Bibcode
Grigore, Valentin; Minti, Harry; Vaduvescu, Ovidiu
Bibliographical reference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO6QvXKCPoo (Romanian title: Noi si cerul: Telerom (1))
Advertised on:
6
2011
Citations
0
Refereed citations
0
Description
The TV broadcast discusses problems of the modernization of the Romanian
astronomical infrastructure, the worst in Eastern Europe. It presents the
TELEROM project which proposed to establish a new EU-funded robotic 1,3 m
telescope, a project finally rejected by the Astronomical Institute of the
Romanian Academy mainly due to the incompetence of the director of this
Institute, Dr. Vasile Mioc. It is mentioned that this was the second very
promising project failed under the same director, after the project ASTEROS in
value of 15 million Euro to establish two modern telescopes was also lost in
the recent years. The total cost of the TELEROM project was 1,5 million Euro,
according to the agreement with the EU foundation for Regional Development
(director Hanns Ruder Institut für Theoretische Astrophysik,
Universität Tübingen, Germany - the TELEROM auto-dimissed project
director). The facilities from this implementation were very promising in
observations of Solar system objects (asteroids, near Earth asteroids,
comets), few hundred millions of faint stars, quasars, exoplanets and galaxies.
Initially, the director Vasile Mioc and the governing body of the Romanian
Astronomical Institute intended to place the telescope in Romania in very bad
astroclimatic conditions, namely in the old Feleac observatory, very close to
the very highly polluted and quite clouded city of Cluj-Napoca. Many opposite
considerations (Dr. Marian Doru Suran from Bucharest, many Romanian
astronomers from the Diaspora and a group of 68 astronomers, professors,
public outreach people and students from Romania and Diaspora supporting
TELEROM) were totally disregarded! Due to refuse to place the telescope in
very good astroclimatic conditions (in Canary Islands or Chile) and also due
to the impossibility to establish a decent national astronomical observatory
in Romania by the direction of the Institute in agreement with the State body
of Romania ("Academia Romana" and "Autoritatea Nationala pentru Cercetare")
the TELEROM project was finally rejected and its funding was lost, after 10
months of discussions and granted funding! Other problems, such as the
proliferation of the astrology between Romanian professional astronomers, a
reduced weight of physicists between Romanian professional astronomers in
comparison with mathematicians, as well as very reduced issue from the
professional Romanian astronomers in international journals in the last years
and the intellectual theft of publications have been also discussed in this 4
TV series presented by the weekly astronomy show "We and the Sky" of Columna
TV (in Romanian).