Europe sets astronomy path

A course for the next 20 years of astronomy in Europe was unveiled on 25 November by Astronet, a network of European funding and research agencies. The roadmap, which came after an exercise that defined the field’s burning questions (see Physics Today, April 2007, page 32 ), involved assessing more than 100 projects for which Europe’s contribution would be at least €10 million ($13.3 million) and spending decisions would come after 2008.

The 42-meter optical–IR European Extremely Large Telescope (EELT) and the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope top the priority list for ground-based facilities that exceed €400 million. The top picks in the medium scale (€50 million–€400 million) are the European Solar Telescope, the Cherenkov Telescope Array, and then KM3NeT, an underwater neutrino detector—the last two were priorities in the recent astroparticle roadmap (see Physics Today, November 2008, page 25 ). The two highest-ranked space missions are the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, a gravitational wave observatory, and the International X-ray Observatory. The full report is available at http://www.astronet-eu.org .

As a follow-up, Astronet has commissioned a review of Europe’s 2- to 4-meter optical telescopes. The “heterogeneous mix of national and common instruments, equipped and operated without overall coordination,” creates a situation that “impedes effective ground-based support of space missions,” says Johannes Andersen, Astronet board chair and director of the Nordic Optical Telescope on La Palma. A review of Europe’s millimeter–submillimeter and radio telescopes is also planned, as is one focusing on optimizing exploitation of 8- to 10-meter-class optical telescopes in the era of the EELT.

One goal of the roadmap, says Andersen, “is to define a common European strategy on future global-scale projects. We hope this will be helpful input to the new decadal survey in the US.” Implementing the roadmap will require an increase of roughly 20% in current astronomy spending, which totals about €2 billion a year.