The future of CFHT: Some Issues and Comments


The following remarks were prepared in mid-October as a contribution to the discussion on the future development of OIR astronomy in Canada that took place on Oct 18 at the DAO. The fate of CFHT as an on-going facility and as a site cannot be entirely divorced from a consideration of what comes next in OIR for Canada.

Site redevelopment

This is a very complex issue because, at its essence, it involves matters related to Hawaiian Sovereignty and control of "ceded lands" (land which formerly belonged to the Kingdom of Hawaii that passed to the Territory and then to the State of Hawaii). BC residents, in particular, will be familiar with the fundamental problem as it is similar to that arising from the land claims of the non-treaty Indian Nations in BC. The University of Hawaii (UH) has prepared a new Master Plan for the summit of Mauna Kea. This plan has been submitted to the Board of Regents of the UH and will be considered for approval in January. The elements of this plan that pertain to the Astronomy facilities may be considered to define the maximum extent of permitted development in the future. The key elements for our consideration are the following:

There are several implications on this plan:

The site for CELT remains open as far as I know and Chile is certainly being considered. On the other hand, the Keck facility on Hawaii could easily be expanded to accommodate a new facility from the existing partnership. Should CELT occupy the VLOT site in the MK Master Plan, it would preclude the development of another similar facility, unless the Plan were amended. In the present political climate, one should not count on that happening. The implication here is that we know that a Mauna Kea facility can be serviced on a daily basis (if necessary), whereas a facility on the Alto Plano should probably be designed for unattended operations over extended time periods. This could be a significant cost driver and design constraint.

CFHT configuration

Other operational Issues

Community Access Issues

Community access is an issue that always bubbles in the background when new, expensive facilities are being contemplated. I am conscious of it because in my musings on the need to maintain a "front-line" capability in "competitive" areas of our science, there is often a counter-argument: the CFHT is the only 4m that Canada funds and therefore it should serve a broad spectrum of Canadian interests. A similar argument comes from some quarters of the French community. There are two elements to this:

Astronomy follows very much a band-wagon style of activity which can be rationalized fairly easily and is not so different from other sciences in that way. What does distinguish much of Astronomy is the reliance on common facilities - it would seem strange indeed if all the biochemists in Canada were to use only four labs, for example. We get away with this because our Observatories typically have many instruments and they change reasonably regularly. We also have some range in Observatory capabilities.

Hence a concern is that as we evolve along a path toward ever larger, more complex and expensive instrumentation, we risk losing the diversity that now exists - both in terms of the type of science that is done and the people who are involved. A miniscule share of a VLOT may involve a large team but that is unlikely to have anything approaching the diversity we now have within our community. Our subject is evolving toward the particle physics model and I believe some care is needed to avoid the unattractive elements that are present in that model.

Maybe all I'm saying is that the number of nights does matter.

Greg Fahlman      <fahlman@cfht.hawaii.edu>