Astronomers are fighting to save the 12-Meter Telescope at Arizona's Kitt Peak from closure at the end of July. The National Radio Astronomy Observatory hopes to save about $2 million by mothballing the telescope — the only millimetre-wavelength facility available to all US astronomers.

The observatory operates the telescope for a consortium of universities (see Nature 404, 7; 2000). But the University of Arizona in Tucson and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst joined forces with dozens of astronomers late last month to develop a proposal to keep it operational.

Millimetre-wavelength telescopes are used to examine the early phases of star formations in supercold molecular clouds. For instance, researchers using the 12-Meter Telescope recently discovered deuterium (a form of hydrogen) in the Milky Way (Ludowich, D. A. et al. Nature 405, 1025–1027; 2000).

Astronomers from Arizona and Massachusetts met last week with the National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns the facility. “The astronomy community is working very diligently to come up with a solution,” says James Breckinridge, an NSF astronomy programme manager.

Later this month, the universities plan to submit an interim proposal to the NSF to operate the telescope with the agency. To begin operations on 1 August, the two universities have secured a $150,000 donation from Research Corp., a Tucson-based non-profit-making corporation.

The NSF will decide later this month what will happen on 31 July when the telescope is due to shut down. The astronomers are also writing a three-year research plan, to be sent to the NSF later this year.

A joint US–Mexican project is under way to build a millimetre-wavelength telescope with a 50-metre dish in Mexico. But this will not come into operation until 2003.