[meteorite-list] World-Class Radio Telescopes Face Closure

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Mon Nov 6 12:55:08 2006
Message-ID: <200611061755.JAA19520_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.newscientistspace.com/article/dn10449-worldclass-radio-telescopes-face-closure.html

World-class radio telescopes face closure
Jeff Hecht
New Scientist
04 November 2006

Two of the world's best-known radio observatories - the 305-metre
Arecibo dish in Puerto Rico and a widespread collection of telescopes
called the Very Long Baseline Array - face the budgetary axe.

Despite rising budgets, the astronomy division of the US National
Science Foundation realised it could not afford to continue operating
all its existing instruments while also building the new cutting-edge
telescopes requested by astronomers, division director Wayne Van Citters
said at a press conference on Friday.

So the agency commissioned a committee of leading astronomers headed by
Roger Blandford of California's Stanford Linear Accelerator Center to
slash $30 million from its annual operations budget, amounting to about
a quarter of the budget now spent on facilities. Their proposals cut
across all of astronomy, and Blandford told the press conference "they
were all extremely painful". But those in radio astronomy are likely to
be the most controversial.

The panel told the NSF it should shut down Arecibo and the VLBA by 2011
if it cannot get other organisations to share their operating budgets of
about $8 million and $10 million, respectively.

"We're quite disappointed in that recommendation," says Joe Burns, a
professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, US, who helps
manage Arecibo. He says astronomers ask for four times more observing
time than Arecibo can offer, making it the most oversubscribed telescope
supported by the NSF.

Unique capabilities

Built in the 1960s and upgraded in the 1970s and in 1997, Arecibo is the
world's most sensitive radio telescope. The giant antenna is fixed in
place, but the Earth's rotation on its axis and movement of a receiver
suspended above the reflective dish allow it to scan about 40% of the
sky over the course of a year.

It is famed for discoveries including the first binary pulsar. It also
offers unique capabilities for radar observations of near-Earth
asteroids, which Van Citters said could not be done elsewhere because of
Arecibo's sensitivity.

But funding for its operation has been a political football - a few
years ago NASA pushed the NSF into paying about $500,000 a year for the
asteroid radar observations requested by Congress (see NASA budget
fiasco reaches new depths
<http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1727-nasa-budget-fiasco-reaches-new-depths.html>).

Finding outside support for the telescope is expected to be difficult.
But because Arecibo does research on the Earth's ionosphere, Burns hopes
to garner support from the NSF's atmospheric sciences division.

The VLBA is a network of 10 radio dishes, each 25 metres wide.
Stretching more than 8000 kilometres from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands
in the Caribbean, it offers unmatched resolution at radio wavelengths.

First operated in 1993, it is famed for discoveries of cosmic jets and
studies of bright galaxies powered by colossal black holes. Fred Lo,
director of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), which
manages the VLBA, said in a written statement that the NRAO would
"aggressively pursue international assistance" to save the telescopes.
The statement also quoted the new report's observation that "if the VLBA
is closed, a unique capability would likely be lost for decades."
Received on Mon 06 Nov 2006 12:55:03 PM PST