MINUTE of the 39th SUBARU ADVISORY COMMITTEE Meeting

 

Date : 11:00-15:30 May 1, 2003 JST

Place : Subaru TV conference rooms (2F:Mitaka, 208 Hawaii)

Attendee : Chiba, Deguchi, Hidai, Iwamuro, Iye, Shimasaku, Watanabe, Yamada, Usuda(TV),

  Taniguchi (TV, partial participation),  Ex Officio: Karoji, Noguchi, Ichikawa-S

 Observers: Tokunaga, Wainscoat, Sekiguchi, Nishimura, Takami

 Absent : Maihara, Kataza

 

As this is the first SAC meeting with new members, self introduction of participants was made.

 

1) Reports

 The summary of activity of the previsou SAC was reported by Iye based on "SAC 38th Minutes"(39-1a) and "Summary of SAC activities"(39-1b).

Some issues handed over from the previous SAC were explained, including 1) Critical Review of First Generation Instruments, 2)Reconsideartion of the Basic Policy on the Open Use, 3) Next Generation Project for the Community, 4)Telescope Time Exchanging with other major Observatories, 5) Summary and review of the Science Achievemments, 6)Promotion of  an Interantioanl Symposium.

 

1')Nomination of New Chair

M.Iye was elected to continue the chair of the new SAC.  The term of service is one year as NAOJ will be restructured into an new agency.  Maihara is elected to serve as the vice-chair.

 

2) Situation in and around the NAOJ

 The situation concerning the re-structuring of NAOJ as a part of the agencinizing program of all the national universities and inter university institutes is explained base on the DG's ppt file (39-2).

 Additional comments on the status of Hawaii Observatory, concerning the corporate identity, taxation, visa etc. are made by Karoji.

 

3) Hawaii Observatory Reports

3a)Directors's report(39-3a)

 Organization,  RCUH staff increase plan, Budget reduction plan, 2003 Summer re-aluminization plan, policy on compensation of weather loss of open use programs,  and a plan for organizing an International critical review of the Observatory were explained.

 Discussion on accepting visitors instruments and policy for compensation followed.

 

3b)Budgetary Planning for FY2003 (39-3b)

 Budget reduction by reducing the large contract for maintenance and upgrade and making the

corresponding effort by in house RCUH staff is explained.  No budget allocation for R&D sub-committee is planned this year.

3b')Travel Budget Spending for FY2002(39-3b')

 Noguchi reported the summary of travel budget spending for FY2002.

 

3c)Telescope Status  (39-3c)

Usuda reported the schedule for the re-aluminization operation of this coming summer.

As the reflectivity maintains 82% level even after 450 days from the previous aluminization thanks to the regular CO2 cleaning, the optimum interval of re-aluminization can be extended to 3 years.

 

3d) Instruments Status(39-3d)

 Status of the instruments was reported.  Evaluation of the instruments and the R&D policy for the future instrumentation should be rigorously discussed at the SAC.

 

3e) AO Upgrade Plan(39-3e)

 Upgrading the existing Cassegrain AO to a system with 5 times more actuators and installing the Laser Guide Star System is reported by Takami. Securing the necessary laboratory space is an issue of concern.

 

4) Open Use

4a) S03A Open Use(49-4a)

  The statistics of the night allocation is presented.

4b) S03B CFP(39-4b)

  The change in relaxing the maximum number of nights requestable for open use programs from 3 nights to 5 nights is explained.

4c) UH88/UKIRT (39-4c)

  The budgetary support from the observatory became somewhat thin.  The demand for

these time frames should be larger than is actually received. Probably we need to call attention for the community of this opportunity.

 

5) New TAC Policy

   The reviewing of  the intensive programs has been made jointly by SAC and TAC over the

last few semesters based on hearings.  To have more consistent reviewing system, it is proposed to ask TAC to carry the responsibility of reviewing the instensive programs as well based on the referee report.  The actual procedure to review the intensive programs discussed at TAC should be reported to SAC.

 

6) International Critical Review of the Observatory

 Critical Reviews on AO and Software were performed.  A plan for invite a visiting committee to ask for a critical review of the whole observatory is explained. To start with, the review for the instrument suite is the key issue to be performed by the SAC.

 

7) ELT WG report (39-7)

   A GOPIRA/NAOJ WG (Chair: Iye)on Future Optical/IR Projects started its active studies. The WG consists of 3 subgroups on Science(Chair Chiba), Ground Based ELT(Chair Takami), and Space Programs (Chair Tamura) and will report to the community on various occasions to forma a concrete future plan by the end of March 2004.

   This activity was reported to the National Committee for Astronomy and the NCA encouraged to organize a forum if possible in the summer of 2004.

 

8) Instrument Review WG (39-8)

 Iye proposed to set up an Instrument Review WG to perform by early autumn a critical review of the 8 open use instruments offered on Subaru Telescope.

 Iwamuro was nominated and accepted to serve as the chair of this WG.  Nomination of other candidates of members was done and actual selection of the members was left to the task of Iye and Iwamuro. The WG is expected to make some proposal for the future planning of the second generation instruments and the optimum way of operating them.

 

9) Miscellaneous

9a) Educational use of Subaru data (39-9)

 A memo reporting the discussion of the representatives visiting Hawaii to discuss this

issue is presented.

9b) A proposal to include the allowance factor for expected weather loss was made by Shimasaku.

9c) Next meeting will be scheduled at the end of the summer.