UK to pull out of Gemini
I spent yesterday trying to travel from California to Washington, where we’re visiting NASA HQ and the Goddard Space Flight Centre, so I’ve only just heard about some really shocking news. The STFC, which funds UK astronomy, has announced it’s planning to pull the UK out of the international Gemini observatory. As theseimportant people say, this is seriously worrying. Gemini North provides UK astronomers with their only state of the art visible light telescope in the Northern hemisphere; it is literally irreplaceable. The RAS have more details about why STFC’s plan is a bad one, but it essentially boils down to this. We’ve already spent £23 million to get the telescopes working well. They are now working well, as the flood of press releases from Gemini shows, and now we’re writing off all that investment in an attempt to save £4 million a year. We know that money is tight, but as the RAS point out the worrying thing is that this decision has been made without any attempt to consult astronomers, who will now be left without any access to half the sky.
The sad thing is I’d much rather be writing about results like this.
on November 18th, 2007 at 8:38 pm
[...] You can read the reaction of the Royal Astronomical Society here, a couple of UK Astronomy blog reactions here and here, and a letter to the Guardian. [...]
on November 18th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
[...] Andy has an interesting take on the Gemini crisis. It’s essentially a salient reminder that it’s the government and not the STFC that’s responsible for the loss of funding. That’s true, but the thing that scares me about the Gemini decision is that the apparent lack of consultation. Instead of asking the astronomical community to save £4 million, they’re just planning to shut of access to one of our major facilities. That isn’t how these decisions are supposed to be made. [...]
on December 11th, 2007 at 12:39 am
[...] Today, Tuesday, is not going to be a good day for astronomers in the UK unless I’m very much mistaken. Particularly for post-docs whose contracts run out in the near future (like me). We already know that we’re going to lose access to the Gemini Observatory. But the real picture is almost certainly much worse than that. Andy is reporting informal discussions of cuts at the 25-40% level. As the Royal Astronomical Society point out, what’s worse is that these cuts are being made ‘with no briefing or consultation of the community during the decision making process’. [...]