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FIGURE 6‐5 Gemini North with Southern Star Trails Credit: Gemini Observatory/AURA.
Observatory has been slow in providing the community with the world class instruments that it needs to
carry out its research program, and has incurred operations costs that are larger than were anticipated. The
challenges arose partly because of a heavy international management structure and partially because of
the early choice of a queue-based observing mode.
AST also supports instrumentation on private observatories through its TSIP ($4M per year)
program and ReSTAR ($3M per year) based expenditures. These development funds are small compared
to the investments in NOAO+Gemini ($43M per year), and provide access for the community to both
unique and workhorse scientific capabilities that complement those available on the NSF-run facilities.
The ATI and MRI programs provide technology development and instrumentation support for
radio, optical/infrared, and solar facilities.
In solar astronomy, the Advanced Technology Solar Telescope (ATST) on Haleakala in Maui,
Hawaii received an ARRA commitment to about half of its roughly $300M construction cost and the
project has formally started. Managed within AST, the other half of its construction costs will come from
NSF's MREFC program. It will be a world-leading facility, with an off-axis 4-meter mirror and an optical
design optimized to eliminate scattered sunlight. ATST will operate with the most advanced solar
adaptive optics system in the world, making it possible, for example, to compare directly the magnetic
structures that accompany solar granulation with the predictions of the latest computational models
(Figure 6-6). It will allow study of intense solar magnetism on the fine and complex scales that are likely
to be present in nearly all stars, but which can finally be resolved with the 0.05" spatial resolution that
ATST will allow.
Summarizing the activity scale and the frequency between the appearance of new flagship
capabilities among NSF/AST facilities, during the 1990’s the optical Gemini facilities were built, during
the 2000’s the Expanded Very Large Array and the ALMA radio facilities were constructed with ALMA
slated for completion early next decade, and the 2010’s will witness construction and operation of the
solar facility ATST. While construction money has come recently from the NSF Major Research
Equipment and Facilities Construction (MREFC) line, operations for and development of these new
flagships falls to AST—as do these costs for the existing optical, radio, and solar facilities mentioned
PREPUBLICATION COPY—SUBJECT TO FURTHER EDITORIAL CORRECTION
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