Management, Operations and Maintenance of the International Gemini Observatory

NSF’s National Optical-Infrared Astronomy Research Laboratory (NSF’s NOIRLab) is the U.S. national center for ground-based nighttime optical astronomy. NOIRLab includes the International Gemini Observatory, the Kitt Peak National Observatory, the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, operations of Vera C. Rubin Observatory, and the Community Science and Data Center (CSDC).

This award supports management, operations and maintenance of these facilities for five years, 2023-2027. The award supports preparations for the launch of Rubin Observatory and the first three years of Rubin’s ten-year Legacy Survey in Space and Time (LSST). Gemini is operated by NSF in collaboration with its international partners in Canada, Brazil, Argentina, the Republic of Korea, and Chile.

Rubin is operated jointly with the Department of Energy. NOIRLab will also continue and further develop an ambitious program of communication, education, and outreach activities. NOIRLab communicates the wonders of astronomy through its facilities, technology and people.

NOIRLab engages with the public locally through a range of face-to-face activities in Hawai’i, Chile and Arizona, and on a national and indeed international level through on-line publications, educational resources, and citizen-science projects. Through its telescopes, instruments and software services, NOIRLab supports over 400 graduate thesis projects and of order 550 non-thesis graduate students each year. On a yearly basis, NOIRLab facilities generate data for more than 700 scientific papers.

NOIRLab's vision is to be the preeminent laboratory for research in modern ground-based optical-infrared (OIR) astronomy, supporting a diverse community of scientists spread across all 50 states through the entire research life cycle. NSF’s goal is to create in NOIRLab a national resource that will lead the world in data-intensive astronomy, drive exploration of the new frontiers in time-domain astronomy and multi-messenger astrophysics, maximize science return from Rubin Observatory, and provide a foundation for all U.S. scientists to make full use of potential future Extremely Large Telescopes in the 2030s and beyond.

For the science community NOIRLab provides access to state-of-the-art instrumentation on large (8-meter mirror diameter) and medium-sized or “mid-scale” (approximately 4-meter diameter) OIR telescopes to enable research in all areas of astronomy. NOIRLab also provide a national focus for the development of research and educational partnerships with universities, other NSF-funded research disciplines, other funding agencies, and international communities.

Over the next five years NOIRLab will continue to operate and develop the 4-meter Blanco and SOuthern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) telescopes in Chile and the twin 8-meter Gemini telescopes in Hawai’i and Chile. NOIRLab will support pre-operations of Rubin leading to commissioning in 2024 and the launch of LSST shortly thereafter. Rubin will undoubtedly revolutionize modern astronomy through its extensive survey of the southern skies but also by releasing millions of time domain alerts every night.

Rubin, working in concert with the other NOIRLab telescopes and with software and archival support from CSDC, will have a significant impact on all of the priority science areas identified in the recent National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine (NASEM) decadal survey in Astronomy and Astrophysics, Pathways to Discovery in Astronomy & Astrophysics for the 2020s (Astro2020).

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.