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Mercury, March/April 1995 Table of Contents

(c) 1995 Astronomical Society of the Pacific

Newspapers proclaim that astronomy is in crisis: the Hubble constant keeps changing, quasar engines lack fuel, dark matter lurks in the shadows. If this is crisis, it is fun crisis. But there is a not-so-fun crisis that astronomers and astronomy enthusiasts would rather not talk about. In astronomy as in the rest of society, the gap between haves and have-nots is widening, corroding the meritocracy that has been responsible for the recent explosion of astronomical knowledge.

Coffee breaks at January's American Astronomical Society meeting buzzed with uneasiness over this crisis, but few stood up in public to question the professions approach to the era of austerity. Most preferred to stay silent, closing ranks around whatever the various public-policy committees conclude.

The latest such committee, chaired by Richard McCray of the University of Colorado, presented its report on optical and infrared astronomy at the January meeting. The panel gave highest priority to Gemini, a pair of fancy 8-meter telescopes at Mauna Kea in Hawaii and Cerro Pachón in Chile now under construction. Unless the National Science Foundation rustles up more money, the panel said that paying for Gemini would require closing the 1-meter-class telescopes of the National Optical Astronomy Observatories on Kitt Peak.

NOAO is astronomy's level playing field, where observing proposals are decided by merit, not by where a person happens to work. Half of U.S. astronomers rely on NOAO for access to telescopes, yet the national observatories account for only a fifth of the telescope area in the country. The McCray plan would eliminate 40 percent of NOAO's telescope time. And even this figure assumes that private observatories agree to let in outside astronomers in return for government instrumentation funding.

The cuts fall squarely on the have-nots: the astronomers and students at small institutions who have neither direct access to telescopes nor the name recognition that give their proposals the extra edge so important in these competitive times. Not only will the cuts push still more young astronomers from the profession, they will probably further reduce the survivors' willingness to take risks, a danger identified by NOAO director Sidney Wolff five years ago [see "Cautions for Astronomys Golden Age," January/February 1988, p. 28].

If carried out, the McCray plan will accelerate a trend of closing many small observatories in order to open a few big ones. Yet astronomy needs a continuum of sizes and capacities. The blitzkrieg of big telescopes has left tough problems unconquered. Small telescopes, equipped with technology that make them the equal of the largest telescopes only a decade ago, excel at tackling variable stars, occultations, redshift surveys, calibration work, and education. These topics may not be as sexy as quasars, but they are as important.

The McCray panel was frank about the painfulness of its plan, and in many ways had no choice. Its purview was so limited, so constrained by politics, that the conclusion was preordained. The astronomical community as a whole needs to hash out its plans, rethink its institutions, and, if need be, step on political toes. Until that happens, we suffer the absurdity of a dozen new mega-telescopes -- a doubling of telescope area by the turn of the century -- at the same time people can't get observing time, instrumentation funding, or grants. Whatever decision the community makes, it should be the decision of the have-nots as well as the haves.