Report on a meeting at Birr Castle on September 10, 2002 to discuss
the current situation with regard to the possible establishment of
an Irish Radio Telescope at Birr

Present:

Paul Callanan (UCC)
Gerry Doyle (Armagh)
Phil Diamond (MERLIN)
Brian Espey (Trinity)
Denise Gabuzda (UCC)
Mike Garrett (JIVE)
Susan McKenna-Lawlor (NUI-Maynooth, Birr Foundation)
Barney Patterson (RIA - URSI)
Mike Redfern (NUI-Galway)
Lord and Lady Rosse (Birr Foundation)
Tom Roche (RIA - URSI)
W. Salters Sterling (Birr Foundation)
Jim Slevin (RIA)

Lord Rosse opened the meeting by welcoming all present and by reflecting 
on the historical significance of the occasion. He restated the vision of 
Sir Bernard Lovell to extend the MERLIN chain westwards and to create a 
Radio Telescope for Irish Astronomers. The findings of the Sub-Committee 
chaired by Michael Redfern (discussed below) have encouraged Lord Rosse 
to offer a site at Birr for the construction of a Radio Telescope. This 
offer is being made free of charge on condition that it would benefit both 
the Irish Astronomy community and Jodrell Bank/MERLIN. Following the 
traditions of the Third Earl, the family are now seeking to advance the 
cause of Science in Ireland, Europe and the World. Lord Rosse thanked the 
RIA for the interest being shown in the proposal and asked that a report on
this meeting be presented at the next meeting of the Academy in early October.

Susan McKenna-Lawlor was appointed as the chair of the meeting, and
Denise Gabuzda as the "rapporteur".

Apologies from Evert Meurs, Mark Bailey and Luke Drury were read by 
Salters Sterling.  These letters were nominally supportive about the general 
concept of investigating the possibility of constructing an Irish radio 
astronomy facility, but both stressed the importance of recognising the 
sensitivity of pursuing new astronomy projects in the context of attempts 
to secure funding for ESO membership. Michael Sexton sent apologies and
expressed strong support for the proposal. Garrett also conveyed an apology 
from Richard Schilizzi for his inability to attend.

A review of previous initiatives to pursue the idea of constructing an
Irish radio telescope were summarized by Redfern, who was the chairman
of the original committee established at the suggestion of Sir Bernard
Lovell and the Birr Scientific and Heritage Foundation to investigate
possible sites for such a telescope and related issues, including possible
sources of funding. Testing of a number of sites was carried out by
personnel of Jodrell Bank. All sites tested were deemed to be very good,
with a few being outstanding. The Birr site was deemed to be very good.
There was some interest in identifying a site as far west as possible to
obtain the largest increase in resolution, but this also increases
the gap between the baselines joining antennas in the UK and baselines
to the Irish antenna. Overall, Birr was estimated to be the best site,
since it was already known to be available and to be a very good site,
and offered a good compromise between increase in baseline length and
size of the baseline gap introduced by the addition of the Irish antenna.
The previous committee determined that a strong scientific case could be
made for establishing a radio telescope at Birr.

Redfern reviewed previous attempts to secure funding for an Irish radio
telescope, none of which were successful. These included proposals in
the PRTLI Third Initiative, a proposal made directly to the previous Minister
of Science and Technology, and a proposal to an American philanthropist.
It was also pointed out that there is now no longer a Minister of Science and
Technology, and it is not clear what minister would have the responsibility
for dealing with any new proposals for funding a radio telescope.

Redfern suggested that, given current concern among the Irish astronomical
community about the uncertainty of access to ground-based observing
facilities in the future (e.g., the closing of the 1-m JKT telescope at La
Palma), it would be highly desirable to attempt to obtain some benefit of
this kind in return for the contribution of an Irish telescope to the
overall capabilities of the MERLIN array. Diamond stated that it was
agreed in principle that it would be possible to negotiate with PPARC to
enable access for Irish astronomers to all UK astronomical observing
facilities, including the remaining La Palma telescopes, the JCMT, UKIRT,
and the two Gemini telescopes (but not ESO facillities). This would enable 
Irish astronomers to propose for observations using all these facilities 
on the same footing as UK astronomers.

The discussion then turned to the question of an Irish radio telescope in
the context of priorities in the Irish astronomical community. It was
stated that the RIA was supportive of the idea of obtaining ESO membership
but also of the establishment of an Irish radio telescope.

Redfern reported that a concensus had developed that priority should be
given to trying to obtain ESO membership.  The previous Minister of Science 
and Technology was approached about this, but no definite action or funding
emerged. A working committee from Georgia Tech appointed to formulate
recommendations for Forfás about the possibility of Ireland joining various
international scientific organizations reported that it would be desirable
but expensive for Ireland to join ESO. The initial Irish contribution to
ESO would be about 5-6M Euros, with a subsequent ongoing contribution of
about 1M Euros per annum.

One outcome of this discussion was to affirm the importance of pursuing
the establishment of an Irish radio telescope via the formulation of a
coordinated multi-wavelength package including the radio telescope itself
together with access to UK observing facilities. This represents
a fundamental difference from previous investigations into the founding
of a radio telescope, since the establishment of the radio telescope would
also ensure future access for Irish astronomers to a wide range of optical, 
infrared, and millimetre observing facilities in both the northern and 
southern hemispheres.

There was also a clear agreement among those present that any radio telescope
project would encounter strong resistance among some segments of the Irish
astronomical community if the radio telescope project was perceived as
posing a threat to funding ESO membership. It was therefore agreed to adopt
an approach in which funding for an Irish radio telescope at Birr will
be actively pursued, but specifically trying to avoid direct competition
for funding for ESO membership.

Diamond gave a review of the parameters of the 7-telescope MERLIN array
and the recently funded upgrade to link the elements by optical fibres
and improve the performance of the Lovell telescope. This upgrade is scheduled
to be complete in 2007, and is expected to improve the sensitivity of the
array by a factor of 30. The resolution offered by the MERLIN array is
comparable to that of the HST, VLT, Gemini, and ALMA. Diamond stated that
the UK was able to both join ESO and fund the MERLIN upgrade precisely
by obtaining some funding for the MERLIN upgrade from non-traditional
sources.  The use of an Irish radio telescope at Birr together with the 
UK array would increase the resolution of MERLIN by about a factor of 
three, from the present 40 mas to 12.5 mas at 5 GHz, as the maximum baseline 
increased from about 220 km to 600 km. The Irish telescope would be especially 
valuable because it would be one of the most sensitive antennas in the 
array, thereby providing high sensitivity on the longest baselines.  

Diamond quoted the total estimated cost of constructing a 32-m telescope 
that would essentially be identical to the Cambridge dish as about 12.75M 
Euros; using the design of the Polish 32-m antenna would bring down the 
cost to 9-10M Euros. The expected running cost was estimated to be about 
300,000 Euros/year.  The Irish telescope would be fully frequency flexible 
and useable up to 43 GHz, with a shaped surface for maximum efficiency. As 
an Irish-owned and operated state-of-the-art facility, it can be expected to
greatly expand Irish astronomical activity, increase familiarity with 
radio astronomy techniques among the community, and develop expertise in 
high-speed digital, RF engineering and the use of modern high-bandwidth 
optical-fibre systems.  Diamond also pointed out that the experience obtained 
in Ireland by constructing and operating the radio telescope would put 
Ireland in a better position to pursue involvement in the Square Kilometre 
Array project sometime in the next decade.

Garrett discussed the proposed Irish radio telescope in the context of the
European VLBI network. He emphasized that the Irish antenna would "not be
just another telescope" in the European array, since the volume of data
obtained with an interferometer increases roughly as the square of the number
of antennas used. Thus, for typical European VLBI observations involving
six antennas, the addition of the Irish telescope would increase the volume
of data by a factor of roughly 49/36, or by about 36%. In addition, the
Irish telescope would provide the longest baseline in the EVN (between Birr
and Noto, Italy). The use of the Irish telescope in EVN observations would
also be helpful in bridging the gap between the longest MERLIN baselines
and the shortest EVN baselines. The EVN is moving toward ease of use, and
is actively trying to become accessible to a larger user community. The EVN
is also moving toward "e-VLBI", in which the various participating European
telescopes will be connected with the correlation centre at the Joint
Institute for VLBI in Europe in Holland via optical fibres. The first real
tests of VLBI conducted via fibre links are planned for the coming year.
In the case of the Irish radio telescope, the data could be transferred first
to the UK, then onward to the correlation centre via links developed for
the UK EVN telescopes.

Diamond and Garrett made it clear that MERLIN and JIVE are both extremely
interested in the idea of establishing an Irish radio telescope, and are
prepared to help with this in whatever way they can.

The discussion then turned to various possible sources of funding for
the radio telescope, specifically keeping in mind the desire to avoid
competition with likely sources of funding for ESO membership. One
strong possibility might be the EU Sixth Framework program, which could
potentially provide up to 50% of the funding. Another attractive potential
source of funding would be Science Foundation Ireland. This could be
particularly appropriate, due to the clear possibility of formulating the
linking of the Irish telescope with the MERLIN array/EVN in the context
of communication technology. It was decided not to pursue this possibility
for the meantime until it becomes clearer whether there could realistically
be direct competition with a proposal to obtain ESO membership funding
from SFI (although it is not clear how such a proposal could be formulated,
or whether the two proposals would be likely to be perceived by SFI as
directly competing).

Ideas that were raised but deemed logistically difficult or otherwise
inappropriate included formulating the project to attract funding in the
context of Strand-3 (unclear how to make suitable and unlikely to be able 
to provide funding on the necessary time scale) or Atlantic Philosophies 
(unclear how to make suitable -- would have to construct a telescope near 
the border, thereby formulating a "north--south" project? But then issue 
of finding a site arises again, etc.).

Shortly before the end of the meeting, Garrett raised the idea of building
a phased array rather than a single 32-m dish. An array of several dozen
small satellite-type dishes could yield the same collecting area as the
32-m dish. This could be desirable from the point of view of including an
engineering aspect to the proposal, particularly in the context of preparing
Ireland for potential participation in the SKA project. However, this would
also complicate the radio telescope project and introduce some element of
risk, and may not be logistically feasible due to the lack of existing
required technical expertise in Ireland.

ACTION ITEMS

It was decided to prepare toward making an EU Sixth Framework proposal
to fund some aspects of the radio telescope project, with the required
three countries involved being Ireland, the UK, and the Netherlands (JIVE).
It was decided that Aaron Golden (NUI-Galway) coordinate preparation of the
scientific case for the proposal, since he was heavily involved with the
preparation of the scientific case for the previous radio-telescope
proposals. Interested astronomers from as wide a range of Irish observatories,
universities and institutes should also be involved, and a number of names
were suggested. Diamond also suggested that he could designate Alastair
Gunn to work on this, since he was heavily involved in the preparation
of the proposal for the MERLIN upgrade. 

A small group (Barney Patterson, Susan McKenna-Lawlor and Denise Gabuzda)
was assigned the task of composing a "marketing brochure" to present to
potential sponsors for the radio telescope project in the private or
commercial sectors, and to begin the process of identifying such sponsors
(and other sources of funding subject to the constraint of not competing
with funding for ESO membership).  The first meeting of this group will be 
on Thursday September 19 at the Academy House in Dublin.

A "notional value" of the site is to be estimated by Salters Sterling.

It is somewhat difficult to set definite time lines for future meetings,
etc., but the aim is to be ready to move forward with preparing a Sixth-
Framework proposal shortly after the Call for Proposals comes out, which
is expected to be in late November of December.

Gabuzda as rapporteur is to prepare a report summarizing the meeting for
the Royal Irish Academy. She also agreed to make a brief presentation to
the National Committee for Astronomy and Space Research at the next meeting
of the Committee on Sept. 19 at Academy House in Dublin.