SMARTS - STATUS & PLANS
Alistair Walker, October 2003
SMARTS = Small & Moderate Aperture
Research Telescope System
Members and P.I.’s
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American Museum of Natural History (Mike Shara)
Georgia State University (Todd Henry)
NOAO (Alistair Walker)
Northern Arizona University (via GSU) (Dave Koerner)
Ohio State University (Darren DePoy)
Space Telescope Science Institute (Howard Bond)
State University of New York at Stony Brook (Fred Walter)
Yale University (Charles Bailyn)
1.5m
1.5m
0.9m
0.9m
1.0m
1.0m
1.3m
1.3m
TELESCOPES & INSTRUMENTS
• 1.5-m + Cass Spectrograph, 30% service
• 1.3-m + dual IR/CCD Imager, 100% Queue, synoptic-optimized (ex2MASS)
• 1.0-m Not scheduled in 2003
• 0.9-m + CCD Imager, 50% service, all runs 7 nights
and
PEOPLE
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Two instrument specialists
Three observers (2 for 1.3-m, 1 for 0.9-m)
One part-time observer (for 1.5-m, shared with CTIO)
Other support from CTIO & AOSS, charged per-use
PLUS YALE (management, data distribution, 1.3-m Q scheduling):
STScI (1.5-m service scheduling), GSU (0.9-m operations)
• Operations Model developed from YALO
FOR THREE YEARS (2003-2005)
NOAO provides
• Telescopes, guiders, instruments
• $100K in 2003
• 5-10% of Alan Whiting (CTIO post-doc), a few % at CTIO Dir level
NOAO gets
• Savings of approx $400K per annum compared to running the 1.5-m and
0.9-m telescopes alone
• Consortium helps defray mountain costs
Users get
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33% of time in 2003, 25% in 2004-2005
Service and Queue Opportunities
Potential access to new instruments
Time according to their contribution ($, telescopes, instruments)
Enhanced research and educational opportunities
Chile retains 10% of the time
What’s Imminent?
• New partner for 2004-2005 = Delaware (John Giziz)
• NSF review of SMARTS so-far, plus budget & operations
plans for 2004-2005
• Science results!
• Attract another participant at the $50-$100K/annum level.
Potential partner = Vanderbilt/Fisk (Keivan Stassun)
• Montreal IR Imager on 1.5-m (AMNH Project, 5 months in
each of 2004 and 2005) - from April 2004
• 1.0-m with 4K CCD Imager (built by OSU) - from May
2004
Science Programs for 2003B
• NOAO --Mixture of Survey projects & shorter P.I. programs
– J. Huchra, The 2MASS Redshift survey, 1.5-m spectroscopy
– J.A. Smith, uvgriz Southern Standards Stars, 0.9-m photometry
– G. Meurer, Star formation in HI Selected Galaxies, 0.9-m
– N. Suntzeff, The w project, 0.9-m
– And 35 other other Projects, overall over-subscription rate 1.33
• Other Consortium Members - 36 different programs, 24 P.I.’s
– Yale (Bailyn): Optical/IR observations of high-energy transients
– GSU (Henry): CTIOPI parallax program
– SUNY (Simon): SIM target selection program
– OSU (DePoy) & STScI (Sahu): Microlensing events
– STScI (various): Extensive spectroscopic monitoring programs
– Yale (Urry) & GSU (Miller): AGN reverberation mapping
– SUNY (Walter): Simultaneous observations with FUSE
Science Education - examples
• SUNY (Walter)
– Assembling a data set for a Cepheid Lab for undergraduate majors
– Advanced undergraduate/beginning graduate course where the
students write proposals, get the data, and reduce it all in the same
semester
• Yale, GSU, OSU, SUNY
– At least 12 grads/undergrads at the 4 universities carrying out
research on SMARTS data this semester
– Grad student contributions to scheduling and operations (Yale, GSU)
• CTIO REU Program
Bottom Line - is it worth it?
Plusses
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Productive and efficient facility
Flexible observing modes
New telescope (1.3-m) and instrumentation
Core group of keen users doing programs of substance $600K per annum program, not counting scientists
• Retains access for NOAO users - only 3 lowly rated
proposals did not get time (0.9-m) in 2003B. Although 70
1.5-m and 126 0.9-m nights requested for 2004A.
• Allowed CTIO to re-program ~10% of its telescope
operations budget (~6% of NOAO funds spent in Chile)
Bottom Line - is it worth it?
Minuses
• Long-term viability? 1.5-m telescope needs lots of
maintenance, image quality issues
• Unbalanced instrumentation - fiber-fed synoptic
spectrograph on 1.5-m?