Designing the Community Infrastructure for ESO's Next Transformational Facility. Equitable Governance and Sustainable Teams for 2040s Astronomy
Annagrazia Puglisi (University of Southampton, UK), Amelia Bayo (ESO Garching, Germany), Laurane Freour (University of Vienna, Austria), Daniela Iglesias (University of Leeds, UK), Akhil Krishna (Indian Institute of Astrophysics, India), Fatemeh Zahra Majidi (INAF-Capodimonte

TL;DR
This paper discusses the importance of designing equitable, sustainable community governance structures for future large-scale astronomical facilities to ensure long-term scientific and societal benefits.
Contribution
It introduces a framework for embedding equitable access and participation as core design principles in the development of next-generation astronomical infrastructure.
Findings
Identifies key community challenges for 2040s astronomy facilities.
Proposes integrating access and participation as fundamental design parameters.
Emphasizes long-term sustainability and societal impact.
Abstract
The scientific ambitions of the 2040s will require large, interdisciplinary teams operating across continents, institutions, and increasingly heterogeneous political and funding landscapes. While significant effort is devoted to advancing the technical capabilities of future astronomical facilities, frameworks for coordinating and sustaining the associated community systems are often developed in parallel rather than embedded as coherent, long-term structures at the scale needed to fully realise this ambition. In this white paper, submitted as part of the ESO Expanding Horizons initiative, we draw on experience from established observatories and emerging collaborations to identify key community-level challenges. We argue that a central and transversal scientific challenge for the 2040s is to operate a flagship observatory in which access to telescope time, data, leadership, training,…
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Taxonomy
TopicsAstronomy and Astrophysical Research · History and Developments in Astronomy · Adaptive optics and wavefront sensing
