APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 1/22/07 Attending: Suzanne Hawley, Bruce Gillespie, Michael Strauss, Scott Anderson, Jon Holtzman, Russet McMillan, John Bally Absent: Don York, Rene Walterbos, Remy Indebetouw, John Fulbright, Al Harper Minutes taken by Bruce Gillespie ********************************** User feedback, comments from institutional representatives: Princeton (Strauss) - Michael said that the PU users are wishing for better weather. There is some frustration users have had with the user documentation at the APO website. Suzanne mentioned that Gabrelle Saurage has been enlisted to produce a basic users manual for each instrument, and is working these with help from Jon Holtzman and Jack Dembicky. The DIS manual is ready to go, and users are invited to go look at it and give us comments; see http:// www.apo.nmsu.edu/35m_operations/35m_manual/Instruments/instrument% 20guides/disbasicusersguide.htm JHU (Fulbright) - no report Chicago (Harper) - no report Washington (Anderson) - Scott said that there had been UW users concerned with the DIS cal lamps issue (see telescope report) and with the problems with the DIS slit view camera shutter. NMSU (Holtzman) - Jon said that "stray light" has recently been seen in DIS images. We're trying to confirm that it is caused by the CCD heater, which was recently turned back on when we installed the new red CCD. Virginia (Indebetouw) - no report Colorado (Bally) - John reported that he's recently used DIS with the new red CCD, and that he's seen that the fringing is greatly improved. ********************************** Discussion of telescope/instruments report: The report is given below. ************************* 3.5-m Telescope, Instruments, and CIF Projects Highlights, 11/23/06 through 1/18/07 Bruce Gillespie 0) Overview Winter weather has returned to the area, and the associated cloudiness has frustrated several observing programs. But whenever conditions have allowed, the staff and equipment were able to eke out good science data. The good highlight for the period was the successful installation of the new deep-depletion CCD for the red camera of DIS--the new chip appears to have good sensitivity and much reduced fringing in the deep red spectrum. The biggest trouble we have had is an unreliable shutter in the DIS slitviewer. 1) Telescope Other than routine maintenance, not much happened with the telescope during the holidays, and it performed very well. Some tuning of the drive servos was done to improve tracking performance, and a new version of TUI is being site-tested prior to release to the users. 2) Instruments DIS: Now that the DIS upgrade project is substantially complete, we have found that the improved sensitivity and performance at both ends of the spectrum has uncovered shortcomings in our lamp calibration system. Our arc lamps have inadequate lines (mainly in the UV) and the flat-field lamps have inadequate intensity. We also will need decent arc lamps for TripleSpec later this year. We have decided to undertake an overall study of the lamp calibration system requirements for the telescope and all instruments, and plan to invest in some new lamps, optics, and flat-field reflecting surface (on the mirror covers) during the course of the year. Throughput measurements of DIS were made, showing substantial improvement in both the UV and red parts of the spectrum. The new R1200 grating was damaged during handling while the grating tilt was being adjusted. We have kludge-reinstalled the grating, but are going to replace it anyway. The DIS slitviewer camera shutter became balky during the cold weather. We have replaced the shutter and modified the ventilation around the camera to keep it warmer during the winter, but are also looking into shutterless operation of the camera. NIC-FPS: Stephane Beland is coming to APO next week to look into recently reported problems with the camera controller. 3) Engineering and CIF projects Work continues on TripleSpec, heading for a delivery to the site possibly this summer. A plan to modify the NA2 instrument rotator is underway, and a design requirements discussion was held for a future CIF project to rebuild the tertiary mount and actuators. We have also started work on upgrading the telescope drive controllers to make them perform better and be maintainable. 4) Miscellaneous Nick McDonald began work as the new 3.5-m Telescope Systems Engineer, refilling the post Jon Davis vacated last year. ********************************** Discussion of new site software protocols - group: Suzanne asked how the new password and security protocols were working out for the users. Everybody said they were OK. Scott said that he was aware of problems people were having ftp-ing their data from APO, some kind of timeout problem breaking the connection. It wasn't immediately clear which end of the connection was causing this problem, so Bruce will get Fritz to talk to Scott to try to work this out. ********************************** Discussion on fast guiding, rotator upgrade - group: Suzanne gave a short report on the NA2 instrument rotator upgrade project, planned for this year, which is being done in order to fix long-standing problems with the rotator and to give it better capacity to handle TripleSpec. We plan for a PDR in early April, and the design work is being done by Mike Carr at Princeton. On fast guiding, we are looking at this (again) partly because we're starting the redesign of the tertiary mirror mount and actuator system, and are wondering if tip-tilt provisions should be built in. Instead of using the tertiary, it could be possible that a low-bandwidth tip- tilt capability could be implemented at the 2ndary mirror, now that the new top end is giving us better mechanical mount stiffness. But would it be worth it? Apocryphal reports from people at other telescope suggest that tip-tilt offers only modest image quality improvements. We will explore this some more, and welcome any comments from our users on the tip-tilt issue. ********************************** Agile update - Hawley: Agile, the high-speed photometer being built by Anjum Makadum, has its commissioning run scheduled for mid-March. All the parts are in hand, and Russell Owen and Ed Mannery are helping with the s/w and h/ w. It's possible that Agile could be available for shared-risk use in Q2 2007, depending on how the commissioning run goes. ********************************** Actions from earlier meetings - group [open from previous months]: None [new actions from last month]: ACTION: Rene to collect history of 3.5-m publications, and Bruce will make a space for them on the APO website. STATUS: Rene and Bruce are working on this, and it may be possible to use the list Don York has produced for the ARC Futures document. This list is presently being vetted for accuracy. ********************************** Next meeting: The next Users Committee phonecon will be on Monday, 26 February, at 8:30 AM Pacific Time. Agenda and other materials will be sent to the committee members during the preceding week. APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 1009 in the apo35-general archive. 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