The Astro2020 Report
The Astro2020 decadal survey (see also: PhysicsToday) has ended with its report recommendations to the National Academies of Science for the next decade of Astronomy in the US. The three big themes can be coarsely summarized as: exoplanets, new observing techniques and dark matter. We’ll revisit each of these research areas in the next few newsletters.
For today, we’ll focus on the big ticket items in the report: the telescopes. Funding has been recommended for both new space telescopes and the next generation of extremely large telescopes (ELTs).
We’ve all been impacted by the stunning images captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, but those beautiful images are just the tip of the iceberg of the scientific data collected by the orbiting observatory.
Space telescopes are expensive, long term projects. The Astro2020 report spells out a strategy for getting impactful space telescope technology out in a time of volatile budget forecasts. These are lessons no doubt from the drama and long delays around NASA’s current big push to get the James Webb Telescope to first light.
Ground based telescopes are another story. They’re easier to build bigger, easier to maintain and with mirrors nearly five times as large as space telescopes, they aren’t going away any time soon. The National Science Foundation’s chief priority remains the Vera C. Rubin Telescope - formulary known as the Large Synoptic Sky Survey, whose aim was to take a high resolution, deep image of the entire night sky every few days. The associated timeseries data collected would be a tremendous help to gain short-term historical view on surprising events after they’ve unfolded, and also be a rich source of phenomena for other Astronomers to mine for years into the future.
Two other ELTs still in works include the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT). While both are US led, the GMT aims to be built at the Las Campanas Observatory, in the mountains above the Atacama desert in Chile. The TMT is a long as sordid story.
The Astro2020 report recommends the NSF fund at 800 million for each ELT project - about 25% of the required costs - although language in the document appears to recognize the delicate position the TMT is facing.
