SAM Update ............................................................................... 10 50 Years of CTIO – an Exposition .................................................. 29 Las Cumbres Observatory Gains First Light for Fifty Years of Wide-Field Studies in the Southern Hemisphere ...... 31 Entire 1-m CTIO Node .............................................................. 11 Got Data? ................................................................................... 32 NOAO at the 2013 Winter AAS Meeting ........................................ 32 System Observing: Telescopes & Instruments CTIO Summer Student Program for 2013 ..................................... 33 2013B NOAO Call for Proposals Due 28 March 2013 ...................... 12 EPO Participation in the Sells Elementary DECam Is Operational ................................................................. 13 Extended-Day Program ........................................................... 33 Availability of the Blanco 4-m Telescope Kitt Peak at the 2013 Tohono O’odham Rodeo and Fair ................. 34 during the Dark Energy Survey................................................. 14 Welcome Mariela Silva Olivares, DECam Community SV Update .................................................... 14 Safety and Environmental Engineer ......................................... 35 Confessions of a Noncosmologist DECam Observer ....................... 15 Tenure Track Position at CTIO ...................................................... 35 The DECam Community Pipeline ................................................. 16 Staff Changes at NOAO North and South ...................................... 35 Instruments Offered at KPNO in 2013B and Beyond ..................... 17 On the Cover CTIO: Past, Present, and Future This cover presents a collage of the past, present, and fu- ture of the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile in celebration of the observatory’s 50th anniversary. Top left: 150-inch (Blanco 4-m) telescope building in progress, 8 October 1969. (Image credit: NOAO/AURA/NSF.) Top middle: Construction of the 60-inch (left) and 36-inch (right) telescopes on Cerro Tololo, 1967. (Image credit: NOAO/ AURA/NSF.) Top right: CTIO construction progresses as workers create a utility trench, 9 September 1970. (Image credit: NOAO/AURA/NSF.) Middle left: Aerial view of CTIO, May 2009. (Image credit: NOAO/AURA/NSF.) Middle right: Star trails over the Blanco 4-m telescope on Cerro Tololo. (Image credit: T. Abbott/NOAO/AURA/NSF.) Bottom left: the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) 4.1-m tele- scope on Cerro Pachón. (Image credit: NOAO/AURA/NSF.) Bottom middle: the newly-commissioned Dark Energy Cam- era installed on the Blanco 4-m telescope. (Image credit: R. Hahn/Femilab.) Bottom right: Computer rendering of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) to be constructed on El Peñón, which is part of the Cerro Pachón ridge. (Image credit: T. Mason/LSST Corporation.) For more information about the creation of CTIO and the building of its telescope facilities, see: www.ctio.noao.edu/noao/content/CTIO-History. Tod R. Lauer, Editor David Silva NOAO Director’s Office Tod R. Lauer Science Highlights Jane Price, Ken Hinkle NOAO System Science Center Betty Stobie Science Data Management Nicole S. van der Bliek CTIO Timothy C. Beers, Cheri Marks-Murphy KPNO Stephen Pompea Education & Public Outreach The NOAO Newsletter Dave Bell, Mia Hartman System Observing is published semi-annually by the David Sprayberry NOAO System Technology Center National Optical Astronomy Observatory William Gressler LSST Project P.O. Box 26732, Tucson, AZ 85726 Patricia Knezek WIYN [email protected] Production Staff Publication Notes Barbara Fraps Managing Editor Peter Marenfeld Design & Layout This Newsletter is presented with active Kathie Coil Production Support links online at www.noao.edu/noao/noaonews.html If you are receiving a paper copy but would prefer not to, please let us know at [email protected]. NOAO Newsletter March 2013 1 Director’s Corner Looking Forward, not Back Dave Silva n the aftermath of the Portfolio Review, I believe it is important to data” expertise at the terabyte and petabyte scales, built on our cur- look forward, to seek opportunities for excellence, and to lay the rent involvement in LSST, the Dark Energy Survey, and the Big Baryon groundwork for a strong national optical/infrared (O/IR) center in Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BigBOSS). Gemini and NOAO are I2020 and beyond. What opportunities do I see emerging? discussing how NOAO can become more involved in producing and supporting Gemini data products. Ultimately, as the federal partner in The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Project remains the corner- TMT, it is natural to imagine NOAO as the TMT US data and commu- stone of our future. NOAO already has a strong leadership role as one nity science center, working closely with the NOAO LSST and Gemini of four founding partners (with a permanent seat on the LSST Board of community science center teams. Other facilities and projects (e.g., the Directors) and the Lead Organization for the Telescope and Site Facili- Giant Magellan Telescope) could be served by such a center as desires ties design, development, construction, and commissioning activity. We and resources permit. also have helped foster the LSST Science Collaborations and their strong connections to the Project team. Looking forward, we expect to operate A strong national center should also have a vigorous focal plane instru- all LSST facilities in Chile on behalf of the partnership, including one of mentation program. NOAO aspires to retain the expertise and resources the top supercomputing centers in South America. Moreover, to develop and deploy such instruments on 8-m-class telescopes, we have started developing an LSST Community Science while looking forward to working within larger consortia of Center, initially chartered to support LSST researchers federal and non-federal partners to develop and deploy during the LSST construction phase, but ultimately in- 30-m-class instruments. tended to act as the “go to” research support resource during the LSST survey era. What about our legacy 4-m telescopes? The May- all and Blanco are world-leading wide-field imag- NOAO and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) ing systems. To exploit that capability and enable Project—at the invitation of TMT and with the world-class high-impact research projects, we approval of NSF—have started a collaboration to have deployed the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) connect the broad US astronomy community more on the Blanco and continue to work vigorously to- closely with TMT and to develop a federal partner- ward deployment of the BigBOSS instrument on the ship model for possible future NSF involvement in Mayall circa 2018. Obviously, Blanco+DECam and TMT. Both the Astro2010 decadal survey and Portfolio Mayall+BigBOSS are optimized for large surveys. Over Review reports anticipated that NOAO would act as the fed- time, I expect such surveys to become the dominant mode eral partner on behalf of NSF, if such a partnership were cemented of operation for those facilities, well into the 2020s. LSST follow- later in the decade. Ultimately, I believe that federal participation in one up alone is sound justification for continued involvement in SOAR in or more of the large aperture telescopes after 2020 at the 25% or greater the 2020s. Recent imaging