STFC Programmatic Review : UKIDSS reponse to consultation

This is a temporary wiki page holding key documents and guidance concerning the status of UKIDSS and UKIRT in the STFC Programmatic Review.

The STFC Programmatic Review

Since November 2007 STFC has been undertaking a thorough review of its major facilities and projects. This has become an especially difficult exercise because, following its allocation in the recent government Spending Review STFC has a budget shortfall of £80M over three years; and in order to protect the future, it is trying to make savings of £120M. The scientific rankings from the Programmatic Review were announced here. STFC have been holding a short community consultation exercise. using a web form into which anybody can post comments. This closed on March 21st. Following this, a series of panels will summarise and digest the consultation submissions, with an aim of these being considered by the key committee (PPAN) at its meeting on April 24/25. Following this STFC will produce an actual implementation plan.

Status of UKIRT

For some time UKIRT has been under notice to reduce its operating costs by a factor of two by 2010, with an implication that otherwise it may need to close. JAC management have been actively pursuing potential partners, but these discussions are not yet complete. The STFC Programmatic Review sharpened the threat. The feedback received said

We plan to move UKIRT to 100% survey mode as soon as practical after 1 April 2008. Efforts are in hand to find international partners to share the cost of running the telescope in return for access to UKIDSS. Should these fail to materialise, immediate closure would have to be seriously considered.

PPAN recognised that the UKIDSS survey was only partially complete but felt that the overlap with the VISTA survey meant that UKIDSS' priority was lowered. PPAN also considered that the non-survey science being done at UKIRT could be covered using other telescopes to which UK astronomers had access. Thus, overall, UKIRT fell into the lower priority category.

Status of UKIDSS

UKIDSS began in May 2005 and is currently approximately 25% complete. We believe of course that completion of UKIDSS is of very high scientifiic priority, but it is also a quasi-legal commitment, as part of the UK-ESO accession agreement (see below). The PPAN feedback above suggests that this has not been understood, so it is vital to get these points across. On the current UKIRT model, UKIDSS would not be completed until the end of 2012, and even using the maximum available time would take until mid-2011. Furthermore, there is considerable scientific and strategic interest in completing a Northern Hemisphere sky survey, which would take another few years. The agreed UKIDSS consortium submission makes all these points as clearly as possible.

Agreed UKIDSS response and other docs and links

• UKIRT-PPAN-feedback.pdf: Official feedback from PPAN

• UKIDSS-response-20080321.pdf: UKIDSS submission

• UKIRT-Board-response.pdf: Submission by UKIRT Board

• UKIRT update page : information from JAC on UKIRT and STFC Programmatic Review

• ESO-UKIDSS-agreement.pdf: Agreement concerning UKIDSS between UK and ESO as part of formal UK accession papers

• Original proposal : submitted March 2001, slightly revised Nov 2001

• Lawrence et al 2007 : Survey Definition paper

• UKIDSS papers : published papers so far based on UKIDSS

• transit-survey-submission.pdf: Transit Survey submission

• seb-oliver-submission.pdf: Submission by Seb Oliver

-- AndyLawrence - 21 Mar 2008