TMT Work to Resume Says Ige!

[TomK]

UKIRT's funding is from NASA, not Arizona and/or Lockheed Martin.

Aaron, I think the question of which telescopes are decommissioned depends on whether it's a political or scientifically driven decision. If it's political, then I would agree that UKIRT and JCMT are at risk, especially as the UH were given the money to decommission both by the STFC. On the hand, they would certainly piss off several countries and organisations if that was the decision.

However, if it's scientific, decommissioning the JCMT and UKIRT makes no sense whatsoever. UKIRT remains the most scientifically productive telescope on the planet, and the JCMT is the most productive submillimetre telescope in the world and the only large-dish submillimetre telescope in the Northern hemisphere. It would make much more sense to decommission the UH Educational Telescope and the UH 88-inch. The former doesn't work and the latter is unreliable and among the least scientifically productive telescopes on the mountain. Another option is the VLBA telescope. It's not at the summit but is counted amongst the 13 and its capabilities can be reproduced just about anywhere.

So it'll be interesting to see how this develops over the next week or so.