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SMARTS - STATUS & PLANS

SMARTS - STATUS & PLANS. Alistair Walker, October 2003. SMARTS = Small & Moderate Aperture Research Telescope System. Members and P.I.’s American Museum of Natural History (Mike Shara) Georgia State University (Todd Henry) NOAO (Alistair Walker)

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SMARTS - STATUS & PLANS

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  1. SMARTS - STATUS & PLANS Alistair Walker, October 2003

  2. SMARTS = Small & Moderate Aperture Research Telescope System Members and P.I.’s • American Museum of Natural History (Mike Shara) • Georgia State University (Todd Henry) • NOAO (Alistair Walker) • Northern Arizona University (via GSU) (Dave Koerner) • Ohio State University (Darren DePoy) • Space Telescope Science Institute (Howard Bond) • State University of New York at Stony Brook (Fred Walter) • Yale University (Charles Bailyn)

  3. TELESCOPES & INSTRUMENTS • 1.5-m + Cass Spectrograph, 30% service • 1.3-m + dual IR/CCD Imager, 100% Queue, synoptic-optimized (ex-2MASS) • 1.0-m Not scheduled in 2003 • 0.9-m + CCD Imager, 50% service, all runs 7 nights and PEOPLE • Two instrument specialists • Three observers (2 for 1.3-m, 1 for 0.9-m) • One part-time observer (for 1.5-m, shared with CTIO) • Other support from CTIO & AOSS, charged per-use • PLUS YALE (management, data distribution, 1.3-m Q scheduling): STScI (1.5-m service scheduling), GSU (0.9-m operations) • Operations Model developed from YALO FOR THREE YEARS (2003-2005)

  4. NOAO provides • Telescopes, guiders, instruments • $100K in 2003 • 5-10% of Alan Whiting (CTIO post-doc), a few % at CTIO Dir level NOAO gets • Savings of approx $400K per annum compared to running the 1.5-m and 0.9-m telescopes alone • Consortium helps defray mountain costs Users get • 33% of time in 2003, 25% in 2004-2005 • Service and Queue Opportunities • Potential access to new instruments • Time according to their contribution ($, telescopes, instruments) • Enhanced research and educational opportunities • Chile retains 10% of the time

  5. What’s Imminent? • New partner for 2004-2005 = Delaware (John Giziz) • NSF review of SMARTS so-far, plus budget & operations plans for 2004-2005 • Science results! • Attract another participant at the $50-$100K/annum level. Potential partner = Vanderbilt/Fisk (Keivan Stassun) • Montreal IR Imager on 1.5-m (AMNH Project, 5 months in each of 2004 and 2005) - from April 2004 • 1.0-m with 4K CCD Imager (built by OSU) - from May 2004

  6. Science Programs for 2003B • NOAO --Mixture of Survey projects & shorter P.I. programs • J. Huchra, The 2MASS Redshift survey, 1.5-m spectroscopy • J.A. Smith, uvgriz Southern Standards Stars, 0.9-m photometry • G. Meurer, Star formation in HI Selected Galaxies, 0.9-m • N. Suntzeff, The w project, 0.9-m • And 35 other other Projects, overall over-subscription rate 1.33 • Other Consortium Members - 36 different programs, 24 P.I.’s • Yale (Bailyn): Optical/IR observations of high-energy transients • GSU (Henry): CTIOPI parallax program • SUNY (Simon): SIM target selection program • OSU (DePoy) & STScI (Sahu): Microlensing events • STScI (various): Extensive spectroscopic monitoring programs • Yale (Urry) & GSU (Miller): AGN reverberation mapping • SUNY (Walter): Simultaneous observations with FUSE

  7. Science Education - examples • SUNY (Walter) • Assembling a data set for a Cepheid Lab for undergraduate majors • Advanced undergraduate/beginning graduate course where the students write proposals, get the data, and reduce it all in the same semester • Yale, GSU, OSU, SUNY • At least 12 grads/undergrads at the 4 universities carrying out research on SMARTS data this semester • Grad student contributions to scheduling and operations (Yale, GSU) • CTIO REU Program

  8. Bottom Line - is it worth it? Plusses • Productive and efficient facility • Flexible observing modes • New telescope (1.3-m) and instrumentation • Core group of keen users doing programs of substance - $600K per annum program, not counting scientists • Retains access for NOAO users - only 3 lowly rated proposals did not get time (0.9-m) in 2003B. Although 70 1.5-m and 126 0.9-m nights requested for 2004A. • Allowed CTIO to re-program ~10% of its telescope operations budget (~6% of NOAO funds spent in Chile)

  9. Bottom Line - is it worth it? Minuses • Long-term viability? 1.5-m telescope needs lots of maintenance, image quality issues • Unbalanced instrumentation - fiber-fed synoptic spectrograph on 1.5-m?

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