SMARTS - STATUS & PLANS

Alistair Walker, October 2003

SMARTS = Small & Moderate Aperture Research Telescope System

Members and P.I.’s

• 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)

1.5m1.5m

1.0m1.0m

0.9m0.9m

1.3m1.3m

TELESCOPES & INSTRUMENTS• 1.5-m + Cass Spectrograph, 30% service• 1.3-m + dual IR/CCD Imager, 100% Queue, synoptic-optimized (ex-

2MASS)• 1.0-m Not scheduled in 2003• 0.9-m + CCD Imager, 50% service, all runs 7 nights

and

PEOPLE• 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• 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

• 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?