Dear Andrew:

Thanks for your e-mail.

This AO project is extremely critical to our 1.6m New Solar Telescope
(NST), and we really wish that it can be supported. I discussed with other
team members and cut the first year budget from 211K to 56K, and reduced
the total project cost from 373K to 263K. This is done in two parts:

(1) Dr. Deqing Ren, one of the Co-PIs, just obtained a tenure-track
faculty position in California State University, Northridge (they operate
The San Fernando Observatory). He will continue his involvement in NST
project, since the success of the NST will benefit the CSUN observatory
and help him to earn tenure downstream.  He will be physically much closer
to BBSO than he is now. Our proposed project budget is significantly
reduced by deleting his academic year salary, while adding one month of
his summer salary instead.

(2) We will concentrate our effort in optical design and software
development in the first year, and can postpone purchasing of equipment to
the beginning of the second year, along with the building of mechanical
system and setting it up.

In summary, below is the comparison of the difference between the new and
old budgets:

		Year 1 		Year 2 		Total

Old Budget 	211,192 	161,478 	372,670
New Budget 	56,138 		206,472 	262,609

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Haimin