by Henry Roe
STAC Report
The recently formed Science and Technology Advisory Committee (STAC) held its
second meeting in Hilo, Hawai‘i, and set a course for instrument development,
planning, and other important issues impacting Gemini’s scientific potential.
This report by the committee’s chair, Henry Roe, shares the meeting’s highlights
including a vision for future instrumentation development.
Gemini’s Science & Technology Advisory Committee (STAC) (www.gemini.edu/science/#stac)
held its second in-person meeting on April 24-25, 2012, at the Hilo Base Facility. By the time
this newsletter is published, the meeting report should be publicly released. As you may recall
from the previous GeminiFocus, the STAC is a recently formed committee that is appointed by
the Gemini Board to advise the Board on scientific priorities across the observatory, including instrumentation, operations, facility development, and long-range planning. In making its
recommendations, the STAC is focused on scientific productivity, user demand from partner
communities, and using its best judgement as to what capabilities will be most productive and
demanded in the future. All of the STAC’s decision making and planning must take into account
the current fiscal era, with the U.K. withdrawal and uncertainties in future availability of instrumentation funding from partners.
With the U.K. withdrawal, and subsequent decreased budget, Gemini Observatory is undergoing significant change. This includes moving, by the end of 2012B, to the “4+AO” operations
model in which only four instruments and one adaptive optics system are supported at each
telescope. This restriction comes from estimates of the staffing required to support and maintain each instrument. Instruments will still need to be swapped on-and-off the telescope, as
the current configuration allows only three instruments to be simultaneously co-mounted on
each telescope. In order to attain 4+AO by the start of 2013 the STAC recommended that the
MICHELLE mid-infrared imager and spectrometer, and, as already planned, the Thermal-Region
Camera Spectrograph (T-ReCS) be retired at the end of 2012B. Further, the STAC recommended
that that the Near-Infrared Coronagraphic Imager (NICI) be retired once the Gemini Planet Imager (GPI) is ready for commissioning. These were difficult recommendations as they eliminate,
36
GeminiFocus
June2012