TO MEMBERS OF THE ACADEMIC AND STUDENT AFFAIRS COMMITTEE: DISCUSSION ITEM EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

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1 Office of the President A7 TO MEMBERS OF THE ACADEMIC AND STUDENT : For meeting of DISCUSSION ITEM UC S LAND-BASED ASTRONOMICAL OBSERVATORIES EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The UC Observatories (UCO) is a Multi-campus Research Unit that represents a compelling example of collective excellence. Providing stewardship for Lick and Keck Observatories, with planning underway for the Thirty Meter Telescope, the UCO leverages a central, systemwide investment of funds in core astronomical facilities to enable scientists from across the UC system to collaborate on trailblazing scientific projects. UCO s capabilities for designing and deploying cutting-edge instruments help UC attract top-notch faculty, postdoctoral scholars, students, and research scientists from around the world. UC faculty members involved with UCO have won many national and international accolades, attesting to the high quality of their scholarly outputs. Three examples of seminal research supported by their access to instrumentation, facilities, and viewing nights attributable in one way or another to UCO discovery of extrasolar planets, confirmation that the Milky Way galaxy has a black hole at its center, and characterization of galaxies in the early universe illustrate the scholarly impact of this system-wide investment. UC scientists will be able to continue their groundbreaking astronomical studies through a memorandum of understanding that is being finalized with UC s partner, Caltech, for maintaining and operating the Keck Observatory. BACKGROUND The University of California s faculty, students, and research staff have had access to state-ofthe-art, ground-based observatories beginning only twenty years after the founding of the University of California itself. They currently make regular use of two major ground-based astronomical observatories (Lick and Keck Observatories, shown in Figure 1), with planned access to the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) in the late-2020s. Pooling resources for groundbased observatories across the eight UC campuses that conduct astronomy research has proven to be extraordinarily fruitful. Rather than having each campus build a small telescope on the roof of its own Physics Building, UC systemwide collaboration in astronomy, via UC Observatories (UCO), Lick, and Keck, has allowed access for UC students and researchers to a whole new class of leading facilities. These facilities enable UC to attract and retain outstanding faculty and are simply not available to those at other major universities. Lick Observatory is owned and operated by UC; Keck and TMT are standalone non-profits of which UC is an integral part of the governance and contributes operating funding. UC s size and stature enable this investment.

2 ACADEMIC AND STUDENT -2- A7 UCO manages the competition for UC telescope time, builds forefront instruments for these facilities, and catalyzes cross-campus collaborations. UCO s reputation nationally and internationally is such that competition to become a UC astronomy faculty member is fierce. Moreover, outstanding graduate students and postdoctoral researchers are attracted to UC s astronomy programs because they know that they will have access to telescopes to carry out world-class research. UC faculty commonly leverage telescope time on Lick and Keck to win time on other large ground and space telescopes, e.g., the Hubble Space Telescope, extending the scope and amplifying the impact of their research programs. Access to UCO and UC-supported facilities also translates into a competitive advantage for extramural funding, bringing millions of dollars in grants each year to the UC astronomical community. The synergy between UCO and the excellence of UC astronomy is reflected not only in publications and citations, but also in the accolades that have been bestowed on current and emeriti astronomy faculty: two Nobel Prizes (Perlmutter, Smoot), 24 National Academy of Sciences members, one National Medal of Science (Faber), one MacArthur Genius Prize (Ghez), four Shaw Prize winners (Jewitt, Marcy, Perlmutter, Shu), three Gruber Prize winners (Davis, Faber, Perlmutter), one Kavli Prize winner (Jewitt), and one Franklin Institute Bower Award (Faber). UCO thus represents a superb example of collective excellence, of making the whole more than the sum of its parts. Lick Observatory Keck Observatory Thirty Meter Telescope Figure 1. The three ground-based astronomical observatories available to UC faculty, students, and researchers. Lick Observatory (left) is in the hills east of San Jose CA. Keck Observatory (center) is on Mauna Kea, HI. The Thirty Meter Telescope (right), scheduled for first light in the late 2020 s, will be either in Hawaii or in the Canary Islands. UCO is an example of what UC calls a Multi-Campus Research Unit (MRU). An important part of UCO s mission is to build advanced instruments that are the key to continuing high-profile scientific discoveries at these telescopes. UCO encourages ambitious scientific collaborations across multiple campuses. The most recent of these is the MOSFIRE Deep Evolution Field (MOSDEF) galaxy survey, which has characterized the star-formation and black hole activity in very young and very distant galaxies, as well as determined their masses, structures, and evolution. MOSDEF involved faculty and students from four UC campuses and studied the Universe when it was only 1.5 to 4.5 billion years old. It is now 13.8 billion years old! Each of UC s three observatories hosts a significant outreach program. Lick Observatory runs an extensive summer program with concerts, telescope viewing, and astronomy lectures for the general public, as well as an annual workshop for high school science teachers, who reach many pre-college students. Lick will have its first La Noche de las Estrellas event in late September, in which all the usual components of the Summer Programs will be delivered in the Spanish

3 ACADEMIC AND STUDENT -3- A7 language. Keck and TMT sponsor vigorous Workforce Development Programs that grew out of a pilot project at UC Santa Cruz. History Lick Observatory was founded in 1888, only 20 years after the founding of the University of California. With a large gift to UC from James Lick, a wealthy San Francisco entrepreneur, the 36 refractor telescope was built atop Mount Hamilton, east of San Jose, and was the heart of the world's first permanently occupied mountain-top observatory. UC and Lick Observatory grew up together. Initially the Observatory was reachable only via horse and buggy over a custom-built road to the mountaintop. Astronomers and their students lived on the mountain since a plausible commute was impossible (Figure 2). Figure photo of carriage road just below Lick Observatory, on the peak of Mt. Hamilton, CA. Between 1966 and 1968, the astronomers at Lick Observatory moved to the UC Santa Cruz campus, leaving only the telescope operations staff at Mount Hamilton. At UC Santa Cruz, Lick Observatory retained its role as a research organization while also forming the nucleus of a new Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. The Department has steadily grown in strength. Starting in fiscal year 14-15, the former UCO faculty members have been fully integrated into the UC Santa Cruz Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. When the Keck Observatory opened for business in Hawaii in the early 1990s, the role of UC as steward of Lick Observatory expanded to include the two new Keck Telescopes. At that time, UC s ground-based astronomy became part of a new organization called the UCO. Today, the total annual budget for UCO and Lick combined is nearly $12 million, including over $7 million from UC, and about $5 million from external contracts and grants, and from sources such as UC Santa Cruz for facilities maintenance, endowments and gifts, and sales and services. The mission of UCO is to bring forefront groundbased astronomy facilities and instruments to UC astronomers systemwide, and to design and build instruments for Lick, Keck, and TMT, using specialized facilities based primarily at UC Santa Cruz and UCLA. The facilities operated and supported by UCO are used annually by approximately 500 UC faculty, postdoctoral scholars, student researchers, and research staff. As a MRU, UCO functions under the auspices of the UC Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies. Today, the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, with its twin ten-meter telescopes, is the leading facility available to UC astronomers. Keck is operated by a free-standing, non-profit corporation, the California Association for Research in Astronomy (CARA). The two founding partners of this

4 ACADEMIC AND STUDENT -4- A7 corporation are UC and Caltech, which jointly govern the Observatory through the CARA Board, of which UC Santa Cruz Chancellor Blumenthal is the chair. The other UC members of the CARA Board are UC Provost Dorr, and UC Observatories Director Claire Max. Under the current operating agreement for the Keck Observatory, UC is responsible for all of the annual operating costs UC now contributes more than $14 million annually to the Keck budget, as costs have increased annually through a cost of living escalator until the total operations costs paid by UC grow to equal the total capital expenses borne by Caltech. To cover operations after that time (April 1, 2018), a new Operating Agreement is being negotiated between UC and Caltech; the two will be equal partners in contributing to Keck s budget. The Regents will consider the proposed new Operating Agreement at an upcoming meeting. Figure 3. Scientific impact measured per telescope for each of the world s large telescopes (impact metric includes, e.g, journal article citations). The two Keck Telescopes have the largest impact. The scientific impact of the two Keck Telescopes is unsurpassed in the world. Figure 3 shows a graph of the total impact per telescope, for all of the world s large observatories (indicated by their acronyms along the horizontal axis). In a very real sense, the collective excellence provided by combining the resources and expertise of astronomers from throughout all of UC has made this possible. Scientific Discoveries Enabled by UCO s Telescope Access and Instrumentation UCO has a proud history, not only of fostering innovative telescope design, but of supporting inhouse development of instrumentation by faculty motivated to make new discoveries by utilizing instruments they themselves build. At Lick, going all the way back to construction, in 1888, of the Great Refractor with its 14-ton rising floor that pre-dated electricity, relying only on water and wind-power UC astronomers have embraced telescope and instrumentation innovations with the potential to give them a competitive edge. Astronomical photography was perfected on Lick's Crossley telescope in the 1900s; the first digital detector forerunner of today s charge coupled device cameras was developed in the 1970s; and the first successful robotic searches for supernovae were begun in the 1980s. In the 1990s, Lick developed the first facility-class laser

5 ACADEMIC AND STUDENT -5- A7 guide-star for Adaptive Optics for astronomy, at the time a revolutionary new concept, permitting real-time mirror adjustments to compensate for changes in the atmosphere and thereby maintaining sharp images of what astronomers were seeing. The Shane three-meter telescope continues to serve as a testbed for new Adaptive Optics (AO) technology, with a new AO system becoming operational in Lick Observatory's newest telescope, the Automated Planet Finder, commissioned in 2014, has contributed to the successful confirmation of more than a hundred new extra-solar planets. At the heart of the Keck I and Keck II telescopes, which saw first light in 1993 and 1996 respectively on Mauna Kea, is a revolutionary mirror concept, conceived by UC Santa Cruz Professor Jerry Nelson. Each mirror is comprised of 36 hexagonal segments, mosaicked together to form the equivalent of a single, huge mirror ten meters (33 feet) in diameter. Several instruments can be used in combination with either Keck s natural or its artificial laser guide star AO system. Following the lead of the highly successful Keck telescopes, TMT will also be constructed using a segmented mirror design. TMT plans to deploy a laser guide star-supported, so-called multi-conjugate adaptive optics system. This will involve utilizing multiple lasers to correct for atmospheric turbulence (the same effect that causes stars to twinkle) to produce sharp images over a larger area of the sky than is currently possible at Keck or Lick. Science Achievement 1: Extra-solar Planets In the past 20 years, concepts of solar system formation have been turned on their heads by the discovery of more than 3,500 planets orbiting nearby stars. Three instruments designed and built by UC faculty members (Lick s Hamilton spectrograph and Automated Planet Finder telescope and Keck s HIRES [High-Resolution Echelle Spectrometer]) have played a key role in these discoveries by allowing planets to be detected indirectly by observing the variations induced in their host star s light. Originally a collaboration between faculty members at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz, the UC extra-solar planet work has now evolved into a large and very successful international endeavor. Figure 4 shows an artist s impression of the Tau Ceti solar system, the nearest Sun-like star about 12 light years from the Sun, which has been found to have four Earthsized planets orbiting it.

6 ACADEMIC AND STUDENT -6- A7 Figure 4. Artist s impression of four planets detected around the nearby star Tau Ceti (top) and the inner planets of Earth s solar system (bottom) using the Keck HIRES instrument. These planets have masses as low as 1.7 Earth mass, making them among the smallest planets ever detected around nearby Sun-like stars. Two of them are Super- Earths located in the habitable zone of the star and thus could support liquid surface water. Credit: F. Feng In a stunningly exciting new application, Adaptive Optics technology has been used to obtain actual images of extrasolar planets. Figure 5 shows an image in infrared light of four planets orbiting the star HR8799. Figure 5: Image of the four planets (labeled b, c, d, and e) orbiting the star HR8799. Arrows show the orbital motion of each planet. The light from the star itself has been largely subtracted from this image, in order to show the much fainter planets. Data from the Keck Observatory. The discovery was a collaboration between Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, UCLA, and several other institutions. Credit: Marois et al (2010) Science Achievement 2: Confirming the Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way Galaxy A black hole is a place in space where the pull of gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape. Astronomers have shown that most large galaxies host black holes in their cores. UCLA professor Andrea Ghez and her research group have not only confirmed the existence of a massive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, they have, as described below, used the motions of stars close to the black hole to measure the black hole s mass, and it is large!

7 ACADEMIC AND STUDENT -7- A7 It is quite difficult to get sharp images of stars at the center of Earth s Galaxy, because of intervening gas and dust. But infrared light can get through. Panel a) of Figure 6 shows an image of the star cluster at the center of the Milky Way galaxy, obtained in infrared light under normal conditions. A few dozen stars can be seen. However, the use of Adaptive Optics, the aforementioned technology to sharpen astronomical images that UC scientists pioneered at Lick and then Keck, allows many hundreds of stars to be clearly seen (Panel b). Figure 6, Panel a Infrared image of stars at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Turbulence in the Earth s atmosphere blurs each star. (Keck Observatory, Andrea Ghez at al.) Figure 6, Panel b Same region as in a), imaged using adaptive optics to remove atmospheric blurring. Stellar positions and motions can be measured with great accuracy and for many more stars. (Keck Observatory, Andrea Ghez at al.) Because the stars are so sharp with Adaptive Optics, Professor Ghez and her group were able to follow their motions and use Kepler s laws to determine the mass of the central black hole. Figure 7 shows the orbits of the stars around the central black hole. The measurements determined from these orbits show that the black hole in the Galactic Center of the galaxy has a mass that is four million times greater than the mass of the Sun. This project began with Professor Ghez s group at UCLA. Over the years, three of Professor Ghez s Ph.D. students (who still collaborate with the UCLA group for some of their research) have been appointed to faculty positions at UC San Diego and UC Berkeley. Today, UC s Galactic Center research includes three different campuses, as well as international collaborators.

8 ACADEMIC AND STUDENT -8- A7 Figure 7. Orbits of stars around the position of the black hole (shown by asterisk) at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. The UCLA Galactic Center group has used these orbits, obtained via Adaptive Optics at Keck, to measure the mass of the central black hole as being four million times the mass of the Sun. Science Achievement 3: Galaxies in the Early Universe At heart, a telescope is a light bucket. Larger telescopes collect more light and hence are more sensitive and allow astronomers to obtain images of fainter objects. For example, the TMT will have a light-gathering power nine times that of a Keck ten-meter telescope (The light-gathering power is proportional to the square of the diameter of the primary mirror.). Note that this is before any consideration of the significant image-sharpening enhancements that will result from TMT s advanced AO design. The Universe began 13.8 billion years ago in the Big Bang (Figure 8). Over the years, using the Keck telescopes, astronomers have been able to study the properties of thousands of nearby galaxies and hundreds of very distant galaxies, seen as they appeared when the Universe was only a few billion years old. They have also been able to study a precious handful of the very brightest galaxies which formed within a few hundred million years of the Big Bang; one example is shown in Figure 9. While it is common for groups of two or three UC faculty and their students to collaborate informally and pool valuable telescope time, UCO formally encourages and enables UC faculty to answer the most ambitious scientific questions about our Universe by submitting Large Multi-Year Projects (LMAPs). An LMAP is a special category of telescope-time award, which, once approved by a rigorous Telescope Allocation Committee vetting process, guarantees tens of nights of Keck telescope time over several years to faculty teams to carry out world-class multi-year projects with large scientific impact.

9 ACADEMIC AND STUDENT -9- A7 Figure 8. Using the Keck telescopes as 21st-century time machines, UC astronomers have been able to look back billions of years to address fundamental questions about the origin of the Universe and the formation of galaxies. The Deep Extragalactic Evolutionary Probe (DEEP) and MOSDEF surveys are examples of LMAPs, a special category of telescope-time awards, designed to encourage system-wide collaboration amongst multiple UC faculty. The DEEP and MOSDEF surveys utilized the Deep Extragalactic Imaging Multi-Object Spectograph (DEIMOS) (Principal Investigator [PI] Sandy Faber, UC Santa Cruz) and MOSFIRE (co-pi Ian McLean, UCLA) instruments, respectively, and resulted in tens of scientific publications and many Ph.D. theses.

10 ACADEMIC AND STUDENT -10- A7 The most recent LMAP telescope-time award was to carry out the MOSDEF galaxy survey. This involved six UC faculty and their students from four campuses who characterized the properties of infant galaxies (mass, size, properties of bulge and disk, amount of star formation occurring, black hole activity etc.), seen as they appeared when the Universe was between only 1.5 and 4.5 billion years old (Figure 8). Figure 9. Observations with Keck s MOSFIRE instrument have confirmed the galaxy in the blue circle (top of figure) to be one of the most distant galaxies ever found, seen as it appeared when the Universe was only 700 million years old. The discovery was made by a team led by Professor Marusa Bradac and her graduate student Austin Hoag (UC Davis; pictured lower left). Until the advent of TMT, which will be able to find and study faint distant galaxies in large numbers, astronomers have to play tricks like using one of nature s own telescopes, a massive foreground cluster of galaxies, which gravitationally-lensed the infant galaxy to make it visible to Keck (lower right). Primordial galaxies are much smaller and less massive than galaxies found in the local Universe. Finding the very first populations of short-lived stars and infant galaxies and understanding how they evolve over time are some of the biggest questions that will be answered by TMT. Credit:M.Bradac/A.Hoag Nature Astronomy UCO as a Multi-Campus Research Unit UCO is a quintessential example of an MRU that supports collective excellence. By making centralized investments in cutting-edge, technically supported instrumentation and facilities that are available to the entire UC astronomy community, resources such as Lick, Keck, and TMT can be shared by faculty, research staff, and students from across the eight UC campuses that support this academic discipline, as well as by astronomers from around the nation and world.

11 ACADEMIC AND STUDENT -11- A7 UCO has several features that have made it so successful. A key investment has been in the expert faculty, staff, and specialized facilities that support the building of customized instrumentation. This has led to new technologies being developed through UCO, such as the revolutionary mirror concept and AO described above. Being able to provide specified design features is often a key element of successful experiments. Moreover, UCO supports the training of students who can learn these valuable skills and contribute to the development of nextgeneration telescopes and facilities. Several committees ensure good scientific communication between UC faculty and the UCO Director, and with the Keck Observatory and international TMT partners. The UCO Advisory Committee has at least one representative from each campus and advises the Director on the full range of policy and operations of UCO, and also on new instrumentation opportunities. The Keck Science Steering Committee advises Keck Observatory on all matters that affect Keck s scientific capabilities, including selecting instruments and instrument upgrades. The Science Advisory Committee serves a similar role for the Thirty Meter Telescope. There are also nine TMT International Science Development Teams, groups of researchers, including many from UC, who work together to provide scientific guidance and feedback to the TMT project on different astrophysical topics. There is an annual Keck Science Meeting held to discuss new scientific results and instrumentation initiatives, and an annual TMT forum organized to foster scientific collaboration across the TMT partnership. With limited observing time available on UC s telescopes, it is important to ensure that time is used wisely. Telescope Time Allocation Committees have systemwide representation and award time on the Keck and Lick telescopes twice a year on a competitive basis. All UC astronomy campuses are now equipped with Remote Observing Rooms, providing faculty, students, and researcher staff the option of operating the Lick and Keck facilities without physically traveling to the telescopes. These rooms are especially important for undergraduate and graduate student training since the expense of taking a student to a telescope is considerable, but many students can inexpensively participate in the remote acquisition of data. Measures of the success of UCO s approach are the high national and global rankings of UC s astronomy departments and the many national and international accolades noted above that UC s astronomers have garnered. In turn, UCO s commitment to academic excellence helps UC continue to recruit and retain top faculty, research staff, and students from around the world. Another dimension of UC s investment in UCO is the almost unique ability of the greatest public university system in the world to make the rare, well-informed big bet as part of UC s research portfolio. TMT with the window it will provide into yet earlier, deeper stages of the Universe s formation is almost certain to continue to produce breakthrough science, new technologies, and future Nobel Prize-caliber discoveries and recognition. Validation of the significance of this investment may be found in the international and national partners TMT has already attracted: UC will be joined by Canada, China, India, and Japan, as well as by its long-standing observatory partner, Caltech; the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, representing 39 U.S. institutions and six international affiliates; and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. UC Santa Barbara Chancellor Yang chairs the Board and UC Chief Financial

12 ACADEMIC AND STUDENT -12- A7 Officer Nathan Brostrom and former UCO Director Michael Bolte serve on the Board, ensuring that UC perspectives and interests are well represented. In short, UC ground-based astronomy has a bright future. With UCO, two observatories and a third in development, a tradition of collective excellence, and the steadfast support of UC and its partners, UC will continue to be a national and global leader in astronomy research and in the education of UC students at all stages of their professional development. Key to Acronyms AO CARA DEEP DEIMOS HIRES LMAP MOSDEF MRU TMT UCO Adaptive Optics California Association for Research in Astronomy Deep Extragalactic Evolutionary Probe Deep Extragalactic Imaging Multi-Object Spectograph High-Resolution Echelle Spectrometer Large Multi-Year Projects MOSFIRE Deep Evolution Field Multi-campus Research Unit Thirty Meter Telescope UC Observatories