NATIONAL OPTICAL ASTRONOMY OBSERVATORIES QUARTERLY REPORT January 1, 1984 - March 31, 1984 The period ending March 31, 1984, was a very active period with the formation of NOAO and several of its component parts. Each of the Observatories—Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO), Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), and National Solar Observatory (NSO)—has prepared separate quarterly reports which are included in this packet. Because the Advanced Development Program (ADP) was just starting up during the last month of the reporting period, a report was not required for that division. The only other units which were formed during the reporting period—the NOAO Director's Office and Central Administrative Services—are covered in the following report (Central Offices). Director's Office The NOAO Director's Office was officially established on February 1, 1984. During this first quarter efforts were centered on reorganization of the management of the three ground- based observatories—CTIO, KPNO, and NSO—and the formation of the NOAO Central Offices. Search Committees which we established for the NOAO Associate Directors/Directors of KPNO and NSO completed their separate searches and recommended candidates for the positions. Consistent with their recommendation Drs. Sidney Wolff and Robert Howard were selected by NOAO Director Jefferies, for KPNO and NSO respectively, for recommendation to the AURA Executive Committee whose approval was subsequently obtained. In addition, selections were made for the following positions: NOAO Associate Director/Director ADP, Manager Central Administrative Services/Controller, Assistant to the Director NOAO, Manager of NOAO Engineering and Technical Services, and Manager of NOAO Central Computer Services. The newly formed NOAO Management Committee met several times concentrating mainly on the FY 1985 budget and program plan. Construction and preparation of offices in the Warren Avenue building were carried out during this quarter. In addition to the NOAO Director and his staff, the Manager of Central Administrative Services/Controller, Budget Manager, and Personnel Office staff are housed in this building. Central Administrative Services The quarter ending March 31, 1984, was an extremely busy one for the newly-formed Central Administrative Services, primarily due to the on going NOAO reorganization. Because the addition of each division to NOAO requires extensive reprogramming and -2- substantial effort for all CAS departments, especially the accounting and budgeting staff. The office of the CAS Manager/Controller continues to play an active part in the reorganization, particularly in the area of budgeting. Several budget exercises related to the FY 1984 Program Plan were prepared, including a breakdown of Revision 1 into mission and support components and reassessments of carryover. As requested by the NSF, preparation of an addendum to the FY 1984 Program Plan was begun. Work was also begun on formulation of the FY 1985 Provisional Program Plan. With the January closing, the NOAO subledger was established and accounting procedures/programs changed to reflect organizational changes, i.e. the addition of the NOAO Director, CAS, and ADP. In February, the Chile Support Office Manager spent two weeks at CTIO assisting the Procurement Department with specific problems and coordinating and streamlining the procurement process to make it more compatible with that of the Tucson Office. With the assistance of the Chile Support Office, a new AURANET Telemail System was established between AURA-operated facilities. It is anticipated that CTIO will be on-line by the end of the next quarter, thereby eliminating the need for the inefficient radio-telex communications link currently in operation. The Personnel Department has continued to be involved in unusually heavy recruiting activity due to the NOAO reorganization and, in addition, has finalized the Summer Research Assistant recruitment. Statistical salary information, requested by the AURA president, was prepared for a presentation at the March 21, 1984 meeting. Negotiations were finalized resulting in a change of health and life insurance carriers from Blue Cross/Blue Shield/TIAA to Massachusetts Mutual. In addition to the unusually heavy load of purchase requisitions processed, six major subcontracts or amendments to existing subcontracts were processed, all of which are in support of the NNTT project. QUARTERLY REPORT CERRO TOLOLO INTER-AMERICAN OBSERVATORY January-February-March 1984 INDEX I. SCIENTIFIC HIGHLIGHTS 1 II. TELESCOPE OPERATIONS, INSTRUMENTAL WORK, RELATED ACTIVITIES 4 III. ADMINISTRATIVE AND FACILITIES HIGHLIGHTS 6 IV. USAGE OF CTIO TELESCOPES 10 V. CTIO PUBLICATIONS 18 VI . MISCELLANEOUS 22 I. SCIENTIFIC HIGHLIGHT An active field of research is the search for the so-called missing mass in galaxies. The term comes about because observations of motions in galaxies indicate that a significantly larger amount of mass is present than can be accounted for by the light distribution. The missing mass is not really missing, just non-I urninous. Speculations on the nature of the missing mass span the range of massive neutrinos, mini-black holes, objects of planetary mass like Jupiter, and low-mass, cool stars. G. Gilmore and P. Hewett report new results on this topic based on observations made at CTIO. As they point out, a widely assumed, and logical, candidate for the missing mass is a population of low luminosity M dwarfs. Such stars have very little luminosity for their mass and are consistent with the observations of mass- to-light (M/L) ratios inferred from galactic rotation curves. The stars do exist in large numbers, yet it has been difficult to determine their space density because of their low intrinsic luminosity and low temperatures, which makes them faint at the. visual and blue wavelengths used in previous surveys. Consequently, Gilmore and Hewett have been carrying out a new survey using the UK Schmidt telescope in Australia and red sensitive photographic plates. The wide area and faint limit of the survey at wavelengths favorable for the detection of cool stars allows them to make a much improved search for stars with masses down to the limit at which nuclear hydrogen burning occurs. Using automatic techniques to cover the huge amount- of information on their plates, they identified some 50 very red stars, which are candidates for having very low mass (0.1 solar mass or less). These stars would all be within 200 parsecs of the Sun. However, the survey observations alone are not sufficient to determine the nature of the stars. Spectroscopic data are needed to estimate the temperature and luminosity of the stars; then their mass can be inferred. Gilmore and Hewett used the CTIO 4m telescope and CCD spectrometer to observe a subset of their candidates and compare them with stars rof^nowrr :\ umi nos ities The CCD system, then just newly installed, offered- the on Iy means of obtaining red spectra of such stars, as previously available detectors did not have adequate sensitivity. The spectra showed that none of the candidate stars was significantly less luminous than their comparison stars (the faintest of which is 1/300,000 as luminous as the Sun), despite the fact that they had sampled a volume of space 50 times larger than had been covered before. Therefore, Gilmore and Hewett conclude that either the faint limit of stellar luminosity has been reached, or that the space density of very low luminosity stars is substantially less than expected. In either case, very Iow-I urninosity stars do not account for the missing mass in the solar neighborhood. They also go on to argue that such stars do not account for the missing mass problem that occurs on larger scales in the gaIaxy. The problem of the missing mass remains, nevertheless, and the search for it will continue at other wavelengths and with other techniques. Its nature continues to be a tantalizing problem in modern astronomy. II. TELESCOPE OPERATIONS, ENGINEERING AND TECHNICAL SERVICES, AND INSTRUMENTAL WORK TeI ops In the period Jan-Mar 1984 the telescope statistics were quite good. On the 4m, 1.3^ of the time was lost to instrument failure and 6.3% to poor weather. On the 1.5m, the percentages were 2.7 and 10.6 respectively. There were 78 instrument changes on all telescopes during this period. The instrument group repaired a number of cold boxes and installed a new collimator on the 4m RC spectrograph. A number of small maintenance items on various instruments were performed. There were no serious problems or breakdowns reported by TELOPS during this period. A good quarter! ETS and Generaj Instrumentat1 on Work continues on the Vidicon electronics boxes in order to identify and fix some recurrent causes of failures and to increase their reliability. Two new CCD dewars were completed and testing of the new GEC chips is proceeding. The Air-Schmidt camera was tested on the 4m telescope. It looked very good and will be made available as soon as the new GEC chip situation is sorted out. Work continues on the IRS. A number of small mechanical pieces were fabricated in the shop to aid optical testing. The electronics are producing smoothly. The computer peripherals problems are sorting themselves out. Plotting packages are installed and available on the PRINTRONIX. The Cipher tape drive problems are almost all cured. The new big disks have not yet been received, though, nor has a replacement for the V ICOM "mouse". V ICOM software implementation is making progress. A library has been set up to store and catalogue magnetic tapes. III. ADMINISTRATIVE AND FACILITIES HIGHLIGHTS P_iil£ e_o1_+he_DJ_ rector_o f__ Adm_i_ nJ_ strat_i_ ve Services (DAS) During the quarter the DAS was primarily occupied with budget changes for FY84 and budget preparations for FY85, with the Conference Board Price Survey, and with travel to the U.S. for the annual AURA Board meeting and associated NOAO meetings. There was an extraordinarily large amount of budget work owing to the implementation of new NOAO procedures and the consequent changes that had to be made.