AAS 205th Meeting, 9-13 January 2005
Session 35 HAD II: Observatories, Toys and Genesis
Oral, Monday, January 10, 2005, 10:00-11:30am, Pacific Salon 1

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[35.02] Productivity and Impact of Large Optical Telescopes

V. Trimble (U California, Irvine)

The advent of HST and 8-meter mirrors has considerably changed the pattern of publication and paper citations in optical astronomy. Comparison is made between the 1163 papers published January 1990 - June 1991 and the 2100 published in 2001, cited in each case in the next two years. Among the results (a) HST is an alpha male primate, though perhaps only 400 lbs rather than 500 lbs, (b) the 4-meter IR telescopes are more than holding their own, though the optical ones are not, (c) there are fashionable topics with many citations per paper (cosmology), and less fashionable ones (binary stars), and (d) more than half the papers from 2001 dealt with topics not generally regarded as drivers for the next generation of Humongous Optical Telescopes.


The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: vtrimble@astro.umd.edu

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