CEDAR email: Arecibo Observatory White Paper Endorsement

[Jens Lautenbach]

Dear member of the CEDAR community,

The Arecibo Observatory (AO) staff, together with members of the scientific community, prepared the white paper "The Future of the Arecibo Observatory: The Next Generation Arecibo Telescope," which presents a proposal to replace the legacy 305-m Arecibo telescope with a new, unparalleled instrument that will push forward the boundaries of the Planetary Science, Space and Atmospheric Sciences, and Astronomy for decades to come. The science requirements presented in the white paper were established from discussions with the community that is in overwhelming agreement on the need to build an enhanced, next-generation radar-radio telescope at the AO site.

This white paper will be presented to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and will be shared this month with key stakeholders from both private and public sectors to request support for the construction of the Next Generation Arecibo Telescope (NGAT). The NGAT concept presented here is not intended to be final, but it lays the groundwork for engineering and optical studies to begin.

The community support of this white paper is a crucial factor in the future of AO. Thus, we kindly ask you to sign this form of endorsement for the white paper and to share it with your colleagues (and students) in the science community. Our goal is to collect the majority of endorsements by February 10th.

  *   To access this White Paper and more related information, click here: The Next Generation Telescope  White Paper< The%20Next%20Generation%20Telescope %20White%20Paper> (http://www.naic.edu/ao/ngat)
  *   To endorse this white paper, click here: The Future of Arecibo Endorsement Form<https://forms.gle/uKPF36H3mBwiizrY9>

My apologizes if you have received this email multiple times; we are reaching out to as many members of the scientific community as possible.

Sincerely,

Dr. Noemí Pinilla-Alonso

Deputy Principal Scientist of the Arecibo Observatory

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