SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation: Advancing Astronomy with Developments on All ScalesThe great success of the Hubble Space Telescope has been seen and noted by most people on planet earth, and its successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, is planned to continue this tradition. Giant astronomical projects such as these inevitably capture the attention of the media and public. Across different continents and many countries astronomers are collaborating to obtain funding to begin construction of the new generation of giant ground-based telescopes with effective diameters beyond anything once thought possible, such as the E-ELT, GMT and TMT. In the remote high Atacama desert the giant international ALMA project is nearing completion. Still in Chile, site preparation activities on Cerro Pachon for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope are under way, and the era of the general purpose 8-10m class telescopes has reached full maturity. All of these are large engineering projects, requiring major industrial participation and funds to match. They already have or undoubtedly will produce great scientific results.
Yet at the same time that these strides are being made it is worth recalling that some of the major astronomical discoveries of the last decades have been made with more modest facilities. Precision radial velocity measurements discovered the first extrasolar planet and have opened up the new field of extrasolar planet research. Modest telescopes are working in space (Kepler) and planned on the ground for precise planetary transit photometric measurements. Surveys remain the backbone of astronomy and few have had as much impact on both galactic and extragalactic astronomy as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. At Cerro Paranal the 4m VISTA has begun its deep infrared survey work, while at Cerro Tololo the Dark Energy Camera will be mounted this year on the NOAO 4m telescope for a dedicated survey. The South Pole Telescope and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope have extended surveys into the millimeter band emphasizing SZ science. Smaller space astrophysics missions, with large dedicated surveys as the main science goal, such as WISE, GALEX, Planck, NuStar, eROSITA and Gaia are now in operation or nearing completion. Several more are in early study phases.
The combination of large and small, and ground and space, is key to delivering the depth and breadth of our community’s scientific ambitions. Feeding these facilities are technology development programs throughout the world. Smaller in scale, they are essential to exploit our telescope facilities and make major scientific advances. High-order deformable mirrors with thousands of actuators, multi-CCD focal planes resembling sheets of silicon and large format IR detectors for both high and low background applications are just a few examples.
Exciting developments, spanning many orders of magnitude in cost and size, have the goal of achieving scientific discovery. All have a role to play and, uniquely, they all come together at the SPIE Astronomical Instrumentation series of symposia, where science highlights, facility concepts and technical advances are presented. The format for the 2012 meeting in Amsterdam will remain similar to last time, with the conference topics covering most of the relevant technological areas in astronomy. Anyone who has any interest in astronomical technology will find something fascinating in the focused conferences, industrial exhibits and plenary talks. We look forward to seeing you in Amsterdam.
2012 Symposium Chairs:
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Kathryn A. Flanagan
Space Telescope Science Institute (USA)
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Mark M. Casali European Southern Observatory (Germany)
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2012 Symposium Co-Chairs:
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Gillian S. Wright
UK Astronomy Technology Ctr. (United Kingdom)
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Luc Simard
National Research Council Canada (Canada)
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