Sky & Telescope Magazine December 2012 - TuLaTri.com

U.S. Observatories Face Cuts
Changing Times
for
J. Kelly Beatty
U.S. Astronomy
The budgetary writing is on the wall:
the National Science Foundation doesn’t have enough money both to
operate all of its existing facilities and to build big, expensive new ones.
A telling moment for the future of U.S. astronomy came
last October. That’s when James Ulvestad, who heads the
astronomy division of the National Science Foundation
(NSF), delivered a bleak budgetary forecast. Federal funding
for the country’s national observatories, and for the
community that depends on them, was declining — with
no real prospect for a short-term rebound.
Everyone in the NSF’s advisory committee knew what
that meant. Just a year before, a 324-page road map (titled
New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics)
had put forward a vision for astrophysics in the coming
decade that would maintain and extend U.S. leadership in
space- and ground-based astronomy. But to attain even some
of those goals with a reduced budget, astronomers would
need to tighten their collective belts elsewhere.
Now we know how those cuts will likely occur: by cutting
off funding for six existing facilities, some of which
are still producing cutting-edge science.
34 December 2012 sky & telescope
In August a 17-member task force, led by Harvard
cosmologist Daniel Eisenstein, released its analysis of
what the NSF can likely aff ord in the years ahead — not
only the construction and operation of facilities at the four
U.S. national observatories (listed on page 35) but also the
money needed for investigator grants, new instrumentation,
and other capabilities. Eisenstein’s group wasn’t
allowed to second-guess the scientifi c objectives spelled
out in NWNH. Instead, it had to fi gure out how to achieve
those objectives, and then optimize the NSF’s investments
accordingly beginning with the fi scal 2017 budget.
The reality is that the landscape for observational
astronomy is changing rapidly. During the 1950s and early
1960s, establishment of the National Optical Astronomy
Observatory (NOAO) in Tucson, Arizona, and construction
of several observatories on nearby Kitt Peak, fi nally gave all
U.S. astronomers dependable access to fi rst-rate telescopes.
This model was eventually expanded to the solar and radio
FUTURE SKY SENTINEL The Large Synoptic
Survey Telescope is a planned 8.4-meter telescope
capable of photographing the entire sky twice each
week. If funding is approved, project managers
hope to begin full operations within a decade.
LSST CORPORATION