Impact of cost savings at the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes

On December 5th 2001 PPARC Council took a number of important decisions on the future of the UK's ground-based astronomy programme. These decisions will have a profound impact on various existing facilities, including those of the ING. PPARC's way forward reflects the reality of the rapidly changing environment of ground-based astronomy, with the deployment of several 8-m class telescopes and the adhesion of the United Kingdom to the European Southern Observatory. Further reference to the Council's decision can be found in this PPARC press release.

It has been apparent for some time that the annual operating budget for ING would come under pressure, in particular as the UK has to free up funds to contribute towards the annual cost of joining ESO. Over the past year plans have been developed on how ING could be operated at a reduced budget. The decision from PPARC Council is in line with these plans. The key elements of the changes that these plans entail is presented here.

Probably the most important change is presented by the fact that the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias will become a full partner in ING as of 2002. An agreement was reached, with strong support from the ING Board and the UK and NL funding agencies, on the terms under which the IAC would join in the operating costs of ING. This agreement significantly alleviates the impact of the budget reductions announced by PPARC and allows ING to remain a strong a vibrant organisation that can deliver quality service to its user community.

The tight collaboration with the IAC is of strategic importance as this institute fulfills a pivotal role in the development of the observatory site, in particular with the construction of the 10-m GRANTECAN and its plans to create a European collaboration for observing facilities in the Northern hemisphere. Moreover, the IAC is developing a new observatory centre at sea level on La Palma, in which the ING will participate.

But nevertheless, the future budget available to ING for the operation of the telescopes will reduce by more than 30%, in spite of the additional contribution of the IAC. The IAC's contribution will commence in 2002, and the Netherlands will leave its annual contribution largely unchanged. This large decrease in the operational budget and the change of balance between the international partners implies a number of important changes, that can be summarised as follows:

1. Balance of obsering time:
The balance of observing time will gradual change over the following years. The agreed percentage breakdown of observing time will be as follows:

	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005-9
UK	60.0	54.0	50.0	48.9	47.6
NL	15.0	15.0	15.9	17.0	18.3
IAC	0.0	6.0	9.1	9.1	9.1
CAT spanish time	20.0	20.0	20.0	20.0	20.0
CCI International time	5.0	5.0	5.0	5.0	5.0

2. Service observations:
The existing scheme of service observations that are carried out by observatory personnel will be discontinued on the JKT from the end of semester 02A and on the INT from the end of semester 03A. On the WHT service observation will remain available.

3. Use of the JKT and INT:
The JKT will be taken out of normal service as of September 2003. Possibly this telescope will continue as a special-purpose telescope with external funding. But if no additional resources can be found the JKT will close.
It is the intention to review the longer term future of the INT before the end of 2004. By that time various other telescopes will be carrying out imaging surveys and the Liverpool telescope will be well established, making it timely to review the scientific use of the INT. Until that time, operation of the INT will have to be carried out at a lower cost. Cost saving measures envisaged are to operate the INT with only the Wide Field Camera from some time in 2003, and at the same time fully withdraw telescope operator support from that telescope.

4. Use of the WHT:
The focus of support and development will shift fully towards the WHT in order to keep that telescope as attractive as possible to the community. Although scheduling flexibility and instrument changes may have to be more strictly limited, the service delivered will be enhanced through the introduction of queue observing mode for up to 30% of the time on the WHT. Primarily queue observing will focus on adaptive optics observations.

5. A common-user IR imager and spectrograph
As part of the agreement with the IAC, the LIRIS IR imager and spectrograph that is currently being developed at the IAC will be made available to the general user community for at least 3 years after commissioning and acceptance. Commissioning of LIRIS is anticipated to take place at the end of 2002. Given the popularity of ING's IR imager, we expect that this new instrument will attract much interest from the user community.

The changes mentioned above focus on the impact that the budget reductions will have on the use of the telescopes. Not mentioned here are the complex internal changes and cost saving measures in the way ING operates that will be implemented. It is our intention to minimize the disruption to normal day-to-day operation of the telescopes as much as possible, and ING remain dedicated to deliver the best possible service to our user community.

René Rutten
rgmr@ing.iac.es
Director, ING
21 December 2001

The competitiveness of the ING telescopes, and in particular that of the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope, in the era of 8-m class telescopes to a large extend relies on the cost effectiveness of ING's operations programme, and on its instrumentation suite. ING has identified a number of key areas for instrument development which allow ING to continue to offer an attractive and affordable service to its user community. This framework is briefly outlined in these instrumentation plans for ING.

The UK astronomical community is facing exciting new possibilities for the future, such as the advent of the VISTA survey telescope, the ALMA mm-wave array, and the exploitation of 8-m class telescopes. The UK will join the European Southern Observatory. In view of ongoing discussions a letter to the community was sent out by ING, setting out the position of ING with respect to the UK joining ESO.

An important development for the observatory on La Palma is the Spanish 10-m telescope project: GranTeCan. This new facility will also have an impact on ING as it opens a window of opportunity for further scientific and technical collaboration between the ING partners and Spain.

An international review of ING

Early in 2001 a second review of ING provided an independent international perspective on current status of the telescopes and the scientific programme of the ING over the next 5-10 years. The Visiting Group, chaired by Prof. K Freeman, considered the likely astronomical prospects for the ING, and the ways in which the ING would continue to meet the strategic needs of the astronomical community. The Visiting Group met with representatives from the astronomical community and visited the observatory where the current state of the telescopes was assessed and progress on ING's ongoing development activities and future instrumentation plans was reviewed.

Membership of the Visiting Group was as follows:
Professor Bruce Carney, University of North Carolina.
Professor Holland Ford, Johns Hopkins University and Space Telescope Science Institute.
Professor Kenneth Freeman (Chairman), Australian National University.
Professor Guy Monnet, European Southern Observatory

The report from the Visiting Group is extremely positive about the way the observatory has developed in recent years, and is supportive of the development strategy for the William Herschel Telescope. The Visiting Group also emphasised the good possibilities that exist to build a wider collaboration on the excellence of the William Herschel Telescope and the La Palma observatory site. The Executive Summary of the report is available, as well as the response from the ING Board.

For reference, reports from the 1998 international review are available here.

Highlights of scientific productivity

The scientific output from ING remains high, with 245 papers published in refereed science journals in 1999, based on data from ING. This compares extremely well with other UK-funded facilities. This diagram shows the historic development of the number of papers published on the basis of data from the ING telescopes.

The following graph compares the number of papers published by various facilities as a function of time since original commissioning.

The high productivity of INGs telescopes is also indicated by a study comparing the scientific impact of ground-based optical/IR telescopes, as indicated by the number of papers published in Nature (Benn et al). The advantage of this measure is that it is relatively free from regional bias, and the time delay between discovery and publication is short. The graph below shows the result over the 10 years up till 1998 for the ING telescopes compared with large telescopes elsewhere that have been in operation for a number of years. The sample includes all telescopes with an aperture larger than 3.5-m, plus the Nordic Optical Telescope, the INT and the JKT. (Papers with contributions from more than one telescope are divided equally between those facilities). Clearly the WHT compares very favourably with other telescopes.

Citation studies demonstrate that the ING telescopes have a substantial impact on world astronomy. The most recent citation study (Benn et al.) shows the fractional contribution to the 125 most cited papers each year of all optical/IR ground-based telescopes. Figures are averaged over a period from 1995 to 1998. This graph shows that the WHT and INT are amongst the telescopes with the highest science impact in their class, the WHT being only rivalled by the Keck Telescopes and CFHT.

The following graph shows an earlier study of the number of papers in the 'top 100' published by each PPARC facility.

The oversubscription rate is another measure of whether the telescopes are fulfilling the needs of the user community. This graph shows the historic development of the oversubscription statistics for UK observing time on the three telescopes. The WHT and INT are very popular telescopes.

Highlights of developments

An active development programme has ensured that ING instrumentation is world class and offers a well balanced set of common-user workhorse instruments. A summary of instrumentation capability is shown in the following diagram of resolution versus wavelengths (note that the LIRIS spectrograph is currently under development by the Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias).

A recent development highlight is the successful commissioning of INGRID on the WHT, a state-of-the-art IR camera. A common-user adaptive optics system, NAOMI, for the WHT will be taken into operation in 2000, developed by the Astronomy Technology Centre in Edinburgh and the University of Durham. A coronagraph for the AO system is under development at the University College of London.

Of interest is also the number of new instruments funded by groups external to the ING, who wish to exploit the ING facilities. Examples of these are the CIRSI wide field IR imaging camera from Cambridge; SCAM, a camera using the novel super conducting tunnel junction technology developed by ESA/ESTEC; the SAURON integral field spectrograph; the Planetary Nebula Spectrograph; and LIRIS, a versatile IR spectrograph. These developments are an eloquent testimonial to the health of INGs telescope facilities.

ING is seeking to further strengthen its international relationships. As of February 1998 Portugal has joined the ING partnership. A Joint Astronomy Centre has been established in Santa Cruz de La Palma, the result of an international collaboration involving the UK, Netherlands, Nordic and Italian groups. In collaboration with the IAC the possibility of setting up a larger common observatory base on La Palma is being explored.

Reports to the ING Board

The recent development and performance of ING is summarised in the reports to the ING Board (previously known as the Joint Steering Committee), the international governing body of the ING, chaired by Prof. T. de Zeeuw from Leiden University in the Netherlands. 

The most recent report is dated May 2002, reports can also be seen from October 2001, April 2001, October 2000, May 2000, October 1999, June 1999, November 1998, May 1998, October 1997, May 1997, November 1996, May 1996 and October 1995 .

During the May 2000 meeting in Leiden the ING Board agreed the term for Guaranteed Observing time for instrument builders, which can be found here.

The ING Visiting Panel

In April 1998, on invitation from the UK/NL Joint Steering Committee, a Visiting Panel reviewed the operation, competitiveness, effectiveness, and future direction of the ING. The panel consisted of Dr. Russell Cannon (Chair, Anglo-Australian Observatory), Prof. Marijn Franx (University of Leiden), Prof. Ken Freeman (Mount Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories), Dr. Augustus Oemler (Carnegie Institution of Washington), and Dr. Richard Wade (Rutherford Appleton Laboratories). The summary of the panel's report, and the response from the UK/NL Joint Steering Committee can be seen here.

The report from the Visiting Panel provides a valuable, independent assessment of the current state of ING. It provides an overall favourable impression of ING, and suggests avenues for further improvement and direction in the era of the very large telescopes.