AAL is celebrating the signing of agreements to build the southern component of the world's largest Gamma-Ray Observatory near the Paranal site of the European Southern Observatory in Chile.

The Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO) will comprise the Chile site and a second array in La Palma, in the Canary Islands. The gamma-rays it observes are produced by some of the hottest and most violent events in the universe, including supermassive black holes, supernovae and even the Big Bang itself.

Australian scientists, supported by AAL  are involved in developing instrumentation for the array's Small Size Telescopes, and are heavily involved in the CTA Consortium which directs the science goals of the observatory.

AAL is a shareholder, and Australian representative, in CTAO gGmbH, the company managing the observatory's pre-construction. For more information on this exciting development see the CTAO press release.

In July 2018, AAL took over responsibility for allocating time on the Anglo-Australian Telescope (AAT) from the former Australian Astronomical Observatory, on behalf of the new AAT Consortium. The Call for Proposals in Semester 2019A (for observing time in the period Feb-July 2019) was issued in Sep 2018, and a total of 18 proposals was received, including one Large Program request. The Australian Time Allocation Committee (ATAC) met at AAO-Macquarie on 1 and 2 Nov 2018 to discuss and rank the proposals. The AAT observing schedule for Semester 2019A was released on 3 Dec 2018, and feedback provided to all ATAC applicants at that time.

Some points to note from this semester:

• Bright time was more oversubscribed than dark time. While this made scheduling programs easier, this is likely to be only a temporary situation following the decommissioning of the SAMI instrument in preparation for the arrival of the Hector instrument in 2019/20.
• The new Veloce precision radial velocity spectrograph received 58 nights, HERMES 52 nights, and AAOmega + 2dF 33 nights. The visiting HIPPI-2 polarimeter received a further 17 nights.
• Several nights have been set aside to allow for realuminising of the primary mirror, as well as repairs to the dome windscreen mechanisms.
• A total of 3 nights were awarded to OPTICON Horizon 2020 Trans-national access programs, and 5 nights to US National Optical Astronomy Observatories AAT-Blanco time exchange programs.
• The GALAH Survey was awarded long term status, with a total of 70 nights in Semesters 2019A + 2019B.
  

AAL would like to thank the ATAC members, AAO-Macquarie astronomers, and AAT operations staff at Siding Spring Observatory for their assistance with the Semester 2019A time allocation and scheduling process. The next Call for AAT proposals in Semester 2019B will be issued in early-March 2019.

AAL welcomes new AAL Board Director, Dr Sarah Pearce, after her appointment by the AAL Members at our 2018 AGM. Sarah is Deputy Director of CSIRO Astronomy and Space Science, and is involved in both the Square Kilometre Array and the newly formed Australian Space Agency.

AAL also congratulate Prof Rachel Webster and Dr Rosalind Dubs on their reappointment to the Board. Rachel and Rosalind will continue in their respective roles as Chair and Deputy Chair, to be reviewed at the February 2019 meeting of the AAL Board.

We are also delighted to announce the recruitment of Dr Lucyna Kedziora-Chudczer as a Program Manager at AAL. Lucyna brings a wealth of experience in astronomy research and knowledge of the Australian astronomical community. She has worked for astronomy groups at CSIRO, AAO, USyd, WSU and UNSW over the past three decades, been a user of a range of facilities including optical, radio and computing infrastructure, and been Chair of the Astronomy Decadal Plan 2006-2015 Working Group on university facilities. Lucyna will join the AAL Sydney office, starting in January 2019.