Siding Spring program shutting down

[icytailmark (Mark)]

This is such sad news to hear. I have been to this observatory and its great.

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articl...14/3758927.htm

[Kunama]

Mt Stromlo is only an educational facility these days is it not. With the exception of the Solar studies everything else went to Siding Spring some time ago.
I understood it was only Rob McNaught's survey at Siding Spring that was now unfunded.

It begs the question where would we be if it were not for the foresight of certain men of history who funded the studies of Galileo, Secchi et al. If it was left to today governments we would still be worried about falling off the edge of our flat earth.

[icytailmark (Mark)]

im not sure if its just one program being shut down or the entire observatory the article doesnt really say.

[bojan]

How about voluntary work?
I am sure there will be people willing to this kind of job for free... myself included

[Robert9 (Robert)]

My understanding is that it's only the program that's ending.

"
"We're getting NASA funds up until the end of July," says McNaught.
"But beyond July there's no funding available so it's questionable whether the program will continue."


Would surely be a great loss and waste if the entire observatory closed.


Robert

[gary]

Originally Posted by Robert9

My understanding is that it's only the program that's ending.

Hi Robert,

That's correct.

There are many telescopes at Sidings Springs. Some are run by the AAO, some by ANU
and some by other bodies such as UNSW.

Rob McNaught's near-earth object search program was called the "Siding Spring
Survey" (SSS). It was the southern counterpart to the Arizona based Catalina
Sky Survey (CSS).

The SSS employed one of the smaller telescopes on the mountain, namely the
0.5m Uppsala Schmidt. Built in 1956, it had been refurbished and fitted with a
4K x 4K CCD.

Rob also employed an array of PC's loaded with software supplied by the CSS
team.

My guess would be that it would be the camera and PC's that would be the
equipment that would be returned to the U.S. or possibly written off for re-deployment
on other projects here.

The telescope itself belongs to ANU and would remain.

The CSS and SSS were effectively brought about by a directive of U.S. Congress.
They mandated the survey identify NEO's down to 1km with a 90% confidence
interval.

My understanding is that the surveys met those goals. What would possibly
be required is a new goal and a new mandate.

Being such a small telescope with relatively modest equipment, it could be re-deployed
at very short notice if a new program were launched and someone like Rob or Gordon were still available.

[Saturnine (Jeff)]

Hi

My understanding is that the NEO program only costs $110K p.a. to run, here's an proposal ( tongue in cheek ! ). If 5000 members of the I.I.S. community pooled $22 each, less than the cost of a cheap eyepiece, that would fund the project for another 12 months and thus keep this valuable resource running.
Of course the funding for the program should come from the public purse as it very well may save "us" from an disaster or at least inform us of new comets to whet our appetite or of potential near misses.

Jeff

[Kunama]

Originally Posted by Saturnine

Hi

My understanding is that the NEO program only costs $110K p.a. to run, here's an proposal ( tongue in cheek ! ). If 5000 members of the I.I.S. community pooled $22 each, less than the cost of a cheap eyepiece, that would fund the project for another 12 months and thus keep this valuable resource running.
Of course the funding for the program should come from the public purse as it very well may save "us" from an disaster or at least inform us of new comets to whet our appetite or of potential near misses.

Jeff

You can count me in for $22 per year for the next 10 years!

[bojan]

Originally Posted by Kunama

You can count me in for $22 per year for the next 10 years!

I am cheaper..

Originally Posted by bojan

How about voluntary work?
I am sure there will be people willing to this kind of job for free... myself included

[Kunama]

Originally Posted by bojan

I am cheaper..

Mine was a donation not my weekly wage !!!!!!

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

It seems that there is a system of funding cuts occurring as Perth Observatory has also ceased funding research too. The place I believe is now only going to be used as a tourist attraction. Maybe we need a good meteorite strike on parliament to see if it can knock some sense into them.

[gary]

Originally Posted by mswhin63

It seems that there is a system of funding cuts occurring as Perth Observatory has also ceased funding research too.

Hi Malcolm,

Keep in mind that these are not directly related in any way.

Perth Observatory belongs to the state of West Australia and is funded by the
West Australian state government.

Rob's project came about from a US congressional directive and was the southern
hemisphere component of that. As I understand it, funding by NASA made its
way to the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS) which is run by the University of Arizona and part
of that then made its way to ANU in Canberra to fund the SSS.

Then in October 2011, the CSS cut funding off to the SSS and as I understand it,
ANU picked up the tab for a while hoping the Americans might come good again.

In any case, irrespective of where the pool of grant money came from, ANU would have signed the
SSS pay cheques.

In March 2012, the CSS was reported to be awarded a new USD4.1 million grant to perform upgrades.
See http://www.space.com/14911-dangerous...a-funding.html

However, one assumes that little or none of that made its way onto ANU.

Originally Posted by The Register, Richard Chirgwin, 10 Jul 2012

Professor Harvey Butcher, head of the ANU’s School of Astronomy and Astrophysics, says there is currently “no clear channel of finance” for the handful of salaries (for the SSS) and relatively inexpensive (a couple of million rather than a couple of billion) investment for a more powerful telescope.

At a meeting in August 2012 for the Large Synoptic Survey, Telescope, (LSST)
which is a new 8.4m telescope being built in Chile that will
be able to survey the entire visible sky at multiple wavelengths every week using a
three-billion pixel camera, the CSS team announced that they were in "the initial
stages of collaboration with Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LGOCT)."

LCOGT operate the two Faulkes Telescopes. Now Faulkes Telescope South is
at Sidings Springs, only a few hundred meters away from the Uppsalla Telescope
that Rob uses. CSS announced that the geographic distribution of LGOCT is "ideal
for NEO follow-ups". Notice the use of the words "follow-ups" rather than
"discoveries". Though what you read about the renewed efforts at CSS are
about "discovery", including new cameras, it is not clear to me whether they
plan to sit in Arizona and use Faulkes South for "discovery".

The bottom line is though the CSS appears to have received additional funding
last year from NASA, after slicing up the pie and giving some new people
some pieces, there didn't look like as if there was a slice left for the original SSS.

I can only speculate on this and obviously Rob would be the best one to talk to for
a clearer picture.

For example, one assumes the CSS would love to get funding for access to LSST
data some time after first light in 2021. A public-private partnership,
part of its stated role is "a survey of the orbits of asteroids as small as 100m that
might impact Earth". When you consider its 3.2-gigapixel prime focus
digital camera will take a 15-second exposure every 20 seconds, it will be
a formidable instrument for looking for NEO's in southern skies.

It costs hundreds of millions of dollars and the US National Science Foundation
has given it the thumbs up for the next stage, so in a way, when you look at it
on a global scale, funding for NEO searching is actually increasing not decreasing.

[Saturnine (Jeff)]

As usual Gary, you are an gold mine of information. The LSST project sounds fantastic but is a few years away from being operational, Chile, because of it's geology and weather is an obvious place to host the survey but I can't help being a little parochial in wanting Australia to remain as one of the southern hemispheres (re)search centres for NEOs'
Maybe some of the large mining companies could be persuaded to fund the SSS. if they were told that any large iron/ nickel meteors that were spotted in close approach could be there's for the taking. After all , the cost of 1 years operation of the SSS is less than 1 years wages for 1 mining company employee in the north west.

Jeff

[mswhin63 (Malcolm)]

Originally Posted by gary

Hi Malcolm,

Keep in mind that these are not directly related in any way.

Perth Observatory belongs to the state of West Australia and is funded by the
West Australian state government.

Yes I concede this but governments are taking astronomy science as a less important science overall. Fairly heavy cuts all round. This is more a generalist observation, although funding could be cut due to concentrating aspects of SKA project as well.

I am hoping the tourist industry for Perth Observatory as well as any others that funding stops still allow the obs to be re-opened if the need arises.

[Robert9 (Robert)]

Originally Posted by mswhin63

This is more a generalist observation, although funding could be cut due to concentrating aspects of SKA project as well.

I was at a lecture given at Monash University by Dr. Lisa Harvey-Smith - CSIRO's Project Scientist for the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) - on the topic of "The Square Kilometre Array: Building the World's Largest Telescope in our Backyard". It was my understanding from her lecture that funding for the SKA is has been fully allocated and as such should not be subject to any cuts.

Robert

[rally]

Gary,

Thanks for all the great quality information.

So do you think this is more an issue of retiring an existing research program for a bigger and better program that will effectively take over the same tasks - but unfortunately being relocated in another part of the world (for better seeing and sky access) with an entirely different and moire advanced technology and capability or it it a case of just shutting one sort of research and starting another type of research ?

Hope I am not putting you on the spot, but is this actually progress with collateral local damage to our Australian astronomy or is it just mindful reduction. I have previously seen the thread on IIS where the discussion of funding indicated that world astronomy expenditure was increasing not decreasing.

It does seem such a shame that for what is really a trifling amount of money that the Aussie government couldnt pick this up - even as an educational program to train other professional astronomers . . . . you know the story - one duplicated school library for $1.5M could have funded this for another 10 years or more !

Thanks

Rally

Originally Posted by gary

. . . . . .

When you consider its 3.2-gigapixel prime focus
digital camera will take a 15-second exposure every 20 seconds, it will be
a formidable instrument for looking for NEO's in southern skies.

It costs hundreds of millions of dollars and the US National Science Foundation
has given it the thumbs up for the next stage, so in a way, when you look at it
on a global scale, funding for NEO searching is actually increasing not decreasing.

[gary]

Originally Posted by rally

Gary,

Thanks for all the great quality information.

So do you think this is more an issue of retiring an existing research program for a bigger and better program that will effectively take over the same tasks - but unfortunately being relocated in another part of the world (for better seeing and sky access) with an entirely different and moire advanced technology and capability or it it a case of just shutting one sort of research and starting another type of research ?

Hi Rally,

Thanks for the post.

Earlier today I was near the end of a comprehensive response including
hyperlinks to references and as luck would have it the browser crashed!
God's way of telling me to stop typing perhaps?

So apologies that this response will be somewhat briefer and won't contain
anywhere near the number of references I had cited in the original draft.

I only get to see Rob very briefly once a year or so if we bump into him at
Coona and I have chatted briefly to him in the past about funding and
his tenure.

So Rob is still definitely the best one to talk to.

However, in a nutshell, the theory that the resources were reallocated to
elsewhere is possibly right.

The CSS team has nine members listed on its web page and lists Rob as
a tenth at the SSS.

It is not clear how long the USD4.1 million the CSS were given last year was
meant to last, but as we all know these days, that sum doesn't go as far
these days as it use to.

What triggered my attention was this PowerPoint presentation by one of the
CSS team from August 2012.
See http://www.lsstcorp.org/ahm2012/.../...follow-up.pptx

Firstly, it is given at the "LSST All Hands Meeting". LSST is the big 8m survey
telescope being built in Chile. Secondly, it then mentioned the new relationship
with the people that run the Faulkes telescopes.

The Uppsalla observatory Rob runs has a CCD camera and an array of half
a dozen or so PC's running custom software written by the CSS team. By definition
they are looking for small, undiscovered, typically distant objects. Rob will
show you some pixels on the screen that look like all the other noise but he
has the skill and experience to identify them as comets or asteroids.

It could well be that the CSS team plan on running Faukes South robotically
and streaming the data across the Pacific and doing what Rob does in Arizona.
I don't know.

Certainly when you look at the LSST scope, if you were a professionals devoted
to finding NEO's, namely the CSS team, you would want to be throwing your hats
in the ring to access it. So from a science point of view it makes sense they would
want to be part of that and have possibly devoted some of their resource, such
as travel budget, to help make sure of it.

I certainly hope Rob can find some place in all of this because of his skill,
devotion, intellect and talent.

Hi Malcolm! I made this post on the forum in January this year -
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/s...5&postcount=16

I would actually hypothesize that the current decades are in fact a Golden
Age for astronomy with more funding than ever before.

When the professional astronomers provide presentations at club meetings
and star parties, even they have had admitted to be lost in the dizzying array
of new telescopes either completed, under construction or planned.

Only last month Discovery magazine had this article entitled "Monster
Hawaiian Telescope Approved" with regards the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT).
http://news.discovery.com/space/astr...d-130418-2.htm

You will recollect the extraordinary efforts both the Australian Federal and
West Australian Governments as well as the South African government went
to in securing the SKA. Many nations are still signed up for it and were doing so
at the height of the GFC.

Then you have the ALMA array in Chile, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT)
and possibly the 100m Overwhelmingly Large Telescope (OWL).

The Federal Government here picked up the tab to fully fund the AAO when the
British pulled out of the partnership and Julia Gillard herself made the trip to
Sidings Springs immediately after the fires.

Also in recent times at Sidings Springs is the new Skymapper telescope and
Faulkes South.

Only last week, Mexico's Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT), built atop a 4600m
volcano, had first light. This has a 50m gathering surface.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Millimeter_Telescope

Meantime the Planck space telescope, which reached the L2 point in 2010,
has just completed its all all-sky map of the cosmic background radiation.

In March, the UK committed £88m to the €1bn European Extremely
Large Telescope (E-ELT).

Plus many more telescopes and projects that I can possibly remember and
undoubtedly many that I have never heard of

Now you can imagine all these teams are competing for the same science funding
pools, so there will be winners and unfortunately losers. But incredibly despite being
a period of one of the greatest economic downturns since the Great Depression,
governments, institutions and individuals continue to back astronomy in a way that
is unprecedented in history.

It must be a good time to be an astronomer.

It is a pity about research at the Perth Observatory, but against the bigger
backdrop of the amount of money being earmarked for astronomy elsewhere,
one can appreciate it's funding cut is not the best indicator of current interest
in astronomy.

On a minor note, we did ship them an Argo Navis two weeks ago which they will be
using on their 30" Obsession I gather for public outreach. We appreciate their support.

Best regards

Gary Kopff
Mt Kuring-Gai

[RefractorPhill (Philip)]

Indeed amazing news, I've visited ace comet-hunter Robert McNaught in March 2013 at the 0,50 m Uppsale-Schmidt telescope (in fact a Newtonian-Schmidt) and now it looks like he has retired. I didn't have the chance to speak to him at AstroFest 2014 where he was scheduled to give a lecture on comets.
The 8,5 m LSST, which will be will be located on the 2680 m high El Peñón peak of Cerre Pachon in Chile will also look out for NEO... planned first light in 2022.

On the other questions:
Mt Stromlo still has an operational observatory: the Stromlo Satellite Laser Ranging observatory operated by the space technology company Electro Optic Systems. Of course Mt Stromlo is the location of the Astrophysics research school and the Advanced Instrumentation & Technology Center which is working for the Giant Magellan Telescope, planned in Chile.

http://www.cloudynights.com/photopos...Naught-med.jpg

[Zaps]

Originally Posted by Kunama

If it was left to today governments we would still be worried about falling off the edge of our flat earth.

Government exists to fund government. And sports.

[GeoffW1 (Geoff)]

Gary,

Just a thank you for taking the time on a couple of the best posts here on IIS.

Cheers