THE ING NEWSLETTER No. 4, March 2001
GENERAL THE ING WIDE FIELD IMAGING SURVEY SCIENCE TELESCOPES AND INSTRUMENTATION OTHER NEWS FROM ING TELESCOPE TIME
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Dear Reader,With this fourth issue of the ING Newsletter we kick off this —still junior— communication channel for the observatory into the new Millennium.
Since the previous issue, NAOMI has seen its first part of the technical commissioning programme and passed most tests very well. Although there remains much work to fully test and characterise this complex system, NAOMI was shown to be capable of delivering diffraction limited images. Unfortunately poor weather hampered the first science observations that were scheduled in December and January. This in spite of the current La Palma winter being one of the best for astronomy in recorded history of the observatory! However, there will be opportunities for service observations later this semester, when the weather is less likely to play its tricks. If you're interested in using NAOMI for your science programme: watch the schedule on our web pages!
The commissioning of NAOMI is the first important step in ING's adaptive optics programme. The following phases are now well under way with the development of a coronagraph (called OSCA) at UCL, and the kick-off of the project in collaboration with the Observatoire de Lyon to convert the OASIS integral field spectrograph to work with NAOMI.
Also on the second main development strand for the WHT, that of wide field spectroscopy, very good progress has been made. The construction of the new fibre unit that will feed the WYFFOS spectrograph from the prime focus is well advanced and on track for commissioning this summer. The new unit will improve throughput of the fibres and enhance S/N as the smaller diameter fibres will receive much less sky contamination.
Data rates from telescopes are generally on the rise. This is certainly also the case for the ING telescopes. Large volumes of data require new techniques to extract the scientifically relevant information in the most effective way. In this respect the ING Wide Field Survey that has been running on the INT for some time now has been leading the way. Survey activities will become increasingly important. With the advent of large scale surveys the problems of data archiving and processing become very significant. Clearly the old-fashioned archive consisting of a collection of tapes in a cupboard is something of the past. At the ING, in close collaboration with the Cambridge Astronomy Survey Unit (CASU), an impressive data pipeline has been developed. Key elements of this at the observatory are the DVD and CD towers for on-line data storage, and the Beowulf data reduction PC cluster with automatic pipeline data reduction software. Ultimately the data are archived in Cambridge as part of the existing and well developed ING archive, which is accessible over the web. With these developments the ING telescopes fit well into the exciting future of e-science and 'grid' developments.
Last year a study was published on the contribution of astronomical facilities on high-impact science. In this study the WHT featured in a very positive way. The highlights of this study are presented in an article in this Newsletter. Given the proven success of the WHT, it is a shame to see that there remains very significant uncertainty over the future of the observatory. Clearly a world class telescope like the WHT with its year-after-year high scientific output will be able to supply the astronomical community with top-quality astronomical data for many more years. I would like to invite astronomers who share this opinion to convey their views to the appropriate committees.
Dr René Rutten
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GENERAL THE ING WIDE FIELD IMAGING SURVEY SCIENCE TELESCOPES AND INSTRUMENTATION OTHER NEWS FROM ING TELESCOPE TIME © Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes