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NOAO ANNUAL REPORT FY 2002 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION ..................................................................................................................................1 2. SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 2.1 NOAO Gemini Science Center ........................................................................................................2 2.1.1 Chemical Evolution in the Magellanic Cloud........................................................................2 2.1.2 Orbital Separations of Low Mass Binaries ............................................................................2 2.2 Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) .........................................................................3 2.2.1 An Arc of Blue Stars Near Centaurus A ................................................................................3 2.2.2 High-Redshift X-Ray Selected Quasar ..................................................................................3 2.2.3 Largest Structure in the Universe Claimed ............................................................................4 2.3 Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO).........................................................................................4 2.3.1 Sampling the Outer Solar System..................................................................................... 4 2.3.2 New Respect for the Neighbors..............................................................................................5 3. DEVELOPING THE NATIONAL SYSTEM 3.1 Support of the Gemini Observatory ........................................................................................... 6 3.2 Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) .........................................................................7 3.2.1 Blanco 4-meter Telescope ......................................................................................................7 3.2.2 Instrumentation .......................................................................................................................7 3.2.3 Current Small, General-User Telescopes on Cerro Tololo....................................................8 3.2.4 Ongoing Efforts to Control Light Pollution...........................................................................8 3.2.5 Education and Public Outreach ..............................................................................................9 3.3 Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) ................................................................................. 10 3.3.1 Instrument Interface at the Mayall 4-meter..........................................................................10 3.3.2 WIYN Operations and Instrumentation ...............................................................................10 3.3.3 KPNO Operations Partnership .............................................................................................11 3.4 Community Access to the Independent Observatories............................................................. 11 3.5 SIRTF, Chandra, and HST ....................................................................................................... 12 3.6 Survey Programs ...................................................................................................................... 12 3.7 The NOAO Data Products Program ......................................................................................... 13 4. MAJOR INSTRUMENTATION PROGRAM 4.1 Gemini Instruments .................................................................................................................. 14 4.1.1 Gemini Near-InfraRed Spectrograph (GNIRS) ...................................................................14 4.1.2 bHROS CCDs.......................................................................................................................14 4.1.3 Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager (GSAOI)................................................................14 4.1.4 U.S. Gemini Instrumentation Program.................................................................................14 4.2 NOAO Instruments................................................................................................................... 15 4.2.1 Infrared Side Port Imager (ISPI) .............154.2.2 NOAO Extremely Wide-Field IR Imager (NEWFIRM)...................................................................................................................................16 4.2.3 SOAR Adaptive Optics ........................................................................................................16 4.2.4 SOAR Optical Imager .........................................................................................................16 i NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report: Table of Contents 4.2.5 WIYN Tip/Tilt Module ........................................................................................................17 4.2.6 Multi-Aperture Red Spectrograph (MARS) ........................................................................17 5. IMPLEMENTING THE DECADAL SURVEY 5.1 Site Characterization for New Large Facilities ...............................................................................18 5.2 AURA New Initiatives Office (NIO)/Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT).....................19 5.2.1 The GSMT Book...................................................................................................................19 5.2.2 Staffing and Web Site ...........................................................................................................19 5.2.3 Science Working Group........................................................................................................20 5.2.4 Supported Studies..................................................................................................................20 5.2.5 Collaborative Studies ............................................................................................................20 5.2.6 Progress on Other In-House NIO Technical Activities........................................................21 5.3 Large-aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) .......................................................................21 5.4 National Virtual Observatory (NVO) ..............................................................................................22 5.5 Telescope System Instrumentation Program (TSIP) .......................................................................23 6. OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH 6.1 Educational Outreach (EO) ............................................................................................................23 6.1.1 Teacher Leaders in Research-Based Science Education ......................................................24 6.1.2 Project ASTRO-Tucson ........................................................................................................25 6.1.3 Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) ...............................................................25 6.1.4 Further Undergraduate and Graduate Education..................................................................26 6.1.5 The Astronomy Education Review (AER)..............................................................................26 6.1.6 Other Educational Outreach..................................................................................................27 6.2 Public Outreach...............................................................................................................................27 6.2.1 Kitt Peak Visitor Center ........................................................................................................27 6.2.2 Visitors to Kitt Peak ..............................................................................................................28 6.2.3 Other Public Outreach...........................................................................................................29 6.2.4 External Coordination ...........................................................................................................29 6.3 Media and Public Information........................................................................................................29 6.3.1 Press Releases and Image Releases ......................................................................................29 6.3.2 Special Information Products................................................................................................30 6.3.3 Web-based Outreach .............................................................................................................31 6.3.4 Image Requests .....................................................................................................................31 6.3.5 Public Information.................................................................................................................31 7. COMPUTER INFRASTRUCTURE AND NETWORK SERVICES 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 Tucson ...................................................................................................................................... 32 Kitt Peak................................................................................................................................... 32 CTIO – La Serena .................................................................................................................... 33 CTIO – Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón (SOAR and Gemini Support)................................... 33 APPENDICES Appendix A. Science and Science Education Publications A.1 United States Gemini Program...............................................................................................A-1 A.2 Kitt Peak National Observatory .............................................................................................A-1 ii NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report: Table of Contents A.3 Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory.............................................................................A-9 A.4 Science Education Publications............................................................................................A-15 Appendix B. Annual Visiting Observer Data B.1 Demographics of Visiting Observers from U.S. Institutions.................................................. B-1 B.2 U.S. Visiting Observers at the Gemini Telescopes ................................................................. B-2 Appendix C. Key Management and FY 2002 Scientific Personnel Data C.1 Key Management..........................................................................................................................C-1 C.2 FY 2002 Scientific Personnel Data ..............................................................................................C-2 Appendix D. NOAO Scientific Staff and Their Research Interests D.1 Scientists Based in La Serena ......................................................................................................... D-1 D.2 Scientists Based in Tucson ............................................................................................................. D-2 Appendix E. United States Gemini Program (USGP) Observing Programs Semester 2001-B .......................................................................................................................................E-1 Semester 2002-A.......................................................................................................................................E-3 Appendix F. Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) Observing Programs Semester 2001-B .......................................................................................................................................F-1 Semester 2002-A.......................................................................................................................................F-6 Appendix G. Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) Observing Programs Semester 2001-B ...................................................................................................................................... G-1 Semester 2002-A...................................................................................................................................... G-5 Appendix H. Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) Observing Programs..................................................... H-1 Appendix I. Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) Observatory Observing Programs...........................I-1 iii NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report: Table of Contents 1. INTRODUCTION Creating new ways of learning about astronomical objects is close to the heart of NOAO’s mission. In this first year of the Gemini South telescope, we take much pride in the success of the Phoenix high resolution infrared spectrograph. As the United States Gemini Program undertakes the challenge to complete other infrared instruments—such as the thermal IR instruments in Florida, the facility spectrograph in Arizona, and the NASA-funded coronagraph in Hawaii—NOAO’s Phoenix spectrograph, revamped again for Gemini by our renowned infrared science and engineering team, is showing its discovery potential on Gemini’s larger infrared optimized aperture. Phoenix is enabling the study of ultracool dwarf stars, the inner disks of young stars, and the masses of pre-main sequence binaries in Orion, and is measuring magnetic fields in stellar flux tubes, probing circumstellar shells in Be stars, determining oxygen isotope ratios in very old stars, and testing the chemical composition of the secondary stars in dwarf novae. An example of the power of this infrared spectrograph is the recent detection on the Mayall telescope by Bary (Vanderbilt), Weintraub (Vanderbilt), and Kastner (RIT) of molecular hydrogen around a “naked” T Tauri star, DoAr 21. In this case, the detection is thought to be a tracer of the existence of a disk in which significant planet building may already have occurred. Phoenix offers a powerful probe of extrasolar system formation and a broad suite of other applications. The successful formation of AURA’s New Initiatives Office (NIO) in 2001 yielded a big dividend in 2002. Seeking new challenges, some of our most creative engineers and scientists from NOAO and Gemini formed the NIO. By March 2002, after a year of brainstorming, workshops, monographs, presentations, and external contracts, these individuals had assembled “The GSMT Book,” a design manual for a 30-meter telescope. The GSMT Book, published on the Web and in CD format, offers our best ideas to interested parties and asserts the rights of the U.S. national and Gemini partners to be consulted in future large telescope projects. The NIO enterprise continues to be a model for the evolution the community is seeking for NOAO to flourish as an effective national observatory. Another very successful new initiative of 2002 is the Telescope System Instrumentation Program (TSIP). The result of much analysis of the strengths and weaknesses of the U.S. optical/infrared public/private system, TSIP owes its early implementation—one year after the publication of Astronomy and Astrophysics in the New Millennium—to some dedicated individuals and to admirable cooperation among the NSF division of astronomical sciences, AURA, and the council of independent observatory directors (ACCORD). As a result, the Keck Observatory is open to NOAO proposers in 2003A, and two state-ofthe-art instruments have been funded. With the right incentives, the national “system” can really work. It is good to see that TSIP is carried through the life of NOAO’s new cooperative agreement (2003–2007), because it is a long-term program. We also wish to note in our annual report the birth of the NOAO Science Archive. Now decidedly an infant with a fairly low birth weight, the NSA is designed to grow into a giant. Downloadable archives have been a boon to the Hubble Space Telescope science community. The NSA will become NOAO’s node of the National Virtual Observatory. By 2017, we foresee a 15-petabyte Large-aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) archive. In a no-growth environment, we cannot begin new projects without cutting the costs of existing facilities. During 2002, the seeds were sown for a number of partnerships that will transfer to university partners the costs and benefits of some of NOAO’s research facilities. Budgeted operational costs of KPNO and CTIO will plateau in 2002–2003, and costs to NSF should decrease in subsequent years, allowing development of future NOAO facilities to proceed. Finally, we began 2002 with the dedication of Gemini South. This was a bittersweet event for NOAO participants due to the passing of Bob Schommer, who was leading the U.S. effort in support of Gemini. 1 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report The fruits of his and his team’s labor are apparent in the increasing demand for telescope time and the stream of discoveries beginning to appear from our long-awaited 8-meter telescopes. 2. SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH 2.1 NOAO Gemini Science Center 2.1.1 Chemical Evolution in the Magellanic Cloud The NOAO-provided Phoenix high resolution infrared spectrograph was used on Gemini South to obtain spectra of 12 red-giant members of the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) by an international team led by V. Smith (U. Texas, El Paso). Chemical abundances can be derived from such stellar spectra and these abundances used as probes of chemical evolution. This heavy-element enrichment over time depends on such processes as star formation history, internal stellar evolution and nucleosynthesis as a function of mass, how stars return their processed ejecta back into the interstellar medium (ISM), and whether some of the stellar ejecta can be lost from the galaxy by galactic winds. The ability to conduct high resolution IR spectroscopy on fainter targets is opening a new window into the study of chemical evolution in nearby galaxies. Numerous spectral transitions in the IR from molecules such as CO, OH, CN, and NH are readily observable in red giants. The ability to easily determine carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen abundances, as well as abundances of some of their minor isotopes (such as 13C or 17O) is crucial in red giants as a means of sorting out internal mixing-related abundance changes versus chemical evolution in the original gas from which the stars formed. Atomic lines are also observable in the IR, with many transitions from interesting elements such as iron, sodium, magnesium, silicon, scandium, titanium, and nickel. Certain aspects of chemical evolution can be probed from determinations of various strategic elemental abundance ratios. One such abundance ratio is that of oxygen relative to iron, as this provides information on the star formation rate averaged over time. Oxygen is a main product of massive star evolution and is dispersed into the ISM through core collapse supernovae (SN); oxygen appears quite suddenly after star formation, such that subsequent stellar generations will incorporate this freshly produced oxygen into their chemical abundance mixtures. Iron is produced in relatively small amounts by massive stars and is synthesized largely in SN type Ia, which are thought to result from evolution in a binary system (with lifetimes of roughly one Gyr). Thus, the oxygen-to-iron abundance ratio will be relatively large for rapid chemical enrichment, and then decline as SN Ia begin to add iron, after a time delay of about a Gyr. Comparisons of the oxygen-to-iron ratios in the LMC and the galaxy indicate that the trend of [O/Fe] versus [Fe/H] in the LMC falls about 0.2 dex below the galactic trend. Lower values of the oxygen-to-iron ratio in the LMC can be modeled as a result of a lower efficiency of star formation—per unit mass of gas—by about a factor of two or three in comparison to the Milky Way. These results have been accepted for publication in the Astronomical Journal. 2.1.2 Orbital Separations of Low Mass Binaries L. Close (U. Arizona) and colleagues observed a sample of very-low-mass stars with the Hokupa’a/QUIRC adaptive optics system on Gemini North during U.S. mini-queue runs. In a series of three papers in the Astrophysical Journal, Close et al. have announced the discovery of companions to six low-mass stars. The separations of these companions from the primary are very small, between 0.15 arcsec and 0.57 arcsec. The exceptional spatial resolution enabled by Gemini with adaptive optics facilitates the detection of such close, faint companions. Close and collaborators compare the binary frequency for M8-M9 stars, determined via their Gemini imaging observations, to those for M0-M6 stars determined via radial velocity surveys by Fischer and Marcy. They conclude that the M8-M9 stars have a similar binary frequency as G and M stars. However, the M8-M9 binaries are very different from the more massive primaries in terms of the distribution of separations. The M8-M9 binaries have a typical separation 2 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report of 4 AU; this is significantly tighter than the typical separation of 30 AU for both the G and M primaries. A limited sample of L binaries studied by Reid et al. has properties similar to the M8-M9 binaries. Therefore, very-low-mass binaries likely form in a significantly different way than their more massive counterparts. 2.2 Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) 2.2.1 An Arc of Blue Stars near Centaurus A E. Peng, H. Ford (JHU), K. Freeman (ANU), and R. White (STScI) have discovered what appears to be a young, star-forming dwarf galaxy being cannibalized by the nearby giant elliptical galaxy Centaurus A. Peng and collaborators made the discovery using UBVR images obtained with the CTIO Blanco 4-meter telescope and Mosaic II camera; the Blanco telescope’s Hydra spectrograph also played a crucial role. Upon combining their BVR images of Cen A into a single color image and using digital processing techniques to improve the contrast of faint extended structure, Peng et al. noticed a well-defined blue arc embedded in Cen A’s halo. In themselves, arcs and shells are not unusual in Cen A, which is still feeling the aftershocks of a major galaxy merger within the past one Gyr. However, Peng et al.’s arc is unique because it is exceptionally blue. This blue light can be reasonably interpreted as produced by an unresolved population of young, massive stars. Indeed, from a quantitative comparison of the integrated light of the arc with stellar population models, Peng et al. derived an age for the blue arc of ~200 Myr. Moreover, the blue arc appears associated with a number of blue point sources. Peng et al. obtained a Hydra spectrum of one of the brightest of these sources, and found it to be consistent with that of a young, massive star cluster with the velocity of Cen A. The spectrum and integrated photometry allowed Peng et al. to derive an age for the cluster; they found it to be ~350 Myr old, a close match to the age of the blue arc. Finally, upon close inspection of their image, Peng et al. found that they could trace the blue arc over half of an ellipse. Interpreting the ellipse as the orbit of an infalling dwarf galaxy, Peng et al. derived a time since disruption of > 240 Myr. In 1978, Searle and Zinn argued that the galaxy’s halo assembled through the collision of fragments with masses similar to those of present-day dwarf galaxies. Recent results have popularized this idea; in particular, the discovery of the tidally shredded Sagittarius dwarf galaxy showed that the formation of the Milky Way halo continues today. Peng et al.’s blue arc provides an even clearer picture of halo formation. By virtue of its young age, their blue arc may be the closest analogue to a Searle-Zinn fragment yet discovered, thus providing a rare glimpse of the early universe. 2.2.2 High-Redshift X-Ray Selected Quasar In the FY 2001 Annual Report, we reported the use of CTIO telescopes in support of large surveys from which data are being made available to the community. The telescopes are also being used to follow up NASA missions. One example of such follow-up is the discovery of CXOMP J213945.0-234655, a quasar of redshift 4.93 discovered through the Chandra Multiwavelength Project (ChaMP). A primary aim of the ChaMP survey is to measure the intrinsic luminosity function of quasars and lower-luminosity Active Galactic Nuclei out to redshifts ~5. This x-ray-based approach to sample selection provides broadband sensitivity between 0.3 and 8.0 keV, and is potentially far less affected by absorption than previous optical, UV, or soft X-ray surveys. Optical imaging of the field was carried out with the MOSAIC II camera on the Blanco 4-meter as part of the ChaMP optical identification program. The discovery observation was carried out with the Hydra multi-fiber spectrometer, also on the Blanco 4-meter. 3 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report 2.2.3 Largest Structure in the Universe Claimed The two previous examples were chosen to illustrate the combined synergistic power of the MOSAIC II/Hydra combination on the Blanco telescope. Both instruments were built through close collaboration between NOAO staff in Tucson and in La Serena. Until Gemini’s GMOS (Gemini Multi-Object Spectrograph) and bHROS (High Resolution Optical Spectrograph) spectrometers, Magellan’s IMACS (Inamori Magellan Areal Camera and Spectrograph), and the SOAR (Southern Observatory for Astrophysical Research) telescope’s Goodman and IFU spectrographs come on line, it is necessary to continue to provide a fairly wide suite of instrumental options on the Blanco telescope. The spectroscopic capabilities used for the next project will translate into new capabilities for SOAR over the next two to three years. G. Williger (NASA/GSFC), L. Campusano (U. de Chile), and R. Clowes (U. Central Lancashire, England) conducted a survey for MgII absorber systems toward the largest structure in the sky at z > 0.2, a large quasar group (LQG) consisting of at least 18 quasars at 1.20 < z < 1.39 toward ESO/SERC field 927. It spans at least ~5 × 2.5 deg on the sky, or ~180 × 90 (~220 × 110) h-2 Mpc2 and depth 170 (220) h-1 comoving Mpc for Ω0=1 (Ω0=0.3), H0= 100h km/s/Mpc, λ=0. It is one of a handful of large quasar groups that are believed to indicate a physical enhancement in the underlying density of the universe, when the universe was about one-third of its present age. It is possible to test for this mass excess by searching for quasar absorption systems in the region. The Blanco telescope and RC spectrograph were used to obtain spectra of 23 quasars in and behind the quasar group, to sample MgII over 0.70 < z < 2.07. There is a 3.2 sigma over-density of MgII absorbers at 1.20 < z < 1.40, which is coincident with the large quasar group. The COBE-DMR four-year sky map shows the group to lie in or in the vicinity of a decrement in the cosmic microwave background that is 2– 3 sigma significant. This is consistent with some of this signal being due to the Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect of Compton scattering by hot cluster gas. 2.3 Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) The time domain is a major new discovery space for astronomy, motivating development of the LSST. Following are two outstanding projects of time domain science already offering major results and pointing the way to future enhanced investigations. 2.3.1 Sampling the Outer Solar System The discovery of the Kuiper Belt and its subsequent investigation have been described as one of the most exciting developments in modern planetary astronomy. A vast region of the solar system that was thought to be largely devoid of material is now known to have a substantial population of small bodies orbiting the Sun beyond Neptune. Beyond this region is the Oort Cloud, a toroidal region of icy bodies from which the general population of comets originates. The existence of the Kuiper Belt was first postulated theoretically, because the short-period comets were much more confined to the ecliptic plane than an origin in the Oort Cloud would produce. Study of the Kuiper Belt is now moving to characterization of the population through large, systematic surveys, and KPNO facilities are playing a major role. R. Millis, M. Buie, and L. Wasserman (Lowell Observatory), J. Elliot and S. Kern (MIT), and M. Wagner (U. Arizona) reported in the April 2002 Astronomical Journal about their Deep Ecliptic Survey. They used the CCD Mosaic camera at the prime focus of the Mayall 4-meter to survey regions of the ecliptic plane to a depth of ~24th magnitude. By taking pairs of five-minute exposures while minimizing overhead time between fields, they were able to identify 10–15 Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) and Centaurs per good 4 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report seeing night. Follow-up observations, often with the WIYN imager in the next dark run, allowed reliable recovery of most objects. As of the production of the published paper, their 69 discoveries represented ~1/4 of all such known objects. They demonstrated that the heliocentric distances and orbital inclinations of newly discovered KBOs could ordinarily be determined accurately from just a few observations in a single apparition. In contrast, they found that accurate determination of the orbital eccentricity and major axis required observations over several apparitions. Essentially all KBOs in the sample with semimajor axes less than 41 astronomical units were grouped into orbital resonances induced by Neptune, either 3:2 or 4:3. Beyond 46 AU, the KBOs tended to be in orbits with large orbital inclinations and eccentricities, interpreted to be the result of disk scattering. In the range between 41 and 46 AU, the KBOs had orbits with low eccentricities (nearly circular) and low inclination (near the ecliptic plane). With a procedure for estimating the efficiency of selecting various dynamical groups of KBOs, the authors derived the distribution of their orbital inclinations based on the observed sample. The distribution has a broad peak of objects with inclinations less than 20°. It is statistically indistinguishable from that of the short-period comets, and completely inconsistent with a random draw from a uniform spread of inclinations. Thus, the data support the theoretical predictions and popular conception that the flattened Kuiper Belt just beyond Neptune is the origin of the short-period comets. 2.3.2 New Respect for the Neighbors In the early days, low galactic latitudes were called the “zone of avoidance” for other galaxies. The reddening and extinction from dust in the galactic plane made a census for distant and even nearby galaxies an observational challenge. One galaxy that was easily identified in this zone was IC 342, a nearby, nearly face-on spiral with a diameter of 20 arcminutes on the sky. Because of previous uncertainties in determining the amount of extinction to that galaxy, published distance estimates ranged from 1.3 to 8 Mpc. A. Saha and J. Claver (NOAO) and J. Hoessel (U. Wisconsin) reported in the August 2002 Astronomical Journal on a new determination of the reddening, hence the distance to IC 342. They took advantage of the NOAO queue observing opportunity on the WIYN telescope to get a time series of images over 2.5 years in Thuan-Gunn r and i bandpasses. In the process, they identified 24 new Cepheid variables, of which 20 had reliable photometry and light curves. Cepheids are high-quality standard candles for distance determinations, because of a well-calibrated period-luminosity-color relation. The combination of periods and measured colors lead through the relationship to a determination of the reddening. The low scatter in reddening from object to object was consistent with a dust “screen” in the Milky Way. The period-luminosity relation, combined with the extinction estimate (of 2.01 mag in the V band), gives a new distance to IC 342 of 3.3 Mpc. The M81 group of galaxies is at a very similar distance from the galaxy, lying about 25° away along the supergalactic plane, implying a distance of that group to IC 342 of 1.8 Mpc. The new distance and extinction estimates make IC 342 intrinsically more luminous (in the blue B band) than the big spiral M81 by 60% and more luminous than the Milky Way by 10%; only M31 is more luminous than IC 342 among nearby galaxies. IC 342 is in a group with two neighboring galaxies, even more heavily extinguished to our view, Maffei I and II. With IC 342 now a rival to the largest local spirals, time domain investigations with 8-meter telescopes (or HST) of the Maffei galaxies now become compelling for a clear understanding of the neighborhood of the Local Group. 5 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report 3. DEVELOPING THE NATIONAL SYSTEM 3.1 Support of the Gemini Observatory The United States Gemini Program (USGP) has 12 scientific staff members—almost all shared with other NOAO divisions—and four technical or administrative staff assigned to support the U.S. community’s use of these state-of-the-art 8-meter telescopes (see http://www.noao.edu/usgp/noaosupport.html). Examples of support work provided by these staff members are answering U.S. proposers’ and users’ queries and performing technical reviews of U.S. Gemini observing proposals. The USGP provided commissioning support, observing support, and maintenance of the NOAO-built Phoenix high resolution infrared spectrograph on Gemini South. USGP staff members K. Hinkle, B. Blum, S. Ridgway, N. van der Bliek, and P. Bouchet observed with Phoenix on Gemini South for community queue science programs during FY 2002. In addition, NOAO staff carried out maintenance of the Phoenix closed cycle coolers and blocking filter changes in April 2002. Phoenix was the most requested instrument at Gemini South in semesters 2002A and 2002B. During FY 2002, USGP staff member B. Blum provided NIRI observing assistance as part of Gemini North queue observing. The USGP also supported two Hokupa’a mini-queue observing runs on Gemini North during FY 2002. The USGP saw a strong community response to the Gemini Call for Proposals for semester 2002B. On Gemini North for 2002B, 57 U.S. proposals were received, 36 requesting GMOS and 22 requesting NIRI. Forty-six U.S. proposals requested Gemini South, 21 for Phoenix, 18 for T-ReCS, 6 for the Florida Multiobject Near-IR Grism Observational Spectrometer (FLAMINGOS), and 4 for the Acquisition Camera (some proposals requested more than one instrument). In total, 103 U.S. Gemini proposals sought 181 nights on the two Gemini telescopes. The resulting oversubscription factors were 3.0 for Gemini North and 4.0 for Gemini South. The U.S. community responded enthusiastically to the Gemini Call for Proposals for semester 2003A. Overall, U.S. proposers submitted 131 proposals for 2003A, which represents a 27% increase over the number submitted in 2002B. On Gemini North, 148.6 nights were requested in 86 proposals. GMOS was the most popular instrument on Gemini North (84.3 nights requested in 47 proposals), followed by NIRI (50.4 nights requested in 29 proposals) and Michelle (13.9 nights requested in 12 proposals). On Gemini South, 45 proposals requested 83.6 nights. Phoenix was the most popular instrument on Gemini South (57.6 nights requested in 31 proposals), followed by CIRPASS (18.1 nights requested in 9 proposals) and the Acquisition Camera (8.0 nights requested in 6 proposals). The resulting oversubscription factors were 4.0 for Gemini North and 3.4 for Gemini South. The U.S. Gemini Science Advisory Committee (SAC) met in Pasadena, California on March 22 and 23. T. Armandroff made presentations on the status of the Gemini telescopes and instruments, the U.S. instrumentation effort, and current operational modes. The U.S. Gemini SAC discussed the current state of observing capabilities on Gemini, future opportunities, and how the priorities of the U.S. Gemini community should be enunciated. Six members from this group subsequently participated in the Gemini Science Committee meeting in Vancouver, Canada, during April 8–9. T. Armandroff represented the United States at the Gemini Operations Working Group meetings on January 16 in La Serena, Chile and on August 19 in Hilo, Hawaii. Membership of the U.S. Gemini SAC is described at http://www.noao.edu/usgp/staff.html. 6 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report 3.2 Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) With the successful “first light” of the Infrared Side Port Imager (ISPI), CTIO is closing in on its shortterm goal of simplifying the complement of instruments available on its existing telescopes. This will free resources for work on other NOAO programs, including commissioning and then operating the SOAR 4.2-meter telescope. The SOAR telescope will be equipped with instruments that are complementary to the wide-field instruments on the Blanco 4-meter. Significant advances have been made towards shifting the responsibility for operating the smaller telescopes on Cerro Tololo to a U.S.-based consortium (“SMARTS”) in which NOAO is a partner. 3.2.1 Blanco 4-meter Telescope The Mosaic II Imager (see http://www.ctio.noao.edu/mosaic/) remains the most popular instrument on the Blanco telescope, with several long-term surveys and many shorter programs supported. The SuperMACHO and ESSENCE (Supernova) surveys, each lasting for five years, are now both under way (as of September 2002). During the gray/dark periods from October–December each year, these programs are being scheduled every other night. Data from the Mosaic II CCD array are fed over the microwave link to CTIO’s La Serena headquarters, and into 10 parallel dual-processor computing nodes (1.2GHz CPUs with a Gbyte of RAM each operating under the Condor task management system) and a RAID disk farm with a total capacity of 3 terabytes. These projects will provide valuable experience in a truly research-driven environment for handling the large amounts of data expected when LSST comes on line. The Hydra multi-object spectrograph has been upgraded with a new camera and low-noise SITe 2K×4K CCD (see http://www.ctio.noao.edu/spectrographs/hydra/hydra.htm ); the larger format and better resolution of the new CCD allows full use of the complete complement of fibers. The ISPI, discussed in detail below, was successfully commissioned on the Blanco telescope towards the end of FY 2002. The Ohio State University Infrared Imager/Spectrometer (OSIRIS) has also seen regular use, but its imaging capabilities have now been superseded by ISPI. OSIRIS will move to SOAR in 2003. Preparation for maintenance and aluminization of the primary mirror in mid-October 2002 is on schedule. 3.2.2 Instrumentation The CTIO Engineering and Technical Services (ETS) group has been involved in several in-house instrumentation efforts in FY 2002, in addition to collaborating with the Tucson Major Instrumentation Program ETS group on Gemini instruments GNIRS (Gemini Near-Infrared Spectrograph), GSAOI (Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager), and on the new array controller Monsoon. The SOAR optical imager, a 4K × 4K UV-blue optimized CCD imager, is nearing completion. It is the commissioning instrument for the SOAR telescope. The Blanco ISPI, which delivers an 11 × 11 arcmin field of view to a 2K × 2K array, has been successfully commissioned. Commissioning had been delayed due to the loan of one of the barium fluoride lenses to Gemini for use in FLAMINGOS. Construction of the SOAR Nasmyth Instrument Support Boxes and Comparison systems is well under way. Concepts for a facility adaptive optics system for SOAR are being developed, with CoDR expected at the end of calendar year 2002. 7 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report 3.2.3 Current Small, General-User Telescopes on Cerro Tololo The 1.5-meter, 0.9-meter, and 1.0-meter YALO telescopes have continued operating with only routine maintenance and minor improvements, the largest of which was the replacement of the motor system on the 1.5-m guider box. The 0.6/0.9-m Curtis-Schmidt telescope has been closed temporarily. (It will reopen in November 2002—still under management by the University of Michigan—for a NASA program monitoring orbital debris.) The YALO consortium has completed the current phase of operation of the 1.0-m telescope, which is now closed. Various discussions have taken place with a view to establishing a larger consortium (with NOAO as a member and based on the successful YALO model) to operate some or all of the CTIO small telescopes from 2003 onwards. This culminated in a call for proposals in which the SMARTS consortium, comprising six U.S. institutions and NOAO, proposed to operate the CTIO small telescopes for three years (see http://www.ctio.noao.edu/telescopes/TheFuture/NSF_prop.html). This proposal was reviewed by an external committee. Following revision, NOAO recommended to the NSF that it be accepted. The consortium will operate the telescopes in an environment that should encourage new and significant largescale scientific projects, some new instrumentation, and enhanced education and public outreach. NOAO provides only the telescopes and some instrumentation for a 25% share, although in the first year of operations, NOAO will seek a level of 33%. The telescope and instrument combinations being offered from the start of operations in February 2003 are the 1.5-m telescope with optical spectrograph, the 1.3-m telescope with dual IR-CCD imager Andicam (Ohio State U.), and the 0.9-m with CCD imager. 3.2.4 Ongoing Efforts to Control Light Pollution The newly established Office for the Protection of the Skies of Northern Chile (OPPC) (see http://www.opcc.cl) is funded by a consortium consisting of the Chilean National Commission for the Environment (CONAMA), AURA (NOAO/CTIO and Gemini), ESO (European Southern Observatory), and the Carnegie Institute of Washington’s Las Campanas Observatory. In early March 2002, a well-attended, bilingual, international conference on controlling light pollution was held in La Serena. Organized by several institutions, including NOAO, this meeting included a section on protection against radio frequency interference supported by the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). The International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Working Group on Controlling Light Pollution (chaired by CTIO director Malcolm Smith) has declared Mauna Kea and a wide strip of Chile running east to west between the Very Large Telescope (VLT) site at Cerro Paranal and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) site near Chajnantor to be of the highest priority in the worldwide effort to protect existing and potential astronomical sites from the effects of light pollution. The IAU group has been working with the NOAO/Gemini NIO “Sites” program, which is seeking suitable locations for new Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs)—such as GSMT/CELT—in the 20-meter–100-meter diameter range. The group is also beginning to work more closely with ESO’s search for a “Nest for the OWL” (ESO’s 100-meter Overwhelmingly Large telescope). Proceedings of the IAU conference have been edited by CTIO staff member Hugo Schwarz (chair of the Local Organizing Committee), and are to be published by Kluwer. 8 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report Conference priorities were set out as follows: • Seek ways to support the production of a “Second World Atlas of the Artificial Night Sky Brightness” (see http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/astro-ph/0003412). • Investigate the consequences of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) becoming involved in the regulation of infrared and optical frequencies between 20 and 375 THz (15 microns and 0.8 microns). • Seek how best to combine these initiatives with work being done by the IAU in conjunction with the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS). • Seek ways to monitor the artificial night sky brightness from key existing and potential observatory sites, as a complement to the modeling of satellite-based measurements. Substantial progress is being made in this area with the TASCA all-sky camera on Cerro Tololo (see http://www.ctio.noao.edu/~david/tasca.htm). • Develop more quantitative experience on financial savings from the use of quality lighting in regions around key existing and potential observatory sites. • Extend international educational outreach programs based around light pollution, including teacher exchanges and the use of videoconferencing. Once again, NOAO is making significant progress in this area, in conjunction with Project ASTRO. Significant advances continue in the IInd, IIIrd, and IVth regions of Chile, the sites of major international optical observatories. Following last year’s success at Copiapo in the IIIrd region, the town of Ovalle (near Cerro Pachón, in the IVth region) recently changed the majority of its lighting to full cut-off luminaries. This lighting is the same type designed specifically by a Chilean company to meet the new “astronomy-friendly” lighting regulations signed into effect in late 1999 by the president of Chile. The director of the OPCC, Pedro Sanhueza, has been a featured speaker in a series of meetings with mining engineers and authorities in the IInd region, which is within the IAU priority zone. The most probable threat to the skies in this zone is from nearby mines that could be developed. Efforts are under way with local manufacturers to develop suitable designs of narrow-band sodium lamps to comply with the new legislation. 3.2.5 Education and Public Outreach CTIO supports a number of education and public outreach activities that benefit both the U.S. and Chilean communities. The NSF Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program at CTIO once again hosted four U.S. students over the Chilean summer 2002 (January through March) (see http://ctext0.ctio.noao.edu/REU/ctioreu_2002/REU2002.html). All four 2002 REU students and the three 2002 PIA (Chilean) astronomy students presented posters at the January 2002 AAS meeting in Washington, D.C. Members of the CTIO scientific and engineering staff supervise and mentor a small number of graduate and undergraduate (“Semester/Summer Abroad”) students involved in scientific research throughout the year. Students are generally supported with money from grants, staff research funds, and/or their home institutions. Support of local K-12 science education in Chile is provided through collaboration among CTIO, Gemini, AURA, the University of La Serena, and other local groups through the “Planetario Móvil” (Mobile Planetarium) program and Chile’s Explora-CONICYT project. In order to participate in the Mobile Planetarium program, local teachers volunteer to attend workshops on astronomy and astronomy education once per week over four weeks. The teachers develop a plan to integrate astronomy into classroom lessons and activities. Only after participation in this educational program is the planetarium brought to the teacher’s school for a day of astronomy. Students present their work, give talks, attend 9 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report lectures given by participating professional staff, and visit the planetarium. Since the program began three years ago, 1,293 teachers and 65,000 pupils at 147 schools have visited the planetarium during the school year. Two-hundred and thirty-four local teachers have received special training in this program. Photographs of some of these activities can be seen at http://www.ctio.noao.edu/AURA/planetario/. Weekly public tours of the telescopes on Cerro Tololo continue to be well attended, including cruise ship groups from the United States and elsewhere. The mayor of La Serena has been invited by the City of Tucson to make a second visit in November 2002. This will include a visit to the headquarters of the International Dark-Sky Association in Tucson and to Kitt Peak. 3.3 Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) Efforts to upgrade the Mayall 4-meter telescope were concentrated on the development of key interface components for present and future instrumentation. WIYN saw the highly successful commissioning of the WIYN Tip/Tilt imager and a comprehensive summer shutdown that included aluminizing of the 3.5-meter primary mirror and maintenance of its support system. The result is the best consistent delivered wavefront performance of the telescope and impressive scientific image quality. 3.3.1 Instrument Interface at the Mayall 4-meter As noted in last year’s Annual Report, a long-standing project has been the installation of a wavefront camera that will allow the 4-meter active primary support system zero-point to be set at the start of every night, as is the standard procedure at WIYN. The guider/adapter was modified to include the x-y stage on which the camera will be mounted. The installation was completed in FY 2002, with installation of custom optics and the camera itself. The facility is in commissioning during engineering nights in semester 2002B, which requires cross-comparison of image information between the new camera and a direct CCD camera at the R-C focus. Design work was undertaken in FY 2002 for the accommodation of the two major IR instruments coming to the Mayall 4-m in the near future. The first project was for the IR Multi-Object Spectrograph, which is being produced for KPNO by the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Goddard Space Flight Center. The instrument employs a commercial digital micro-mirror array as a cold, programmable multi-slit mask. It feeds a Rockwell Hawaii 1K × 1K HgCdTe array. It will complement FLAMINGOS by providing somewhat higher spectral resolution and by being available to KPNO users year-round. KPNO’s contribution consists of provision of the handling cart and telescope interfaces, purchase of the array, and a guarantee of observing time to the developers. NOAO instrument makers have also fabricated the key components of the optical bench. The first light commissioning run is scheduled for June 2003. KPNO Engineering is designing the telescope/guider interface for NEWFIRM, the wide-field mosaic IR imager. 3.3.2 WIYN Operations and Instrumentation WIYN and NOAO support staff completed a major summer shutdown in FY 2002. The primary and tertiary mirrors were stripped and re-aluminized. The WIYN primary was the first customer of the relocated aluminizing facility in the 4-meter dome. The aluminizing chamber was moved to an enclosed area on the west side of the 4-meter ground-floor service area, allowing much better protection from loading area traffic and dust contamination. The coating achieved good uniformity and coverage. 10 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report Systematic checking of the primary mirror support system by site engineer Charles Corson uncovered a radial actuator that was delivering an incorrect force with an offset of almost one-third of the nominal value. With the correction of that problem, the telescope is now delivering impressively low wavefront errors. They are currently in the range 90–120nm rms, down 20–50 nm from the values before shutdown and consistently lower than any values in the recent past. The median and modal seeing recorded for August and September (not the best period of the observing year) were 0.73″ and 0.67″, respectively. The latter value is thought to be close to the site-delivered median. The Cassegrain Instrument Adapter System (IAS) was delivered from the University of Wisconsin for first light commissioning on the telescope in August. The Cassegrain port is fed by re-imaging optics that create an f/13 beam and move the focus to a convenient place below the telescope (as opposed to below the observing floor). This joint Wisconsin/WIYN staff/NOAO project will allow the mounting of fiber integral field unit (IFU) bundles at this additional port without necessitating removal of the Mini-Mosaic. It will also accommodate the dual-beam spectrograph being produced by Jeff Snyder at Yale. The packaging of comparison sources and guide camera was a challenge in the very limited space envelope. Initial commissioning showed that the adapter is very close to its design performance goals and requires only limited additional characterization before it can be put into service. The WIYN Tip/Tilt Module was successfully commissioned on the telescope. Claver et al. describe the on-sky performance in a paper presented at the Kona SPIE meeting. The best fractional improvement in image quality is found when the site seeing is in the range of 0.5″–0.8″, with tightening of 0.1″–0.2″for correction rate from 100-1000 Hz. On rare occasions of best seeing, images of 0.28″ FWHM were recorded with closed-loop correction in the R band. The amplitude and quality of correction is dependent on the nature of the wavefront disturbances of the night. The measured decorrelation over the 4′ field of view of the imager produces only about a 10% increase in FWHM from center to edge in the best conditions. NOAO announced the availability of WTTM for science in semester 2003A, and received 29 proposals. It is worth noting that through the conscientious efforts of WIYN site engineer Charles Corson and KPNO support, the time lost for technical problems for WIYN was 2% from March–September 2002. This achievement is remarkable for any observatory, and particularly in the case of this complex system supported by very limited staffing. 3.3.3 KPNO Operations Partnership The current NOAO budget plan for FY 2003 shows a reallocation of internal funds that corresponds to a ~14% loss of purchasing power for KPNO. In order to provide competitive scientific capability to the U.S. community, however, there must be ongoing and substantial reinvestment in the facility to provide state-ofthe-art instrumentation. AURA and the NSF Astronomy Division therefore agreed that KPNO should solicit a partnership for KPNO operations to help assure long-term competitiveness by supporting new capabilities and enhancing the technical capacity of the partner institution. A peer review panel designated the proposal from the University of Maryland as having the scientific and technical merit to proceed to more detailed definition of partnership terms. The University of Maryland astronomy department intends to support the development of NEWFIRM and its data pipelines in exchange for guaranteed access to the Mayall 4-meter telescope. The goal is to have the partnership fully under way by the start of semester 2003B. 3.4 Community Access to the Independent Observatories FY 2002 marked the start of the Telescope System Instrumentation Program (TSIP), a new NSF program through which independent observatories are funded to build major facility instruments for very large 11 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report telescopes, and observing time is provided on these telescopes to the community. This program is, in a sense, a descendant of NSF’s now-defunct Facility Instrumentation Program, which for the past few years has provided nights on the Hobby-Eberly telescope (HET) and the Multiple Mirror Telescope (MMT) to the community. As a result of the first year of TSIP competition, NOAO announced the availability of 12 nights on the Keck telescopes in semester 2003A. Thirty-one proposals were received, requesting a total of 46.5 nights. Under the previous Facility Instrumentation Program, the HET and the MMT each agreed to make 27 nights per year available to the community for six years in exchange for NSF funding for new instrumentation. Both of these telescopes have been coming through commissioning periods and ramping up of operations, and NOAO has worked with the community and the staffs of the observatories to ease the transition. The HET is entirely queue-scheduled, and NOAO has agreed to provide all support services to the community for the use of time on this telescope. In FY 2002, about nine equivalent nights of program data were obtained. Added to previous years, the total time used for this program is about 16 nights for nine observing programs. Three of these programs have been completed. In FY 2002, nine programs were awarded a total of 19.5 nights on the MMT as part of this program. From its beginning in semester 2000A, a total of 56 nights have been awarded on the MMT for 24 different programs. 3.5 SIRTF, Chandra, and HST The joint NASA-NOAO program that allows observers to apply for space- and ground-based observing time in a single proposal continued in FY 2002. These programs are aimed at eliminating the double jeopardy that proposers face when they require observations from both space-based and ground-based facilities. For the Space InfraRed Telescope Facility (SIRTF), NOAO made telescope time available when the SIRTF Legacy projects were initiated. A total of 155 nights, about half on 4-meter telescopes and half on smaller telescopes, were allocated to four of these projects. By the end of FY 2002, NOAO observations for two of these projects—“SINGS: The SIRTF Nearby Galaxies Survey” (PI: R. Kennicutt, U. Arizona) and “From Molecular Cores to Planets” (PI: N. Evans, U. Texas)—have been completed. Thirteen nights remain to be scheduled for the other two projects: “The SIRTF Wide-area InfraRed Extragalactic Survey,” (PI: C. Lonsdale, IPAC) and “Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey” (PI: M. Dickinson, STScI). NOAO has made available telescope time for successful Chandra proposals in the “large” category. In the most recent Chandra solicitation (cycle 3), 13 NOAO nights were awarded to two programs. These have been scheduled for semesters 2002B and 2003A. For the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), NOAO has made up to 5% of its time available for successful HST proposals. In the most recent solicitation (cycle 11), 13 NOAO nights were awarded to four programs. These have been scheduled for the 2002B and 2003A semesters. 3.6 Survey Programs NOAO’s survey program has reached its steady state, with approximately 20% of the time on some telescopes dedicated to survey projects. Two new surveys were begun in 2002: “The EXPLORE Project: 12 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report A Deep Search for Transiting Extrasolar Planets” (PI: G. Mallen-Ornelas, Princeton U.) and “The w Project: Measuring the Equation of State of the Universe” (PI: N. Suntzeff, NOAO). With several surveys completed or nearing completion, concerns about the ability of survey teams to provide community access to their data products—a fundamental requirement of the program—have been noted. This has been partly addressed by the inauguration of the NOAO Science Archive, which has a goal of serving all data products from the NOAO surveys. However, the timely completion of data reduction and analysis remains a problem for many of the survey teams. 3.7 The NOAO Data Products Program Much has been made of the technology-driven evolution in how astronomical research is carried out. An increasing number of projects involve multi-wavelength data from ground-based and space-based observatories, and more projects use large data sets collected from archives and analyzed or mined using new, statistically powerful tools. This evolution provides the motivation for the development of the National Virtual Observatory (NVO). The NVO is useless, however, without a number of items that must be developed in parallel: the holdings of federated astronomical archives, the expertise to use the data in these archives effectively, and new tools to visualize and mine the data. The development and distribution of this required content for the NVO is the charge to NOAO’s Data Products Program. The Data Products Program builds on a heritage of astronomical software development, including IRAF, data acquisition from large-format detectors, and scientific and technical interest in large astronomical data sets. The Data Products staff includes the software development team that formerly focused on IRAF (supplemented by new hires with experience in archive and pipeline software), and scientific expertise provided by NOAO scientists with interests in data mining and this new approach to astronomical research. Although development and support of IRAF will continue (version 2.12 was released in July 2002), it will serve a supporting role, providing tools for these other activities. Priority in IRAF development will be given to making the IRAF system more open and modern, more easily integrated with other software, and more easily supported by external groups. The principal Data Products project in FY 2002 was the NOAO Science Archive (NSA). Envisioned as a first step toward the establishment of a data center focusing on ground-based O/IR data, the NSA was launched in early April 2002. It initially contains predominantly data from NOAO surveys, and therefore serves the additional purpose of assisting survey teams in making their data products available to the community. Through the year, more capable and sophisticated tools for searching, visualizing, and retrieving data from the NSA were developed, and a second major release is planned for January 2003. A second important Data Products project is the development of data reduction pipelines. Pipeline planning began in FY 2002, and a first automatic pipeline, which is being developed in collaboration with the Super MACHO survey project team, is scheduled for mid-2003. The early emphasis on time-domain data is not an accident; our intent is to use such experience in both pipeline and archive development to prepare for a data management role in the LSST project. The Data Products group also has participated directly in the development of a data management concept for LSST. Led by A. Connolly (U. Pittsburgh), NOAO scientists and software engineers have begun a two-year effort to identify the challenges in LSST data management, and to develop prototypes, simulations, and other precursor activities aimed at providing solutions. This work serves to provide a long-term context for a number of activities in the Data Products Program, as the scale of LSST is far beyond what any astronomical data center has been faced with before. 13 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report 4. MAJOR INSTRUMENTATION PROGRAM 4.1 Gemini Instruments 4.1.1 Gemini Near-InfraRed Spectrograph (GNIRS) The major instrument under production is the Gemini Near-InfraRed Spectrograph (GNIRS). The largest instrument project ever undertaken by NOAO, GNIRS will provide long-slit capabilities with a range of dispersions through selectable gratings, covering the wavelength region from 0.9 micron to 5.5 microns at two pixel scales by means of interchangeable cameras that feed a single 1024 square ALADDIN-type InSb detector. It also provides options for 0.9–2.4 micron cross-dispersion, polarization analysis, and an integral field unit. The project team, under the leadership of Project Scientist J. Elias, spent most of FY 2002 completing parts fabrication and performing subsystem integration and testing. By the end of FY 2002, all the cryogenic subsystems had passed their cold testing. In addition, the GNIRS instrument was integrated, passed its vacuum tests, and then began its first integrated cold testing in the final days of FY 2002. GNIRS came very close to reaching its desired operating temperature during this cold test. 4.1.2 bHROS CCDs NOAO is providing the integration of CCDs, the CCD controller, and relevant software for Gemini’s bHROS high resolution optical spectrograph. The CCDs are from EEV in the U.K., and the controller is SDSU-2. The CCDs, controller, and related software passed their acceptance tests and were shipped to the bHROS team in London during FY 2002. 4.1.3 Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager (GSAOI) The Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager (GSAOI) will be used with the multi-conjugate adaptive optics (MCAO) system being built for the Gemini South telescope. The imager will cover wavelengths between 0.9 and 2.4 microns, and will be based on a 4K × 4K HgCdTe detector mosaic. GSAOI’s imaging area will cover the well-corrected field of view of the MCAO system, with a pixel scale matched to diffraction-limited images. NOAO submitted a proposal to Gemini to perform a conceptual design study for this new instrument during FY 2001. Early in FY 2002, Gemini announced that, based on the advice of an independent review committee, NOAO had been selected as one of two teams to develop conceptual designs for GSAOI. NOAO began and completed its GSAOI conceptual design study during FY 2002, with personnel from Tucson and La Serena participating in the effort (with B. Blum serving as Project Scientist). The NOAO GSAOI design study results were documented as a report for Gemini, and the NOAO team presented its results to the Gemini Design Review Committee on August 21 in Hilo, Hawaii. The Review Committee was not able to select a winning team, rating both proposals equally highly. Instead, Gemini made significant changes to the requirements following the design review, and both design teams submitted revised proposals as requested. 4.1.4 U.S. Gemini Instrumentation Program One component of the U.S. Gemini Instrumentation Program consists of instruments being built by NOAO for use on Gemini. Three such projects (GNIRS, bHROS CCDs, and the GSAOI design study) are described above. The other class of U.S. Gemini instruments consists of those being built at other U.S. institutions under an AURA contract awarded by NOAO, with USGP technical and managerial oversight. 14 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report The Thermal Region Camera and Spectrograph (T-ReCS) is one of the final instruments of the initial complement of Gemini instruments. The supplier of this mid-infrared imager and spectrograph for the Gemini South telescope is the University of Florida (PI: Charles Telesco). The primary T-ReCS activity during FY 2002 was system integration, testing, and resulting repairs and adjustments. At the end of FY 2002, all effort was focused on preparing for the pre-ship acceptance testing of T-ReCS, which will likely occur by the end of calendar year 2002. The T-ReCS team now plans acceptance testing on Gemini South in early 2003. The first of the second-generation Gemini instruments is the Near-Infrared Coronagraphic Imager (NICI). NICI is funded by monies directed from the NASA Origins Program to NOAO via a proposal. NICI will provide a 1–5 micron infrared coronagraphic imaging capability on the Gemini South telescope. Mauna Kea InfraRed (PI: Doug Toomey, MKIR) was the successful competitive bidder for the NICI conceptual design study and the only respondent to an RFP for building the instrument. The NICI Preliminary Design Review (PDR) took place in early April 2002, and NICI passed its PDR. Subsequently, in late June 2002, NICI passed its Critical Design Review (CDR), and then entered the fabrication phase. At the end of FY 2002, a great deal of procurement activity was under way for the NICI optical, mechanical, and electronic components. NICI delivery to Gemini South is planned for December 2004. FLAMINGOS-2 is a near-infrared multi-object imaging spectrograph for the Gemini South telescope, developed by Richard Elston and his team at the University of Florida. FLAMINGOS-2, which builds on the heritage of the FLAMINGOS imaging spectrograph, will provide 1–2.5 micron direct imaging, as well as multi-slit spectroscopy across a 3–4 arcminute field of view. The NSF approved indirect cost support for FLAMINGOS-2 during FY 2002. The Florida team performed significant design work on the FLAMINGOS-2 dewar, mechanisms, and optics. In the past, the USGP ran the competitions in the U.S. community and awarded the contracts, but this is changing as Gemini takes a more direct role in the procurement of its instruments. As it has in the past, the USGP will continue to provide advice and liaison to the instrument teams, and management oversight (including quarterly reviews of each instrument’s progress via a site visit). 4.2 NOAO Instruments 4.2.1 Infrared Side Port Imager (ISPI) The Infrared Side Port Imager (ISPI) is one of the set of permanently installed facility instruments that optimally positions the Blanco 4-m telescope in the U.S. system of facilities (see http://www.ctio.noao.edu/instruments/ir_instruments/ispi/). ISPI has a relatively wide field of view in the near infrared: 11 arcminutes with 0.33 arcsec per pixel sampling at 1–2.4 microns. This complements the small-field, high angular resolution near-IR imaging capability of SOAR and the variety of instrumentation for IR spectroscopic follow-up observations soon to be available on Gemini South. In FY 2002 the ISPI project was subject to schedule delays as a result of damage to the University of Florida instrument FLAMINGOS; the two have identical optics. The ISPI project donated lenses to FLAMINGOS to keep the latter on the air at Gemini, NOAO, and other facilities. Despite this, ISPI ended FY 2002 with a very successful first light engineering run on the Blanco telescope. This “plug and play” operation at first light was a result of close coordination among the design, fabrication, and integration team members throughout the project. ISPI is scheduled to begin science operations in January 2003. 15 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report 4.2.2 NOAO Extremely Wide-Field IR Imager (NEWFIRM) NEWFIRM, a world-class capability for wide-field imaging in the near infrared, is a key element in the U.S. system of facilities provided by NOAO. It has a 27 × 27 arcmin field of view with 0.4 arcsec per pixel at 1–2.4 microns and will operate at the R-C focus on either 4-meter telescope. The instrument per se will be complemented by a highly automated data reduction pipeline feeding the NOAO data archive. A conceptual design review of an in-house concept was held in October 2002. The external reviewers were generally positive but expressed reservations about some aspects of the mechanical/thermal design and the software plan. Subsequently the project team revised the focal plane geometry to a closely butted 2 × 2 mosaic of 2K × 2K ORION InSb arrays. This had significant favorable impacts on the mechanical design and required revision of the thermal design. These conceptual elements were revisited during the remainder of the year in a manner that addressed the CoDR committee’s concerns. The software team conducted a trade study of extant and proposed software for instrument operations, and has proposed adoption of the ORAC/DRAMA software developed and supported by ROE-ATC in Edinburgh, Scotland. At the end of FY 2002, the project was moving on to the preliminary design stage, with a design review anticipated in mid-FY 2003. 4.2.3 SOAR Adaptive Optics The SOAR 4.2-meter telescope on Cerro Pachón will produce very high quality images over a field of view 10 arcminutes square (see http://www.ctio.noao.edu/~atokovin/soar). The initial instruments are designed to exploit this performance, with the optical imager and Goodman Spectrograph emphasizing high throughput in the blue and UV. In 2001, SOAR solicited ideas from its partners for secondgeneration instrumentation. NOAO South (CTIO) subsequently presented concepts for an adaptive optics (AO) system; this project was approved to be developed through to conceptual design review, which is scheduled for January 2003. A positive outcome to the review would imply building the instrument in 2003–2004, assuming funding is available. Good progress has been made during FY 2002. The concept takes advantage of the ability of a 4-meter telescope to compensate turbulence at shorter wavelengths than larger aperture telescopes for a given degree of system complexity. However, pushing the adaptive compensation of turbulence into the visible range remains a challenging task, despite the progress of AO technology. It is proposed that the SOAR AO development be implemented in two phases. The first will provide diffraction-limited resolution at 0.5–0.7 microns with natural guide stars as faint as magnitude 12, enabling studies of a small field around the object of interest (e.g., faint companions to stars). In the second phase of the project, a Rayleigh laser guide star mode will be incorporated, compensating for just the lowest turbulent layers. The angular resolution achieved will only be 2–3 times that of the natural seeing, but the uniformly compensated field will reach 2–3 arcminutes in diameter, offering a unique capability in the southern hemisphere for high resolution studies (e.g., clusters, nearby galaxies) at visible wavelengths. 4.2.4 SOAR Optical Imager The SOAR optical imager, a facility-class instrument being built at NOAO South, will be the commissioning instrument for SOAR. Given its location at a bent-Cassegrain port, the instrument incorporates its own atmospheric dispersion corrector and rotator, in addition to an F/16:F/9 focal reducer and tip/tilt guider controlling M3 at up to 50 Hz. Instrument fabrication was completed during FY 2002 and it is now entering the assembly and final test phase. Good progress has been made on both hardware and software for the data system, which consists of a SDSU (Leach) controller running in a Linux/LabVIEW environment. Work on the software has benefited from an informal collaboration with the instrumentation group at the Caltech department of astronomy. A cause for concern throughout this project—and equally for the other SOAR optical instruments—has been delays in the CCD procurement, which is via a large consortium-funded foundry run at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. A major setback 16 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report occurred near the end of FY 2002, where, due to a process error, most of the CCDs produced had very low quantum efficiency, rendering them scientifically unacceptable. Recovery strategies are perceived to be high-risk with indefinite schedule, thus SOAR decided to immediately purchase two E2V(ex-Marconi) 44-82 CCDs for use in the optical imager. These CCDs have been delivered, and the minor re-engineering needed to accommodate the change has commenced. Predicted completion of the instrument is now well before SOAR first light. 4.2.5 WIYN Tip/Tilt Module The WIYN 3.5-meter telescope is the facility of choice on Kitt Peak for high resolution optical imaging, since it has been shown to deliver images under good conditions of 0.28″ FWHM. In an effort to enhance our capabilities for high resolution imaging over a moderate field, a tip/tilt imaging system has been constructed for WIYN. The WIYN Tip/Tilt Module (WTTM) is an optical/near-IR re-imaging system that utilizes fast tip/tilt compensation and includes real-time focus sensing. The WTTM field of view is 4 × 4 arcmin at a plate scale of 0.12 arcsec per pixel. The WTTM is attached to the WIYN Instrument Adapter System, which facilitates quickly (<1 min) changing between the WTTM and the Mini-Mosaic imager by simply moving a pick-off mirror (in response to changing atmospheric conditions, for example). WTTM was completed in initial form during FY 2002. Work in the lab included completion of post-polishing of the challenging third aspheric mirror, assembly, integration, and test. It was delivered to the telescope for first light commissioning on February 23, 2002. Claver et al. presented a paper on the design and performance of WTTM at the SPIE meeting in Kona, Hawaii in August 2002. Two key aspects of the development process of the instrument are worth highlighting. One is that diamond-turned nickel-plated aluminum mirrors were able to meet a tight optical-light specification with only modest post-polishing requirements. The other is that the “build to print” philosophy paid off handsomely. Considerable up-front design effort was required and parts had to be fabricated to extremely tight tolerances. Initial assembly, however, yielded diffraction-limited images essentially identical to the toleranced optical performance prediction, with no adjustments or critical alignment procedure. That approach was so successful that NEWFIRM has adopted it for their optical elements. Some modest additional work remains to realize the full-up scientific capability. The camera was commissioned with an engineering-grade CCD on loan from Gemini. A science-grade CCD must be identified and commissioned. A set of scientific quality beam splitters (to separate the guide-sensing signal from the imaging field) must be specified, acquired, and commissioned. Additional on-sky experience is necessary to optimize operations under various sky conditions, particularly with respect to correction bandwidth. The WTTM is being scheduled regularly for science now, however, and is a welcome addition to the WIYN instrument complement. 4.2.6 Multi-Aperture Red Spectrograph (MARS) An ongoing project has been the upgrade to the CryoCam low-dispersion spectrograph, renamed MARS. In the first phase, the detector was changed to a very red-sensitive thick CCD from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, the grism was made from a volume-phase holographic grating, and the collimator lens was re-made and coated with a high efficiency coating. The end-to-end system reaches 40% peak throughput, including the detector, has an order of magnitude higher efficiency than the previous version longward of 9000 A, and is largely free of fringing. A. Dey, R. Lynds, and S. Barden devoted considerable time and effort to developing this low-priority project through a heavily committed technical group. Combined with an implementation of the nod-and-shuffle technique, which offers high-precision cancellation of night sky emission lines, this new mode offers extraordinarily competitive performance for far-red spectroscopy, aimed at moderate- to high-redshift galaxies and work on the calcium triplet feature and other important deep red diagnostics. 17 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report The next phase involves upgrading the detector and collimating lens. The LBNL CCDs are developmental devices, and an additional foundry run was undertaken in FY 2002. Four devices were made available to NOAO for lab characterization. Only one may be superior in performance to the CCD now in the regularly scheduled instrument. The replacement collimator lens was fabricated because the first lens was found to have a trace of radioactivity in the glass. The very thick CCD is extraordinarily sensitive as a particle detector, so the current configuration gives an unpleasantly high particle background, reminiscent of space-based detectors. When a final decision is made about the suitability of a CCD replacement, the lens will be swapped as well. 5. IMPLEMENTING THE DECADAL SURVEY 5.1 Site Characterization for New Large Facilities Informal collaborations continued with groups concerned with finding and characterizing sites for large telescopes, with results and plans presented at two workshops: the first held in October 2001 in La Serena, and the second in July 2002 in Tucson (see http://www.ctio.noao.edu/sitetests/). The foci of the two meetings were, respectively, the modeling and measurement of wind flow, on all scales, and prospective sites in the southwestern United States and Mexico. At the July meeting, the analysis of archival cloud and water vapor images for the southwestern U.S. and Mexico was presented, a study funded by NIO and CELT. NIO funded an equivalent analysis for Mauna Kea using a later data set (1998– 2002), and initiated a comparison between Chilean and North American sites. CELT and NIO jointly formulated a multi-year site testing campaign in Chile, with a goal of identifying a site for the CELT 30-meter telescope. By end of FY 2002 a Memorandum of Understanding was in final draft, and the campaign of testing a single Chilean site is due to commence in early 2003. NIO is also participating in the sites working group for the TMT (Twenty Meter Telescope) group, which also envisages building a large telescope in Chile. The Multi-Aperture Scintillation Sensor (MASS) instrument (see http://www.ctio.noao.edu/~atokovin/profiler/index.html), which produces low-resolution maps of the vertical turbulence structure in the free atmosphere, was completed and successfully tested. Several months of data have been obtained on Cerro Tololo, and when combined with the integrated seeing obtained from a Differential Image Motion Monitor (DIMM), the whole atmosphere can be characterized. The instrument is likely to become a standard piece of observatory equipment as adaptive optics systems become common, and a contract to combine the DIMM and MASS in a single instrument and produce six copies has been initiated. These will be used for characterizing both new and existing sites. The weather station installed in FY 2001 on Cerro Honar, above the ALMA site, continued to operate and provide essential long-term data on this very high-altitude (5,400m) site. A similar station was installed on the “8-m site” on Cerro Pachón. The two DIMMs sent to Mauna Kea for use in differential comparison tests on and near the summit continued to be operated by Gemini and the University of Hawaii for much of the year, and two more copies were produced for use at Las Campanas Observatory. The ability to model the wind and turbulence behavior on both micro- (few-meter) and meso- (fewhundred-meter) scales is a critical part of site evaluation, and is also part of the day-to-day operation of any facility relying on adaptive optics. To this end, the AURA New Initiatives Office (NIO) hired a postdoctoral fellow to specialize in computational fluid dynamics to enhance the existing in-house expertise. Modeling will concentrate on determining whether the candidate large telescope site on Mauna Kea is 18 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report significantly inferior to the existing telescope sites, and on characterizing Chilean sites prior to on-ground testing. 5.2 AURA New Initiatives Office (NIO)/Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT) In FY 2002, the AURA New Initiatives Office (NIO) made significant progress toward its primary goal, which is: “[To ensure] broad community access to a 30-m telescope, contemporary in time to ALMA and NGST, by playing a key role in scientific and technical studies leading to the creation of a Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope.” Although based in Tucson, the NIO involves Gemini personnel in Hilo, Hawaii and NOAO staff in La Serena, Chile, as well as teams of technical staff at collaborating institutions in the Gemini partner countries. NIO also works in close collaboration with non-AURA groups interested in future Extremely Large Telescopes (ELTs) to ensure that our efforts and activities are complementary. Over this past year, the NIO team has focused much of its energies on a systems analysis of a “point design” concept for GSMT, with the goal of understanding the technical and cost issues central to the successful design of an affordable telescope. A number of supported collaborative studies and in-house technical studies have been completed. In addition, NIO sponsored two successful international workshops in FY 2002: “Cost Effective Fabrication of Mirror Segments” (May 30–31) and “Sites II,” a second site testing workshop (July 1–2). (See http://www.aura-nio.noao.edu/workshops/workshops.html) 5.2.1 The GSMT Book NIO activities in the first quarter of FY 2002 were focused on completion of the “GSMT Book,” Enabling a Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope for the Astronomical Community, a collection of scientific and technical studies dealing with the point design for the GSMT. Created as a Web book in both HTML and PDF formats, with cross links to the more than 40 major sections of the document, the GSMT Book has three major areas of emphasis: (1) description of the science case for a 30-m optical-IR telescope; (2) development of a point design that is responsive to the science goals and is technically feasible within the next decade; and (3) description of development studies that address key technical issues of interest to any ELT concept. Currently available on the NIO public Web site and periodically updated, the GSMT Book will be distributed in CD form with the December 2002 Gemini newsletter. 5.2.2 Staffing and Web Site AURA has built a strong NIO team staffed primarily by NOAO engineers and scientists, with senior Gemini staff members filling several key positions. The current full-time staff includes eight NOAO engineers (including a post-doc and two interns) and three Gemini engineers. About a dozen NOAO scientists take part in the technical studies and provide scientific guidance, and several additional NOAO engineers support the technical studies on a part-time basis. The NIO Web site (http://www.aura-nio.noao.edu) was greatly expanded this year, and now includes reports on many technical studies prepared by NIO staff, collaborating institutions, and subcontractors, as well as links to the sites of other ELT groups. 19 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report 5.2.3 Science Working Group NIO has responded to a request from the National Science Foundation to create a community-wide GSMT Science Working Group, which is chaired by R. Kudritski (U. Hawaii). The working group is in the process of refining the science case for the GSMT—evaluating the scientific context for GSMT in an era which includes the James Webb Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA)— and considering how the science requirements drive the design features of the telescope. 5.2.4 Supported Studies In FY 2002, NIO funded the following reports and studies by collaborating institutions or subcontractors in the Gemini partner countries: • Wind loading of telescopes. A series of studies by a faculty member and two summer interns from the University of Arizona. • Conceptual-level cost estimate for point design telescope structure. Report prepared by the engineering firm of Simpson Gumpertz & Heger as a follow-on to their development in 2001 of a point design telescope structure for GSMT. • Enclosure for GSMT; feasibility study, and cost estimate. Report prepared by AMEC Dynamic Structures Ltd. (Canada). • Testing off-axis paraboloids using computer-generated holograms. Report prepared by a faculty member and graduate student from the University of Arizona Optical Sciences Center. • Million-element IFU study. Report and PowerPoint presentations by the University of Durham (U.K.) . • Gemini wind test data selector. Software and data package prepared by Mechanical Engineering Research Laboratory (MERLAB). • Feasibility study for large format detector arrays. Study of detectors to be used for very high order adaptive optics wavefront sensors by E2V Technologies, Inc. (U.K.). Discussions are in progress for additional studies that we expect to commission with other institutions in Gemini partner countries before the end of calendar year 2002. 5.2.5 Collaborative Studies NIO is working in collaboration with technical and astronomical organizations interested in participating in the development of technology for ELTs, including the following: • MIT Space Systems Laboratory. A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) is in place to develop integrated modeling techniques to simulate the performance of segmented mirror telescopes. An MIT intern is working with NIO in Tucson for four months in late 2002 and early 2003. • Tennessee State University. TSU staff are performing studies related to GSMT performance, including development of robust control systems and computational fluid dynamics simulations of airflow around the GSMT primary mirror. 20 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report • Center for Adaptive Optics. An agreement is in place for CfAO to provide funding for a post-doc to study wavefront reconstruction algorithms for giant telescopes at Gemini (Hilo) and Montana State University (50/50 time share). • AF Research Laboratory Starfire Optical Range. Gemini and Starfire have a CRaDA that has been extended to study real-time implementation of wavefront reconstructors using FPGA electronics. • Herzberg Institute of Astronomy. NIO and HIA are organizing joint studies in several areas, including science goals, segment fabrication, and integrated modeling. • Twenty-meter Telescope Group. NIO staff are engaged in several TMT working groups, and are engaged in discussions to establish a collaborative program to test Chilean observatory sites. • CELT. NIO and CELT are jointly supporting a site testing program on Mauna Kea, and are currently negotiating an MOU for a joint site testing program in Chile. Less formal collaborations are under way in other areas, including modeling wind loading of telescopes. 5.2.6 Progress on Other In-House NIO Technical Activities • Beowulf Cluster for Adaptive Optics Simulations. Created Beowulf cluster; modified AO simulation software for parallel processing. System successfully tested: increased speed 6x for Gemini MCAO simulations. • System Wavefront Reconstruction Algorithms for Giant Telescopes. Computationally efficient algorithms developed using advanced linear algebra methods. Initial open-loop results for extreme adaptive optics (100K actuators) and multi-conjugate adaptive optics (8K actuator) systems. Currently developing closed-loop algorithms for use in dynamical simulations. • Testing of Multi-Aperture Scintillation Sensor (MASS). MASS provides dynamic measurements of CN2 profile. Completed three-month continuous testing program on Cerro Tololo. Successfully verified performance relative to Differential Image Motion Monitor measurements. • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Studies. A full-time fluid dynamics engineer was hired in August 2002. Primary task is to model wind flow over candidate observatory sites. • Wind Loading of Segmented Mirror. Studies done by two summer interns from the University of Arizona. Resolved Gemini wind data into forces and moments on segments. Created finite-element model of notional segment support. Created dynamic simulations of wind-induced segment displacements. 5.3 Large-aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) The Large-aperture Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) is one of three major new ground-based facilities recommended for construction during the coming decade by the AASC. It has also been recommended as a high priority by two other NRC decade surveys, one dealing with the interface between physics and astrophysics and the other with solar system exploration. During FY 2002, several meetings were held with the community to define science programs that might be carried out with the LSST. Those science programs have been used to establish a preliminary set of requirements for the LSST. The science priorities remain basically those identified earlier at an Aspen workshop and in the recommendations of the NRC studies: discovery of near-earth asteroids; 21 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report characterization of the orbits of Kuiper Belt objects; deep-imaging of large areas of the sky to study weak-lensing, large scale structure, etc; and opening up the time domain. There appears to be general agreement that the LSST survey should begin by characterizing the sky to deep limiting magnitudes (~26) in at least four color-bands, followed by rapid surveying of the sky with ~10 second exposures in one or at most a few colors. A Science Working Group chaired by Michael Strauss has been appointed to develop a design reference mission, which will lead to further refinement of the requirements and will provide a set of priorities to guide design choices. The SWG is planning to complete its report within a year. The observational cadence will be driven by the requirements of the NEA program, and a contract has been let to Lowell Observatory (Bowell, Harris, Ivezic) to determine the optimum surveying strategy and to evaluate the completeness of discovery given models of the NEA population and various proposed strategies for providing the survey capability (e.g., the monolithic LSST and the multi-telescope PanSTARRS approach). This work is scheduled to take 12 months. Preliminary optical designs have been developed for the telescope + instrument combination. Contracts have been let to LLNL and a local Tucson-based company to extend those studies to provide a buildable design by the end of calendar year 2002. This design is a prerequisite for work on the mechanical design of the telescope. An instrument workshop identified a set of priority tasks for addressing the design issues associated with the optical imager and the focal plane array. Contracts are being negotiated to initiate these studies. Preliminary requirements for the detector array have been developed. A paper on the instrument design was presented at the SPIE meeting. A data management planning effort is being led by A. Connolly (U. Pittsburgh). Meetings to date have focused on pipelines, with the goal of defining where further research needs to be done, and on database management. There is optimism that the necessary infrastructure (hardware, database tools, etc.) exists or is within easy extrapolation of existing technologies. Actually writing the software and achieving adequate quality assurance remain very substantial challenges. Recruitment of a project manager is in progress. Appointment of an experienced person to this position is key to further progress. 5.4 National Virtual Observatory (NVO) The creation of a National Virtual Observatory (NVO) was the highest ranked priority item of the National Academy of Sciences Decadal Survey in the “small project” (less than $100 million) category. NOAO has been involved with the development of the NVO from its inception and has continued to play a significant role as this project has moved from the conceptual to the development stages. NOAO was host to the second NVO workshop, and NVO personnel (D. De Young, T. Boroson) were involved in the creation of the successful proposal to the NSF that provided $10 million in funding to establish the framework of the virtual observatory. NOAO is one of the lead participants in this NSF grant. In FY 2002, the contributions from NOAO to the NVO continued at both the management and the programmatic levels. D. De Young continued as a member of the NVO Executive Committee, and was named as Project Scientist of the NSF/ITR NVO initiative. D. Tody (now at NRAO) continued programmatic work at the systems level in defining and developing the data access layer to be incorporated into NVO standards. Tody also participated in defining other NVO technical approaches to 22 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report metadata standards and data access and image cutout development. A major effort for the NVO project in FY 2002 was the definition and development of scientific prototype demonstrations to be presented to the U.S. astronomical community in January 2003. To assist this process, an NVO Science Working Group was created with D. De Young as chair. In April 2002, NOAO hosted an NVO team meeting in Tucson, which was devoted to examining and discussing the suggested science prototypes put forward by the Science Working Group. This meeting resulted in the selection of three prototypes, which are being developed into a demonstration of NVO scientific capability for the astronomical community. The theoretical astrophysics community continued to be informed of and engaged in NVO activities through efforts centered at NOAO. A Theoretical Virtual Observatory (TVO) Web site has been established (see http://bima.astro.umd.edu/nemo/tvo) and maintained, and work is under way to establish metadata standards for incorporation of theoretical calculations and tools into the NVO. 5.5 Telescope System Instrumentation Program (TSIP) Work that was begun on the Telescope System Instrumentation Program (TSIP) in 2001 came to fruition in FY 2002, as NOAO planned and carried out the first proposal cycle for this program. Following the notification by the NSF that $4 million would be provided for the initial year of TSIP, an implementation plan for the proposal and review process was developed by NOAO personnel and approved by the NSF. A solicitation was distributed in early December 2001, and three letters of intent to propose were received in January 2002. Three proposals were received by the deadline at the end of March 2002. These proposals requested a total of $7.2 million. A review panel was assembled which included individuals with appropriate instrumental and scientific expertise. This panel met to review and rank the proposals in early May 2002. T. Boroson and A. Dressler (OCIW) met with NSF/AST staff in June 2002 to discuss the status of the TSIP proposal process and how it might evolve. The recommendation of the panel, subsequently approved by the NSF, was to fully fund the OSIRIS proposal from the California Association for Research in Astronomy (CARA) for an IFU-coupled near-IR spectrograph for the Keck II telescope ($2.7 million) and to fund for one year the KIRMOS proposal, also from CARA, for an ambitious near-IR imager and multi-slit spectrograph for the Keck II telescope ($1.14 million). Memoranda describing the provision of telescope time (41 nights total) through NOAO to the community were negotiated and signed in July 2002. Contracts addressing the payments, the work to be done, and the reporting and oversight responsibilities were negotiated and signed in September 2002. The initial payments were made to CARA by the end of FY 2002, and NOAO/TSIP personnel visited both project staffs to make contacts and agree on how these interactions would be maintained. A revised solicitation for FY 2003 was prepared for release in early October 2002. Changes to the program include an earlier proposal due date (February 28, 2003) and elimination of the 6-meter aperture limit for new instrumentation proposals. 6. 6.1 OFFICE OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS AND EDUCATIONAL OUTREACH (PAEO) Educational Outreach (EO) NOAO’s Educational Outreach group is responsible for managing and developing the national observatory’s programs that train teachers and astronomers to communicate to pre-college students scientific research principles and the latest discoveries in astronomy. The EO group also supports the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program at Kitt Peak and Sacramento Peak, and helps facilitate graduate and post-graduate opportunities at KPNO and CTIO. 23 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report FY 2002 saw a major change in leadership for the NOAO EO group, as Education Officer Suzanne Jacoby left to pursue a master teacher’s degree after many years of excellent service to different parts of the national observatory; Stephen Pompea replaced Jacoby in February 2002. Dr. Pompea has a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Arizona and a Master’s degree in physics teaching from Colorado State University. He has the dual title of Manager of Science Education/Astronomer to reflect the full range of his duties and experience. 6.1.1 Teacher Leaders in Research-Based Science Education S. Pompea assumed duties as director of the NSF EHR-funded Teacher Leaders in Research Based Science Education (TLRBSE). The TLRBSE program held its second immersive summer workshop from July 15– 26, 2002, hosting 19 teachers from around the country for two weeks of intensive instruction in both leadership skills and effective, inquiry-based use of astronomical data in middle and high school classrooms. Prior to their arrival in Tucson, the teachers completed a 15-week distance learning course facilitated by the University of Arizona. The course was run by an online facilitator and taught by pedagogy experts and professional astronomers from NOAO, the Planetary Science Institute, and Steward Observatory. It covered astronomy content, research techniques, image processing, and school leadership components. The distance learning course proved to be a terrific mechanism for the teachers to get to know each other and the NOAO program staff. When the teachers arrived in Tucson, they were ready to pursue research and become acquainted with their research team members. The teachers were divided into two groups for the summer workshop. One group conducted research at Kitt Peak National Observatory and the other at the National Solar Observatory’s Sacramento Peak facility. These research tasks were oriented toward preparing them to bring the research process—and their renewed excitement for it—into the classroom. In addition, each of the teacher leaders is to mentor three teachers new to the field in an effort to retain them in the teaching ranks. The workshop and distance learning course were rated very highly by participants, thanks to the efforts of the NOAO in-house TLRBSE team, as well as Jeff Lockwood (TERC), Don McCarthy (Steward), Steve Howell (Planetary Science Institute), Travis Rector (NRAO), Randy Accetta (U. Arizona), and Jean Young (M.J. Young & Associates). NSO staff members K.S. Balasubramaniam, Han Uitenbroek, and Alexie Pevtsov also worked extensively with the TLRBSE team on developing the solar research experience and served as mentors for the teachers during their stay at Sac Peak. In early July 2002, Dr. Steven Croft joined the PAEO staff as a Senior Science Education Specialist, with his primary responsibility being the TLRBSE program. Dr. Croft came to NOAO from the NASA Classroom of the Future in West Virginia, where he worked as a senior scientist developing inquiry and problem-based science education materials and lead teacher professional development workshops. He holds a Ph.D. from UCLA in planetary geophysics. He has been PI or Co-PI on both NSF- and NASA-funded curriculum development projects in the areas of astronomy, planetary sciences, and remote sensing. TLRBSE had a strong presence at the March 2002 annual meeting of the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) held in San Diego. NOAO offered both an exhibitor’s booth and an exhibitor’s workshop for potential recruits, and a business meeting for Teacher Leaders and Learning Colleagues presently in the program. NOAO posters on careers in astronomy and the Rosette nebula were among the most popular materials passed out at the booth. Other exhibit posters, free CDs, a PowerPoint presentation at the booth, and workshop presentations by TLRBSE staff and teachers all emphasized the benefits of being part of the TLRBSE program. Two different sets of curricula, Jewels of the Night and an analog version of the Nova Search Project, were given out to prospective recruits. Progress reports presented at the business meeting by the TLRBSE teachers overflowed with enthusiasm and impressive accomplishments. 24 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report 6.1.2 Project ASTRO-Tucson Project ASTRO continued strong into its seventh year at NOAO Tucson, training 288 teachers and astronomers in the best methods to bring hands-on, astronomy-oriented activities into science classrooms. More than 100 of these teacher/astronomer partnerships remain active today. Through them, Project ASTRO-Tucson has reached more than 13,000 students and counting. Dr. Connie Walker continued her leadership of the program at NOAO, leading preparations for the annual follow-up workshop for Project ASTRO-Tucson partners, which was held at David Levy’s home-based observatory in Vail, Arizona on February 17, 2002. Workshop highlights included sunspot observing techniques, where the Sun sets on the horizon, the phases of the Moon, and other wonders of the night sky. Many Tucson Amateur Astronomy Association members and Project ASTRO-Tucson astronomer partners volunteered their time and their telescopes. Instructional hands-on classroom activities showed third- through fifth-grade teachers how to make constellations in empty film canisters, while sixththrough ninth-grade teachers kinesthetically discovered “The Reasons for Seasons” from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) activity book The Universe at Your Fingertips. Educational resources for nine Project ASTRO activities were replenished and reorganized in FY 2002, and listed in the ASTROgram newsletter to make them more easily accessible to teachers on a checkout basis. NOAO Educational Outreach has extended Project ASTRO to a bilingual charter school in Nogales, Arizona, and soon to Sierra Vista, Arizona through the Huachuca Astronomy Club and the University of Arizona South. NOAO Project ASTRO astronomers also visited various local schools, including the Arizona School for the Deaf and Blind. The fall 2002 Project ASTRO workshop was held in early October, and will be reported in detail in the FY 2003 annual report. NOAO Tucson staff held several video and telephone conferences with CTIO staff and local La Serena astronomy educators to prepare for an experimental expansion of the Project ASTRO model to Chile. PAEO provided a supply of spectrometer kits and copies of the Spanish-language version of The Universe at Your Fingertips. In addition, PAEO recruited four local Spanish-speaking teachers from Tucson to support the effort, leading toward a prototype video workshop for local Chilean educators on how to build and use a spectrometer in early FY 2003. NOAO’s track record with Project ASTRO contributed to its swift selection as one of the prototype sites for the new Family ASTRO program being developed by the ASP. NOAO will work with three local groups in FY 2003 and beyond: the families of students of the Indian Oasis/Baboquivari Unified School District of the Tohono O’odham Indian Nation, the Hispanic community associated with the Sunnyside Unified School District, and families associated with the Sahuaro Girl Scout Council. C. Walker will lead this program with assistance from Robert Wilson of the NOAO Public Outreach group. 6.1.3 Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) KPNO continued its participation in the NSF’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, preparing future generations of professionals who will sustain U.S. preeminence in astronomy and contribute to a scientifically literate nation. Five undergraduate students from the REU program worked closely with NOAO Tucson staff for a 10–12 week period during the summer of 2002, developing skills as scientific researchers and furthering their 25 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report professional development. (Eight more REU students worked with staff of the National Solar Observatory, with direct logistical support from NOAO Public Affairs.) In July 2002, K. Mighell of NOAO Tucson and A. Whiting of CTIO attended an NSF-organized meeting of REU site directors. Mighell gave an invited presentation on the results of his minority recruiting visits to Spellman College, Morehouse College, and Howard University. Mighell also served on the NSF’s REU proposal review panel in December 2001. In September 2002, KPNO submitted a proposal to the NSF to continue its REU program for another five years beginning in summer 2003. 6.1.4 Further Undergraduate and Graduate Education NOAO continues to support a significant fraction (est. 20%) of U.S. Ph.D. theses in optical ground-based astronomy, including travel support. Funding from NASA’s Undergraduate Research Program in Astronomy (URPA) enabled NOAO to host a post-graduate student from Hunter College, who came to NOAO from a post at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center to gain professional development as a research assistant in tandem with the summer 2002 REU program. NOAO also participates in the NASA-funded Arizona Space Grant Consortium, which sponsors an undergraduate intern in space science at NOAO. UA Lunar and Planetary Laboratory graduate student John Keller received a Space Grant Graduate Fellowship to work with S. Pompea on a project to explore the use of music in representing and teaching about astronomical data sets. WIYN Director G. Jacoby hosted an undergraduate from Harvard University, who was working on a science project, and C. Claver hosted a Yale University student who assisted with the WIYN Tip/Tilt project. S. Barden worked with a graduate student from the University of Wisconsin who assisted with aspects of the Open Cluster Planet Search. The Practica de Investigación en Astronomía (PIA) program, operated with the REU program at CTIO, accepts both undergraduate and first-year graduate Chilean students. CTIO hosted three graduate students in FY 2002, who worked with N. Suntzeff on supernovae and sky brightness measurements. 6.1.5 The Astronomy Education Review (AER) The Astronomy Education Review (AER), a refereed online journal, made its debut to strong positive reviews in FY 2002. The goal of this new electronic journal is to provide a meeting place for all who are engaged in astronomy and space science education, in formal or informal settings. The AER makes it possible for educators to: • • • • • • Publish the results of research in education Share experiences and innovations Learn how to apply education research in the classroom Find pointers to provocative publications about education Identify useful resources and read reviews of resources by other educators Note opportunities such as workshops, symposia, cooperative projects, funding sources, and job openings • Search an archive of useful information and resources that will grow with time • Communicate with others engaged in similar projects and courses 26 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report • Participate in discussions of challenging issues The AER has been endorsed by the American Astronomical Society and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Initial funding is being provided by NOAO and NASA/OSS. The journal is edited by NOAO astronomer S. Wolff and by A. Fraknoi of Foothills Community College. Articles are posted as soon as they are refereed and copyedited. The first full issue has been completed and articles are currently being posted for the second issue. Papers in the first issue covered a wide range of topics, including a how-to guide on assessment, a series of papers on the Astronomy Diagnostic Test, how education reform at the end of the 19th-century removed astronomy from the curriculum, and gender-related behavior in collaborative learning groups. Readership grew sharply in the 10 months since its launch, rising from 200 to over 4,000 distinct visits, and from 4,000 to 90,000 files downloaded per month. 6.1.6 Other Educational Outreach PAEO staff organized three one-hour workshops on teaching about light and color at the March 2002 NSTA meeting, in joint sponsorship with the Optical Society of America, the Lawrence Hall of Science, and the University of Arizona Gamma Ray Spectrometer project, all of which provided workshop materials. Presenters at the workshops included optics education experts from the UC Berkeley Lawrence Hall of Science and the UA Optical Sciences Center. The workshops were standing room only, and were met with great enthusiasm by the teachers. An article about the workshops later appeared in the Optical Society of America’s magazine Optics & Photonics News. EO staff also presented posters and gave formal talks at the Space Science Institute’s 8th Annual K–12 Education Workshop for Scientists, Engineers, and EPO Professionals in April 2002, and at the June 2002 outreach conference organized by NASA’s Office of Space Science Education and Public Outreach. 6.2 Public Outreach NOAO’s Public Outreach group manages all activities at the Kitt Peak Visitor Center, including the center’s educational exhibits and retail operations, three daily tours of Kitt Peak observatories, the Kitt Peak docent program, and the popular fee-based nighttime observing experiences for both the general public and advanced amateurs. 6.2.1 Kitt Peak Visitor Center A variety of efforts to revitalize the visitor center and its grounds continued in FY 2002. Some highlights include the installation of more subdued and flexible lighting fixtures, a new Exploratorium-produced exhibit on spectroscopy, a new exterior audio kiosk to describe the historic mural on the side of the building (as a test of more kiosks to come to bolster the walking tour), major repairs to and refurbishment of the center’s vintage solar-imaging coelostat, and new exhibit cases for the Gemini Observatory model and the McMath-Pierce Solar Telescope cutaway model, among others. The Kitt Peak Nightly Observing Program (NOP) for the public continued to operate at a full-capacity pace in FY 2002, leading to plans late in the year for expansion to a second site in the 16-inch dome near the WIYN 3.5-meter. The NOP was the subject of feature stories in Sunset magazine, Arizona Highways magazine, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Tucson Citizen, and the Space.com Web site. 27 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report In an effort to diversify the exhibits presented by the Visitor Center, the Public Outreach group submitted a successful proposal to rent the NASA/Space Science Institute traveling Space Weather Center exhibit. It will occupy the Visitor Center’s major floor space for three months beginning in October 2002. Assisted by the NOAO Photo Imaging group in PAEO, the Visitor Center began selling a very popular series of posters based on astronomical imagery taken at Kitt Peak, including a wavelength boundary-busting image of M33 that combined optical data from the 0.9-meter telescope and radio telescope data from NRAO. Other subjects included the Eagle Nebula (M16), the Moon, and AE Aurigae, the Flaming Star. The general Kitt Peak visitor brochure received a major update, and its print run was increased from 100,000 to 150,000 copies. Within a one-year period, we had distributed 100,000 copies of the previous brochure. The NOAO Public Outreach and Photo Imaging groups worked together to redesign and print a new Walking Tour Map, which includes a four-color directory of all of the mountain’s telescopes. Brochures for the Nightly Observing Program and the Advanced Observing Program were also upgraded into an insert-card PAEO format. Kitt Peak Visitor Center The Kitt Peak docent program continued to mature in FY 2002, with regular evening lecture sessions by NOAO staff for docent training, and energizing exchanges with the staff of the ArizonaSonora Desert Museum and Kartchner Caverns. 6.2.2 Visitors to Kitt Peak In FY 2002, more than 30,000 of the estimated 50,000 visitors to Kitt Peak took a formal tour—self-guided or with a KPNO docent—or participated in one of the popular observing programs for the general public. An automated counter was installed at the Visitor Center entrance in September 2002 to obtain a more precise count of the number of guests visiting the mountain. Results will be reported in subsequent NOAO quarterly reports. Summary of Visitors (12 Months Ending 9/30/02) Group/Program General public tours Self-guided tours Visitors 18,635 6,857 School groups K-12 491 Special tours 262 Nightly Obs. Program 4,157 Advanced Obs. Program Total Visitors-est. 161 30,563 NOAO staff provided numerous special tours for schools, university groups, film and video production companies, and media reporters in FY 2002. Among them were the Australian correspondent for Science magazine; a science reporter for the Christian Science Monitor; representatives of the National Film Board of Canada; a film crew from Tennessee State University creating an online astronomy course aimed at underserved students; CNN-TV working on a segment on the need to preserve dark skies, and a film crew from the Academy of Media Arts in Cologne, Germany. Sky & Telescope also brought a group to Kitt Peak as part of a special tour of southwestern U.S. observatories. Informal comparisons with other Tucson-area attractions suggest that Kitt Peak did relatively well despite the lingering downturn in tourist travel following the events of September 11, 2001. 6.2.3 Other Public Outreach Staff from the NOAO Public Outreach group participated in a wide variety of events in FY 2002, including the University of Arizona’s Elderhostel Program, the Tempe City Parks and Recreation annual summer night sky presentation, the Arizona Science Center’s astronomy weekend in Phoenix, the Old Pueblo Boy Scout Roundtable in Tucson, and a science talk show on WHYY-AM radio in Philadelphia. In addition, Public Outreach staff made presentations to the Southern Arizona Attractions Alliance, the Tucson Association of Museums, the Western Museum Association, the Museum Association of Arizona. 28 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report The first public offering of a new short-course public program on amateur asteroid hunting was held in FY 2002. The program represents a burgeoning collaboration between NOAO Public Outreach and Spacewatch, the group at the UA’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory that tracks near-Earth objects using two telescopes on Kitt Peak. 6.2.4 External Coordination NOAO sent two representatives to the first outreach workshop for the National Virtual Observatory, held at STScI in July. S. Pompea and Doug Isbell presented a talk, “Lessons Learned from Data-Rich Science Education Projects,” and helped brainstorm several potential NVO-related initiatives. Doug Isbell gave a talk at the first meeting of outreach representatives from each of the partner countries in the Gemini Observatory, which was held in La Serena in March 2002. The meeting was the first step in a cohesive international outreach effort by Gemini. PAEO staff attended meetings of the Southwestern Consortium of Observatories for Public Education (SCOPE) in FY 2002, at Whipple Observatory in Amado, Arizona, and at NRAO in Socorro, New Mexico. The meetings provided a forum to discuss common issues of concern and to explore the advantages of joint public group tours of Kitt Peak National Observatory, the National Solar Observatory, Apache Point Observatory, McDonald Observatory, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory/Very Large Array, and Whipple Observatory. 6.3 Media and Public Information NOAO’s media and public information group coordinates news releases, media events and visits, fact sheets, posters, the NOAO Newsletter, and other visual products that explain NOAO’s latest research and organizational activities. It also coordinates NOAO’s public Web presence and external use of NOAO imagery, and serves as the primary response point for public inquiries and general e-mails. 6.3.1 Press Releases and Image Releases NOAO continued to establish a stronger identity with the space and astronomy media during FY 2002 as a dependable outlet for interesting news and compelling imagery. NOAO issued 10 formal press releases (see Table 1) and made fundamental contributions to several major news releases issued by the Gemini Observatory. For example, astronomy news based on adaptive opticsrelated discoveries from Gemini North was the centerpiece of the main press briefing on the first day of the January 2002 AAS meeting in Washington, D.C. This briefing produced very strong media coverage, including page A3 of the Washington Post and two stories in the New York Times. NOAO Public Affairs worked with Gemini and L. Close, a researcher at the University of Arizona, on a detailed press package regarding adaptive optics imaging of a brown dwarf orbiting amazingly close to its parent star. 29 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report Table 1. Press Releases Issued in FY 2002 and Subsequent Media Coverage Press Release Date Title/Subject Subsequent Media Coverage NOAO 01-13 12/13/01 “Passing of Astronomer Robert Schommer” NOAO 02-01 1/7/02 “Astronomers Discover Edge-on Protoplanetary Disk in Quadruple Star System” Washington Post, New York Times, Boston Globe, NPR, Reuters, AP, LA Times, Christian Science Monitor NOAO 02-02 1/10/02 “New Image Shows Rich Neighborhood of Nearby Galaxy” “Astronomy Picture of the Day” Astronomy.com NOAO 02-03 5/21/02 “Closest Brown Dwarf Companion Ever Spotted Around a Star Provokes New Perspective on Formation of Low-Mass Objects” Space.com, Sky&Telescope e-news, Unisci.com, SpaceRef.com, Spaceflightnow.com, Honolulu Star; also cited in a related AP story NOAO 02-04 6/3/02 “Star Cluster with Surprising Similarities to Sun’s Composition Offers Clues on Milky Way Evolution” Astronomy.com NOAO 02-05 6/3/02 “Black Hole Mass Boundary Drops Lower With Two New Lightweights” Reuters (reproduced by ABCNews.com, Yahoo.com, CNN.com), Sky&Telescope NOAO 02-06 6/10/02 “Kitt Peak Visitor Center Restricts Hours Due to Extremely High Fire Danger” Arizona Daily Star, local Tucson TV news NOAO 02-07 8/21/02 “Digital Movie Shows Awesome Speed of Asteroid Close Approach” CNN-TV “Headline News,” CNN.com, Space.com, Astronomy.com NOAO 02-08 9/6/02 “Science Workshop Reveals Evolving Perspective on Asteroid Threat” AP, UPI, Reuters, NPR, Wall Street Journal, Sky & Telescope, Science, Florida Today NOAO 02-09 9/26/02 “Kitt Peak to Preview Major Exhibit on Solar Storms and Second Site for Public Observing on Oct. 8” Arizona Daily Star (p. A1), “Paul Harvey” ABC Radio Program, (plus 2nd Arizona Daily Star story on space weather) NOAO Public Affairs had great success with a Hubble-quality, wide-field color image of the famous Eagle Nebula (M16,) and a fortuitous digital movie of the close approach of asteroid NY40. The spectacular Eagle Nebula image, taken by T. Rector at the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope, was promoted to the media at the June AAS meeting. Its subsequent release by Reuters news service and related coverage on Yahoo.com led to widespread international popularity, with inquiries for media publication or public use spanning the globe from Scotland to South Korea. Yale University alerted PAEO that two Yale students observing at the 0.9-meter had taken the initiative to obtain several hours of asteroid NY40 images a few days before its closest approach to Earth. The NOAO Photo Imaging group promptly turned these images into a short digital movie released to the media. The result was voluminous traffic on NOAO Web servers during the week of August 19, and news articles with such colorful news headlines as “Skywatchers Make Cool Movie of Asteroid” (CNN.com). 6.3.2 Special Information Products NOAO Public Affairs produced a new two-page fact sheet on the economic impact of NOAO and NSO on Tucson and Arizona, which received its first use in a series of handout packets given to Capitol Hill 30 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report staff in Washington, D.C. The fact sheet was later updated and mailed to all Arizona congressional offices and to numerous state and local agencies. The NOAO Photo Imaging group produced the second generation of a major new exhibit featuring a vast image file from the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey. This vibrant exhibit contains 300,000 galaxies and stars and an interchangeable sidebar information panel, and served as the basis of the NOAO presence at the January 2002 and June 2002 meetings of the American Astronomical Society. Also displayed at the meetings were colorful posters produced in-house, featuring images of NOAO educational outreach activities, the future of the WIYN Observatory, the LSST, and early scientific accomplishments fostered by the U.S. Gemini Program. In early September 2002, the Doug Isbell served as the media information officer for a NASA-sponsored workshop on the science needed to further mitigate the risk to Earth from Near-Earth Objects. More than two dozen reporters attended the workshop in Rosslyn, Virginia, and heard a variety of potentially controversial presentations. Media coverage of the workshop and its resulting press release were uniformly well-balanced, and several stories included references to the potential contributions of the LSST to this effort. 6.3.3 Web-based Outreach The evolution of the redesigned NOAO presence on the Internet (which debuted in FY 2001) continued during FY 2002. New Web pages were developed for the Kitt Peak Visitor Center, the TSIP program, NOAO Educational Outreach, and a popular image gallery of planetary nebulae maintained by G. Jacoby. Several new public Web pages with general contact information for NOAO divisions and staff members were created. Additionally, every two to three weeks a new featured image appears on the NOAO home page (http://www.noao.edu). NOAO Web pages received more than 1.4 million individual visits from November 2001 to October 2002, producing more than 6.7 million page views. The NOAO Image Gallery received 1.4 million page views in FY 2002, and NOAO Educational Outreach Web pages had 146,000 page views. Some individual events, such as the popular digital movie of the close approach of asteroid NY40 to Earth, netted nearly 200,000 page views. Images from NOAO telescopes were highlighted 13 times on the popular “Astronomy Picture of the Day” on the Astronomy.com Web site. PAEO continued to test and polish its abilities to present Web-based press briefings in preparation for future news from NOAO or Gemini, via several in-house tests and broadcasts of internal events. 6.3.4 Image Requests More than 600 individual requests to use NOAO images for commercial and non-commercial applications were reviewed and processed in FY 2002, including approved requests for use in calendars, amateur astronomy software packages, children’s educational magazines, textbooks, and popular backyard astronomy software published by Space.com. 6.3.5 Public Information NOAO received and responded to more than 800 individual requests for information on astronomy and the public programs of NOAO, including telephone calls, e-mails, and walk-ins. 31 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report 7. COMPUTER INFRASTRUCTURE AND NETWORK SERVICES 7.1 Tucson The downtown Tucson computing facilities continue to evolve as older systems are replaced by newer systems that are more cost-effective and easier to maintain. In particular, a new FreeBSD system was installed to provide X-terminal support and general UNIX services. Several older disk drives on various CCS systems failed during the year and were replaced by larger, more reliable disks. In particular, substantial disk space was added to the Sun system used for visitor support. Similarly, older laser printers were replaced by newer, more capable ones. The proliferation of desktop workstations, PCs, and X-terminals to scientists’ and engineers’ offices has slowed as saturation is approached; however, many desktop systems were upgraded to faster systems over the course of the year. The network infrastructure in the downtown Tucson office building continued to be upgraded during FY 2002 to increase performance and reliability. Several additional Ethernet switches were installed or upgraded to connect more systems to the backbone network. Public areas, such as the conference rooms and library, were equipped with wireless access points to ease the burden on itinerant astronomers. A DS3 (45 Mbps) data line between Kitt Peak and Tucson went into operation during FY 2002, replacing a DS1 (1.5 Mbps) connection. Efforts to improve the security and robustness of our network continued in FY 2002. A centralized virus detection system for Windows PCs was activated. Rules were added to our firewall to ban incoming telnet connections from the Internet to our machines; users must now use the encrypted SSH protocol for remote access. 7.2 Kitt Peak The conversion from the Leaky guider hardware to software-based guiders was completed in FY 2002. These are Linux systems using commercial frame grabbers. New data reduction machines were installed at three telescopes: Linux systems at WIYN and the 4-meter, and a Sun Solaris system at the 2.1-meter. At WIYN, a new Linux system replaced an older SunOS system at the telescope operator's station. A second Sun SparcStation was put into service as a data acquisition machine for the Mosaic CCD. This provides a spare and removes the need to move a system (and crate) with the Mosaic CCD between the 4meter and the 0.9-meter. Older SCSI disks were placed on several of our SunOS systems, and the files were moved to new 18GB and 36GB SCSI disks. More of the older SCSI disks will be replaced in FY 2003. At the end of FY 2002, three Linux machines were purchased for use in the KPNO Administration building. One is for the telescope operators and is located in their office; a second is for general staff use. These replace older Sun workstations running SunOS. The third system will be the central backup machine. This system contains eight 120GB IDE disks, four in removable trays. A new backup scheme will use this system in conjunction with the current Exabyte tape library and other disks at each telescope. It will be implemented in early FY 2003. 32 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report 7.3 CTIO – La Serena As staff in La Serena play a more active role in NOAO-wide activities, the CTIO computer support group has grown into a role of supporting all NOAO facilities and activities in Chile. We are working closely with and supporting Gemini activities, and supporting other NOAO programs, including the U.S. Gemini Project, the New Initiatives Office, Major Instrumentation, and the Data Products Program. In FY 2002, we continued our shift to Linux/PC workstations for all La Serena staff. The focus of this year’s efforts has been to provide a uniform system installation to allow for better support of users and easier planning and execution of upgrades. This involved upgrading software and many system hard disks to bring the workstations into a common configuration. As of the end of FY 2002, about half of the Linux workstations have been upgraded to our newest Linux operating system, and the others will be upgraded in early FY 2003. The La Serena computing network has grown to the point of saturation, with high performance workstations in most offices demanding resources of local servers and external sources. To better serve these demands, a new central gigabit switch was purchased at the end of FY 2002 to provide gigabit Ethernet connectivity to the desktop for scientific and engineering staff. Earlier in FY 2002, extensive wireless LAN coverage was installed throughout the La Serena offices to support users of laptop computers, including staff members and visiting astronomers. As in Tucson, security remained a high priority issue during FY 2002 in Chile. NOAO South computing staff installed and maintained an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) on the network access serving both NOAO South and Gemini facilities. This unit monitors and filters incoming data streams for viruses and hacking attacks. The IDS, combined with firewalls (in La Serena, on Cerro Tololo, and on Cerro Pachón), provides our external layer of security. Our internal security was also improved with uniform security measures installed into the new standardized Linux system mentioned above, and through the installation of a centralized virus detection system for Windows PCs. The most significant and noticeable improvement in our computing and network infrastructure has been the connection to Internet-2 in the United States via Entel in Chile and AMPATH in Florida. This connection provides NOAO and Gemini with 10Mbps of bandwidth through a three-year grant provided jointly to Gemini and NOAO. The connection was made in April 2002 by NOAO South staff, making NOAO/CTIO the first U.S. research program in South America to access the Internet-2 network infrastructure. Gemini’s southern facilities were brought online soon thereafter by NOAO South staff. The new link is now serving CTIO, SOAR, and Gemini, as well as other “tenant” programs such as the NSFfunded Swarthmore H-alpha Sky Survey. It is also a critical element in the NOAO Data Products Program’s plans to provide public archival access to data obtained from NOAO telescopes. NOAO South staff negotiated with the local service provider (Entel) to increase our “commodity” (nonInternet-2) bandwidth from 2Mbps to 4Mbps for no extra charge. This is serving all of NOAO South’s facilities, including CTIO, SOAR, and Gemini. We are working with Entel to explore further bandwidth upgrades in support of present and future programs. 7.4 CTIO – Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón (SOAR and Gemini Support) The NOAO South mountain network now consists of resources on both Cerro Tololo and Cerro Pachón, connected to our La Serena offices by an OC-3 (155 Mbps) microwave communications backbone shared between NOAO and Gemini. This local WAN has seen greater utilization with Gemini coming online and 33 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report the learning curve required to optimize and occupy this bandwidth. To date, NOAO South staff have provided all support and maintenance of this shared backbone system. Both NOAO and Gemini now routinely use the connection for remote support. At the end of FY 2002, a remote observing console was set up in La Serena to allow true remote observing (with only a telescope operator present on the mountain) to take place with the Mosaic II imager on the CTIO Blanco 4-meter telescope. In addition, a new videoconferencing unit was installed in the Blanco control room to support this remote mode of observing. This system provides a prototype or proof of concept for remote use of other instruments on the Blanco 4-m, as well as those on SOAR. The network on Cerro Tololo was upgraded and reorganized to allow both NOAO and Gemini to take full advantage of the OC-3 link. NOAO South staff configured an ATM circuit on the network backbone to support the new Gemini office on Cerro Tololo, allowing Gemini staff full access to both the Gemini network in La Serena and on Cerro Pachón. In addition, NOAO South staff worked with AOSS to install and support network connections in the visiting astronomer dormitories. On Cerro Pachón, the SOAR construction team has continued to work with the NOAO South computing staff to integrate SOAR into the overall NOAO South network and computing environment. Our Cerro Tololo computing equipment has begun a slow and careful long-term change from a network of Sun workstations to a mix of older Sun computers and newer Linux PCs. By the end of FY 2002, several guider systems had been upgraded to new Linux-based systems, and the upgrade process will continue through mid-FY 2003. The main data reduction machine for the Mosaic II imager was replaced with a high-end Linux workstation, allowing for much more rapid analysis of Mosaic data and more efficient observing. Additional disk space was installed on several machines to support the larger data volumes of our newer instruments. Additional hard disk upgrades are planned for FY 2003. 34 NOAO FY 2002 Annual Report