Speaker
Description
For a number of years there have been contacts and representations made by the Astronomy community towards industry in respect of preserving the night sky for science and general appreciation. A nucleus of this effort is the International Astronomical Union Centre for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky (IAU-CPS). The CPS provides observation capability for operators and has been used successfully in that way to support brightness modelling and to validate RF downlink coordination strategies. Furthermore a wide range of resources are available to allow industry to brief themselves. The CPS Industry and Technology Hub allows industry to interact in a non judgemental environment with the Astronomy community and to a limited extent, with each other to share solutions. The CPS offers an 'Astronomer Guide' programme where a single knowledgeable astronomer is paired with an industry player to provide confidential consultancy. There are many other industry-science interactions outside the framework of the IAU-CPS, particularly in connection with licensing, and examples of this will also be discussed.
The CPS is a partnership between the IAU, NOIRLab, the US National Science Foundation institute responsible for US investments in optical and infrared astronomy, the Square Kilometer Array Observatory, the 14 nation radioastronomy intergovernmental organisation (IGO) and the European Southern Observatory, a 16 member state astronomy IGO. All three partners have industry partnerships in relation to their own programmes.