Large Telescopes and the Moral Economy of Recent Astronomy

Abstract

If they are successfully to carry out a research programme, astronomers need two crucial resources - access to telescopes, and sufficient time allocated on them to make observations and collect data. This paper employs the concept of the `moral economy' - the unwritten expectations and traditions that regulate and structure a community - as an analytical model to examine how astronomers and science managers allocate resources. I use the example of the Gemini 8-Meter Telescopes Project, a recently completed pair of large telescopes in Hawaii and Chile, as a vehicle to explore the moral economy of contemporary astronomy. Paying particular attention to the early years of the project (1987-92), I describe plans to build a new telescope facility for the entire US astronomy community, against the backdrop of the institutional, political and financial forces that shape national and international astronomy. By focusing on the process through which astronomers moved the Gemini telescope project from abstract blueprints and budgets into glass and steel, I examine themes such as access, equity, control and authority in contemporary science.