Skies dim for British astronomers

British astronomers will lose access to two of the world's finest telescopes in February due to a government funding shortfall, reports the BBC.

The Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), which looks after UK astronomy funding, has signalled that formal notice to withdraw from the Gemini organisation - the consortium that runs two of the biggest, most-modern optical-infrared reflecting telescopes in the world - would be issued shortly, as it seeks to plug a large hole in its budget.

The STFC's problems have emerged out of the government's latest spending round, which has left the council short of £80m in the three-year budget plan to 2011.

This is an amount equivalent to just five days worth of money the government is, however, prepared to shower on the audit-failing and wasteful EU.

The result will be that British astronomers will no longer view the Northern Hemisphere sky with the largest class of telescope.

To manage its way out of this crisis, the STFC has announced its intention to close certain programmes and cut research grants. Science societies and union officials have warned the damage to UK physics and astronomy will be incalculable and will lead to hundreds of job losses.

Researchers say they are aghast at the administrators' decision.

Professor Paul Crowther from Sheffield University said: "To withdraw from the state-of-the-art Gemini facilities leaves the UK ground-based astronomy strategy in disarray - some would say deliberately sabotaged."

"This will badly affect the UK astronomical community's ability to address questions such as how galaxies form, or look for planets around other stars, or be able to adequately exploit space observatories such as the Hubble Space Telescope," explained the current chair of the UK telescope allocation committee for Gemini.

"The loss of Gemini North is particularly acute, since the majority of the UK past investment has been focused upon the Northern Hemisphere," he told BBC News.

In future, the only way British astronomers can look at the Northern Hemisphere sky with the largest class of telescope is if they are working on projects with co-researchers whose national funding agencies are sponsors of one of these facilities.

Those MPs who voted to approve the recent 63% increase in our contributions to the EU, despite no end to the EU's annual audit failures, are the ones responsible for this problem.

Doubtless the EU could live without our contributions for just five days, so we can save the £80m required and our international scientific reputation. But those politicians have now made their irresponsible and short-sighted decision to give the money to the EU instead. And we can now only cast our verdict on that decision at the ballot box, come the next general election.