Small Telescopes, Big Rewards

摘要

The Closing Of Lick Observatory ("Lick Observatory in trouble as austerity starts to bite," Y. Bhattacharjee, News & Analysis, 13 December 2013, p. 1299) and all the major national optical telescopes on Kitt Peak National Observatory ("Money woes cloud future of workhorse U.S. telescopes," Y. Bhattacharjee, News & Analysis, 20 December 2013, p. 1425) should hardly come as a surprise to astronomers. For many years, we have argued to funding agencies, often through prestigious decadal surveys [e.g., ], that to do the most important astronomy, only the largest and most expensive telescopes would suffice. Now that the funding agencies believe us, we are facing the consequences. The endgame of advocating increasingly expensive instruments has already been demonstrated by particle physicists with the cancellation of the Superconducting Super Collider in 1993.