Keck Doors Opened

In exchange for grant money to build instruments, the world’s largest ground-based infrared and optical telescopes have been induced to offer observation time to the wider US astronomy community. The twin 10-meter Keck telescopes on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, won $3.89 million from NSF’s new Telescope System Instrumentation Program, which is intended to strengthen the connections between publicly funded telescopes and independent observatories—like the privately funded Kecks.

Over the next two years or so, US astronomers can compete for a total of 41 nights on one of the Keck telescopes. The accessible observing time is set to be worth half the value of the instrumentation grants, with time on a Keck valued at $47400 a night. Observation time will be awarded through the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Arizona.

Keck will apply the NSF grants toward building an integral field spectrograph and designing a near-infrared imager and multi-object spectrograph. Next year, NSF will again make about $4 million available for a trade of instruments for time on private ground-based telescopes.