Washington DC

There's no point in complaining: some US ground-based telescopes almost certainly must close if the country's astronomy spending is to be brought under control.

That was the bleak message delivered to a room of anxious astronomers on 10 January by officials of the National Science Foundation (NSF) during the American Astronomical Society's annual meeting in Washington DC. Faced with flat budgets and growing expenditures, the foundation has asked a panel of 13 senior scientists to find $30 million in savings out of the astronomy division's $195-million annual budget — by any means necessary.

“The problem is huge,” Wayne Van Citters, director of the foundation's astronomy division, told the assembled scientists. “We're rapidly outstripping our ability to operate the things that we are building.”

The agency is the main government supporter of ground-based astronomy in the United States. It operates several major facilities, including the Gemini, Kitt Peak, Arecibo and National Solar observatories, and the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center.

In addition to these telescopes, the NSF is planning several costly, next-generation projects. It is putting nearly $50 million a year towards constructing the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), an international radio telescope set to be completed in 2012. And it recently committed $14 million to developing the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a project to digitally record much of the night sky.

Money is allocated separately for the construction of these and other facilities, but Van Citters says it is unclear how the agency will operate them once they are built. In the fiscal year 2006, the foundation's entire maths and physical sciences budget grew by only $16 million, about half of the amount it will need annually just to operate ALMA.

By slicing $30 million from existing facilities, the NSF hopes to make up for some of the expected shortfalls. Roger Blandford, director of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology in Stanford, California, chairs the panel that will recommend where the cuts should fall. The Washingon meeting was the last of seven held in an attempt to placate astronomers around the country since the panel was announced in August (see Nature 436, 616; 2005).

Blandford says the panel will consider the scientific value of the various facilities, as well as their training capabilities, decommissioning costs and overlap with other observatories. Scientific value, in particular, is notoriously difficult to measure quantitatively — an attempt by one astronomer at the conference demonstrates as much (see ‘Which sites get cited?’). “There are no easy targets,” says Blandford. “We are trying very hard to make this a responsible process.”

It was clear that many of the 200 or so astronomers in the room were not convinced. “If we go through with the cuts then major facilities will disappear,” warns Jeffrey Linsky, an astronomer at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colorado. “I say we complain, and complain bitterly.”

Van Citters told the crowd that this is not an option. “We have to go through this,” he said. Blandford agrees: “It is economically necessary, but it is also politically necessary.” Without proving that astronomers are serious about reining in spending, they are unlikely to win fresh funding from the White House.

Blandford says the committee has received many letters and e-mails since the review was announced, most defending the merit of individual facilities. He and his panel members will now deliberate, aiming to produce recommendations by the end of March.

At least astronomers have no cause to take the measures personally. In an era of flat budgets, such panels are likely to become commonplace, predicts Van Citters. “I suspect within a year or two we're going to see more of this throughout the foundation.”