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Register a new userBuilders Instead of Consumers: Training Astronomers in Instrumentation & Observation
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The astronomy community has made clear our shared scientific vision in the Astro2010 decadal survey. Who will build this future? The cost and scarcity of telescope resources makes vital learning through doing extremely difficult for students and early career researchers. What is needed now and in the future to provide a depth of knowledge, creativity, and experience in our field? At McDonald Observatory we have a clear model in answer to that question, and a long history of successfully training the next generation of instrument builders and observers. We must support and sustain small to medium range local resources such as McDonald to foster the successful growth of our field.
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While both society and astronomy have evolved greatly over the past fifty years, the academic institutions and incentives that shape our field have remained largely stagnant. As a result, the astronomical community is faced with several major challenges, including: (1) the training that we provide does not align with the skills that future astronomers will need, (2) the postdoctoral phase is becoming increasingly demanding and demoralizing, and (3) our jobs are increasingly unfriendly to families with children. Solving these problems will require conscious engineering of our profession. Fortunately, this Decadal Review offers the opportunity to revise outmoded practices to be more effective and equitable. The highest priority of the Subcommittee on the State of the Profession should be to recommend specific, funded activities that will ensure the field meets the challenges we describe.
Societys view of astronomers has changed over time and from culture to culture. This review discusses some of the many ways that astronomers have been perceived by their societies and suggests ways that astronomers can influence public perception of ourselves and our profession in the future.
In this Chapter we review the challenges of, and opportunities for, 3D spectroscopy, and how these have lead to new and different approaches to sampling astronomical information. We describe and categorize existing instruments on 4m and 10m telescopes. Our primary focus is on grating-dispersed spectrographs. We discuss how to optimize dispersive elements, such as VPH gratings, to achieve adequate spectral resolution, high throughput, and efficient data packing to maximize spatial sampling for 3D spectroscopy. We review and compare the various coupling methods that make these spectrographs ``3D, including fibers, lenslets, slicers, and filtered multi-slits. We also describe Fabry-Perot and spatial-heterodyne interferometers, pointing out their advantages as field-widened systems relative to conventional, grating-dispersed spectrographs. We explore the parameter space all these instruments sample, highlighting regimes open for exploitation. Present instruments provide a foil for future development. We give an overview of plans for such future instruments on todays large telescopes, in space, and in the coming era of extremely large telescopes. Currently-planned instruments open new domains, but also leave significant areas of parameter space vacant, beckoning further development.
VOStat is a Web service providing interactive statistical analysis of astronomical tabular datasets. It is integrated into the suite of analysis and visualization tools associated with the international Virtual Observatory (VO) through the SAMP communication system. A user supplies VOStat with a dataset extracted from the VO, or otherwise acquired, and chooses among $sim 60$ statistical functions. These include data transformations, plots and summaries, density estimation, one- and two-sample hypothesis tests, global and local regressions, multivariate analysis and clustering, spatial analysis, directional statistics, survival analysis (for censored data like upper limits), and time series analysis. The statistical operations are performed using the public domain {bf R} statistical software environment, including a small fraction of its $>4000$ {bf CRAN} add-on packages. The purpose of VOStat is to facilitate a wider range of statistical analyses than are commonly used in astronomy, and to promote use of more advanced methodology in {bf R} and {bf CRAN}.
I analyze the postdoctoral career tracks of a nearly-complete sample of astronomers from 28 United States graduate astronomy and astrophysics programs spanning 13 graduating years (N=1063). A majority of both men and women (65% and 66%, respectively) find long-term employment in astronomy or closely-related academic disciplines. No significant difference is observed in the rates at which men and women are hired into these jobs following their PhDs, or in the rates at which they leave the field. Applying a two-outcome survival analysis model to the entire data set, the relative academic hiring probability ratio for women vs. men at a common year post-PhD is H_(F/M) = 1.08 (+0.20, -0.17; 95% CI); the relative leaving probability ratio is L_(F/M) = 1.03 (+0.31, -0.24). These are both consistent with equal outcomes for both genders (H_(F/M) = L_(F/M) = 1) and rule out more than minor gender differences in hiring or in the decision to abandon an academic career. They suggest that despite discrimination and adversity, women scientists are successful at managing the transition between PhD, postdoctoral, and faculty/staff positions.
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