The future direction of the ING: A community questionnaire ========================================================== This questionnaire aims to gauge the scientific interest from the community in the future instrumentation and exploitation of the 4.2-m William Herschel Telescope (WHT) and the 2.5-m Isaac Newton Telescope (INT) on the Island of La Palma. Input to this brief questionnaire from astronomers is highly appreciated in particular those working in the United Kingdom, The Netherlands or Spain. Information received will form a key element of the international review of the future direction of the observatory that is scheduled to take place in 2005. Your response will be treated strictly in confidence. The questionnaire may be completed through the on-line form at http://www.ing.iac.es/About-ING/questionnaire_form.html or by editing the attached questions and sending it by email to Rene Rutten: rgmr@ing.iac.es. Deadline is 31 May 2005. Questions may be addressed to Rene Rutten, Director of the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes: rgmr@ing.iac.es Rene Rutten Director, ING 1 February 2005 Background: ----------- The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes on the island of La Palma has been in operation now for over 20 years. Over these decades the ING telescopes have been amongst the most productive telescopes in the world, and the WHT remains highly oversubscribed, underlining the continued strong demand. Moreover, La Palma has been recognized as being one of the very best observing sites in the world, and most certainly the only world-class site in Europe. With the changing landscape in astronomy, in particular the advent of the 8-m class telescopes, the scientific requirements for the ING telescopes are also changing. The exploitation of the ING telescopes is gradually shifting from being a multi-purpose facility with a wide range of instruments to a more focused and specialized set of telescopes. Similar developments are seen at other medium-size telescopes around the world, and are driven by scientific needs and tighter financial constraints. Discussions are under way with other European telescope operators to explore the possibilities of coordinating the use of medium-class telescopes across the usual national boundaries with the aim of achieving higher efficiency while retaining a wide range of instrument capabilities for the participating countries. The ING telescopes will likely play a central role in this. Moreover, the international agreements that form the foundation of the observatory will come to an end in 2009. The contributing partners, PPARC, NWO and the IAC, will be defining plans for the future of the ING. Responses to this questionnaire will assist in drawing up plans that will best serve the community. The default situation in the future for the WHT is essentially the continuation of the existing suite of instruments, which now comprises optical and IR imaging and spectroscopic capability, multi-object spectroscopy, and adaptive optics (AO) at optical and IR wavelengths. Ongoing developments focus on extending the use of the adaptive optics suite through the use of a Rayleigh laser beacon which will dramatically increase the sky coverage and hence the scientific potential of the existing AO system. The potential of AO-assisted optical intergral field spectroscopy with nearly full sky coverage will be unique for some years to come. The WHT has also acted as a very successful and much-used platform for private instruments. This is foreseen to continue, as it fulfils a clear need in the community and attracts novel, fast-track scientific projects. Recent examples of visiting instruments include the UltraCAM high-speed triple-band camera, the SAURON integral field spectrograph, the PN.S planetary nebula spectrograph, and the S-CAM super conducting tunnel junction detector, a good example of the WHT as a test-bed for new technologies. At the 2.5-m Isaac Newton Telescope only the continued operation of the wide-field camera is currently foreseen. Future use of the ING telescopes will naturally complement research prospects at larger telescopes, and that of specialized survey telescopes, space missions and ground-based facilities operating at other spectral windows. In this respect we anticipate an increasing interest in observations of large samples of objects, or exploration of the time domain, and hence a gradual increase of the length of observing runs. The questions that follow aim to identify the future science requirements for the ING telescopes. ==================================================================== 1. YOUR PROFILE: 1.1 Name: .............. 1.2 Affiliation: ....... 1.3 E-mail: ............ 1.4 Position (select one): Permanent / Post Doc / Ph.D. Student / Other 1.5 How would you classify your research interests (tick one or more options): PLANETARY RESEARCH AND SOLAR-SYSTEM OBJECTS ........ YES / NO STAR FORMATION AND EVOLUTION ....................... YES / NO STRUCTURE AND EVOLUTION OF GALAXIES ................ YES / NO DISTANT UNIVERSE AND COSMOLOGY ..................... YES / NO THEORETICAL ASTROPHYSICS ........................... YES / NO INSTRUMENTATION .................................... YES / NO 1.6 Other ground-based optical/IR telescopes used: ....... ==================================================================== 2. THE 4.2-m WILLIAM HERSCHEL TELESCOPE: The WHT caters for a relatively wide range of observing options: optical/IR (multi-object) spectroscopy; optical/IR imaging; high spatial resolution spectroscopic and imaging observations; platform for visiting instruments. 2.1 Have you obtained data from the WHT in the last three years ? .................................... YES / NO 2.2 Which of the following areas of instrument capability on the WHT do you consider important to retain for your future research, taking into account instruments available on other telescopes, including the 8-m class facilities ? Note that Adaptive Optics (AO) capability will soon be extended with a laser guide star, providing nearly 100% sky coverage. Please do not answer 'yes' to more than 4 options: AO ASSISTED INTEGRAL-FIELD OPTICAL SPECTROSCOPY ... YES / NO / NEUTRAL AO ASSISTED NEAR-IR IMAGING ....................... YES / NO / NEUTRAL OPTICAL SPECTROSCOPY .............................. YES / NO / NEUTRAL OPTICAL MULTI-OBJECT SPECTROSCOPY ................. YES / NO / NEUTRAL OPTICAL IMAGING ................................... YES / NO / NEUTRAL NEAR-IR SPECTROSCOPY .............................. YES / NO / NEUTRAL NEAR-IR MULTI-OBJECT SPECTROSCOPY ................. YES / NO / NEUTRAL NEAR-IR IMAGING ................................... YES / NO / NEUTRAL 2.3 Is there an area in observing capability on the WHT that requires further development of new or existing instrumentation ? (e.g. high-resolution spectroscopy / high-time resolution imaging or spectroscopy / AO assisted optical imaging or IR spectroscopy / wide-field multi-object spectroscopy) 2.4 Over the years the WHT has been used by a wide selection of university groups as a platform for visiting instruments and as a testbed for carying out experiments. Should this activity also be supported in the future ? ................................. YES / NO / NEUTRAL 2.5 Should the WHT in the future offer MORE / LESS / THE SAME level of flexibility in instruments offered and their scheduling ? ............... MORE / LESS / SAME 2.6 Do you personally, or your research group anticipate using the WHT in future years ? ..... YES / NO / MAYBE 2.7 If you answered YES or MAYBE to the above, which broad area of research do you expect to use the WHT for ? 2.8 Any general comments or further clarification on the future use of the WHT ? ==================================================================== 3. THE 2.5-m ISAAC NEWTON TELESCOPE: The INT currently only supports wide field optical imaging and has to be operated at the lowest possible cost. 3.1 Have you obtained data from the INT in the last three years ? ...................................... YES / NO 3.2 Do you consider it important to retain the Wide Field Camera for your future research ? .. YES / NO / NEUTRAL 3.3 Is there any new instrumentation that you would like to see developed for the INT ? ........... YES / NO / NEUTRAL If YES, indicate which type: ..... 3.4 Do you personally, or your research group anticipate using the INT in future years ? .... YES / NO / NEUTRAL 3.5 If you answered YES to the above, which broad area of research do you foresee to carry out ? 3.6 Any general comments or further clarification on the future use of the INT ? ==================================================================== 4. SERVICE TO THE COMMUNITY: Queue scheduled observing, service mode observing, and archival research become increasingly more popular. But these activities are also costly for the observatory to support and would impact on other activities. 4.1 Would you prefer having your observations carried out in queue-scheduled or service more of observation by observatory personnel ? .................... YES / NO / NEUTRAL 4.2 Should observing time be set aside to compensate top-ranked scheduled observations for loss of time due to bad weather ? .......................... YES / NO / NEUTRAL 4.3 The Cambridge Data Archive holds all data obtained with the ING telescope. Is this archive important for your research ? ......... YES / NO / NEUTRAL 4.4 Have you published papers based on ING data retrieved from the archive ? ............................ YES / NO 4.5 What do you see as important improvements in service that the observatory should deliver to its community of users ? ==================================================================== 5. COLLABORATION WITH OTHER OBSERVATORIES: Most likely the pressure on the observatory to reduce cost even further will remain, and therefore ways to streamline operations and development of the facilities is very important. Collaboration with other observatories could lead to an overall better and more cost effective service to the community. The inevitable consequence, however, would be a reduced direct influence of each community over their national facility. Benefits would be guaranteed access to more telescopes and hence to a broader range of instruments. Through focusing on specific tasks each telescope could be run more efficiently. 5.1 Would you support a wider sharing of the WHT and the INT in return for access to other telescopes and instruments ? ............................. YES / NO / NEUTRAL 5.2 Considering the above model, would you support having a single international time allocation committee instead of a national TAC ? ..... YES / NO / NEUTRAL 5.3 Any other general comments on collaboration with other telescopes ? ==================================================================== 6. ANY ADDITIONAL COMMENTS, IF YOU WISH: ==================================================================== send to rgmr@ing.iac.es by 31 May 2005 THANK-YOU ! ==================================================================== ============================================================= To subscribe to [INGNEWS] send to majordomo@ing.iac.es the command "subscribe ingnews" from the email address you want to subscribe. Leave the subject field and the rest of the message body empty. To unsubscribe from [INGNEWS] send to majordomo@ing.iac.es the command "unsubscribe ingnews" from the email address you want to unsubscribe. Leave the subject field and the rest of the message body empty. You can subscribe a colleague to [INGNEWS] by sending an email to majordomo@ing.iac.es with the message "subscribe ingnews address" in the body of the message, where address should contain your collegue's email address. This only works from a previously subscribed address. 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