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Research Environment

Technical equipment at Armagh, which is used primarily for numerical analysis, computer modelling and data reduction, is funded by the PPARC, PRTLI, and the DCAL. Facilities presently comprise some 30 Linux workstations and a range of peripherals. In addition, an 8-CPU Origin2000 is used for computationally intensive research projects (solar system dynamics, stellar atmospheres and numerical magneto-hydrodynamics) while access to Grid technology is provided via CosmoGrid (www.cosmogrid.ie). The internal network is a 100Mbps ethernet linked with switched hubs. The external network, which is currently connected to the Joint Academic Network (JANET) through an arrangement with QUB, has a bandwidth of 1Mbps. With the establishment of a Northern Ireland Metropolitan Area Network (NIMAN) within the next year, this has the potential to increase to 34Mbps and therefore to maintain an equivalence with astronomy groups elsewhere in the UK and abroad. The increase in the Observatory's network capacity along with a continuing programme of equipment upgrades will enable the Observatory to participate in important new developments such as the Virtual Observatory, the UK AstroGRID, the European Grid of Solar Observatories, the ESA SpaceGRID, and GRID Ireland. The latter will provide access to three high-performance supercomputer clusters, each comprising 128 x 1GHz PCs, one in Galway and two in Dublin (DIAS and UCD).

Armagh Observatory staff regularly receive awards of telescope time on national and international facilities, and research grants from various grant awarding bodies. The Observatory is also eligible to receive grants from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). Within a few years, with the support of the DCAL, the Observatory will obtain access to the Southern African Large Telescope, a large (10-metre class) telescope located at the Sutherland Observatory, on the Karoo Plateau in the Northern Cape Province, South Africa (see www.salt.ac.za), through its membership of the UK Southern African Large Telescope Consortium (see star.arm.ac.uk/SALT/). Renovation of the historic telescopes and telescope domes at Armagh is also in progress and will be completed during 2004 with support from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and the DCAL, bringing the Observatory's own telescopes (an 18-inch reflector and a 10-inch refractor) back into use for research and student training.

The SALT project is an international collaboration between the following parties:

• The National Research Council of South Africa;

• The Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center of the Polish Academy of Sciences;

• The Hobby-Eberly Telescope (HET) Founding Institutions (The University of Texas at Austin, The Pennsylvania State University; Stanford University; The Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München; and The Georg-August-Universität Göttingen);

• Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, USA;

• The Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Germany;

• The University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA;

• The Carnegie Mellon University at Pittsburgh, USA;

• The University of Canterbury, New Zealand;

• The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA;

• Dartmouth College, Hanover, USA; and

• The UK SALT Consortium (The Armagh Observatory, The University of Central Lancashire; The University of Keele; The University of Nottingham; The Open University; and The University of Southampton).