E-ALFA Organization

Draft principles

• The formation of a survey consortium should provide a framework within which extragalactic HI surveys with ALFA will facilitate large science programs significantly greater in scope and ambition that typical Arecibo observing programs. Such surveys will require a large investment of telescope time and hardware development, manpower resources, planning and management. At the same time, such large projects can derive significant benefit through coordination and standardization along the lines of the HST Treasury and SIRTF Legacy programs. As such, E-ALFA surveys carried out under the consortium paradigm should be governed in a manner that balances both the investment of telescope time with the investment of individuals who carry out the surveys. Both NAIC and the science team will work closely together to insure the success of the science program.

• The fundamental principles that should govern E-ALFA surveys are similar to those developed by the community workshops that led to the SIRTF Legacy Program, namely "to ...
  • Facilitate large coherent science investigations, not reproducible by any reasonable number of combination of smaller [general investigator] programs
  • Yield projects whose scientific data, upon archiving, are of general and lasting importance to the broad community
  • Produce basic calibrated data that enter the public domain immediately, thereby enabling timely and effective opportunities for follow-on observations and for archival research..."
    (M. Bicay, HST Treasury Workshop presentation)

• The objectives of the consortium or survey team therefore should be:
  • To achieve the maximum science goals
  • To have the broadest possible scientific impact
  • To make the best use of the telescope and available resources
  • To engage the broadest community of researchers
  • To provide the best education and training for students and their teachers
  • To raise the broadest level of public interest

• The operational principles which define the function of a "consortium" are:
  • To plan, execute and manage the survey observations on behalf of the larger community
  • To coordinate the survey for maximum efficiency and maximum impact
  • To contribute expertise, software and documentation to NAIC in concert with the Observatory's efforts on behalf of the consortium.
  • To deliver standardized, robust, high quality data products that enable further research

• Two important factors will have a significant yet uncertain impact on the development of E-ALFA survey teams:
  • The lack of spectrometer capabability when ALFA becomes operational will negate the immediate undertaking of some of the E-ALFA survey projects under consideration.
  • Competition with the other science "consortia" (P-ALFA and G-ALFA) will encourage optimization and compromise. In some cases, piggybacking may expedite the allocation of telescope time but will also very likely introduce inefficiencies at some level.