I am dismayed with the outcome of the Comprehensive Spending Review. Last year, the government established the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) with the stated aim of allowing the UK to compete more effectively in the design and operation of major facilities. We now find that at the first opportunity to fulfil this aim, exactly the opposite will happen.

My research field is in astrophysics and I have been involved in the design, construction and operation of the Gemini Observatory since moving to Oxford in 1989. Over this period, the UK, through the Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC), has invested more than 80million pounds to produce a world competitive facility with key capabilities, supporting many of the UK's highest priority astronomical research. I have just learnt that the UK may be forced to withdraw from Gemini as part of a package of measures to find savings within the STFC budget, effectively wasting this investment just as the Observatory reaches its true potential and maximum productivity. (see: http://www.scitech.ac.uk/About/Strat/Council/gemini.aspx).

If this withdrawal does take place, it will have a severe impact on our research programmes, removing UK access to world-leading large aperture telescopes in the Northern hemisphere and undermining many of the highest priority projects such as the search for exoplanets and the quest to understand Dark Energy. It will severely damage our reputation as reliable and effective collaborators in the operation of large international facilities. It will also have a direct impact on the Gemini support group based in the Physics Department at Oxford University and will have substantial repercussions in astronomy and astronomical instrumentation groups elsewhere in the UK and in our partner countries. This is a disastrous start to the STFC, and one which it will be difficult to recover from.

What is particularly galling is that I understand that the need for these savings arises not from the astronomy programme that had been stewarded by PPARC, but through large overspends on the other parts of the programme that were merged with PPARC to form the STFC.

I regret to say that the outcome from the CSR for astronomy is proving to be a disaster and that the UK science programme will be severely damaged by this.

I would be grateful if you would alert your colleagues to these consequences.

Yours sincerely,

P.F. Roche