In January 1998 the Board of Directors of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope
(CFHT) appointed the NGC (Next Generation CFHT) Committe to explore the question
of a refurbishment or upgrading of the existing 3.6m telescope on Mauna Kea.
The charge to the committee was:
(1) to provide a prediction of the most important scientific questions that
the astronomical community will want to address in the period beginning 2010
and a description of the type of facility needed to address such questions.
(2) to project what the worldwide situation for ground- and space-based
observing facilities in the year 2010 will be and how a new CFHT could
fit into this overall context.
(3) to provide one or preferably several proposed concepts for the new
CFHT. For each concept the committee was asked to provide an outline of the
scientific objectives which the facility could achieve together with a
description of the basic performance specifications which the facility
would need to meet in order to achieve these objectives.
The committee decided early on to expend its energy on the scientific questions and not to consider too deeply what could be afforded, what technological capabilities might be needed to build a particular instrument (as long as no true technological breakthroughs were required) or what the political implications of a particular choice would be.
The first committee meeting was held in Vancouver, BC at the University of British Columbia on April 23 - 24, 1998 with all committee members in attendance. A report of that meeting together with preliminary findings of the committee were presented at the CFHT users meeting in Quebec City May 18 - 20. Most committee members were present at the users meeting and discussion with the wider CFHT community ensued. A second meeting was held in Toronto at the University of Toronto July 3 - 4, 1998 with 3 committee members unable to attend. Roberto Gilmozzi, chair of the ESO OWL (OverWhelmingly Large) Telescope project was in attendance and provided scientific, technical and financial information on the ESO work. An early draft of the NGC committee's report was discussed at this meeting. A final meeting was held between the co-chairs on September 14 - 15, 1998 in Rome where the report was completed, then submitted to the Board of CFHT on September 21, 1998. Based on feedback from both the Board and the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) of CFHT some revisions were made to the report and it was resubmitted to CFHT in time for the December 1998 Board meeting.
In preparation for these various meetings 7 committee members attended the SPIE meeting in Kona, Hawaii in March 1998 whose theme was ``Telescopes of the Future''. All members presented reports at the NGC committee meetings in their scientific areas of speciality indicating where their field was likely to be in the year 2010 as well as on technical aspects related to specific telescopes and their instrumentation. The current report is a distillation of these presentations to which has been added comments and ideas from the several open discussions.