Government told to help astronomers share, not compete

The United States government should focus on sharing telescopes rather than creating bigger facilities to get the best results from astronomy research, the National Research Council has said.

Astronomers in the US need to figure out how to share resources better in order to achieve the goals set out in the most recent decadal survey of astronomy and astrophysics released in 2010, according to a report from the NRC.

“The difficulty is that we keep building bigger and bigger telescopes, both federal and private, with less and less resources to keep everything going,” says astronomer Debra Elmegreen, the chairwoman of the committee that wrote the report.