APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 7/16/07 Attending: Suzanne Hawley, Bruce Gillespie, Mark Klaene, Scott Anderson, Remy Indebetouw, Al Harper, Michael Strauss, Russet McMillan, Jon Fulbright, John Bally, Grace Wolf-Chase, Bill Ketzeback Absent: Jon Holtzman Minutes taken by Bruce Gillespie ********************************** User feedback, comments from institutional representatives: Princeton (Strauss) - Michael had nothing to report, except his hopes for improved observing weather. Mark said that the short-term weather forecast is predicting better weather. CU (Bally) - John had nothing to report from the users. There are issues regarding the upcoming NIC-FPS upgrades, namely a potential staffing shortfall at Boulder. A meeting at CU will be held this afternoon to identify people and funding. The IR test dewar for testing the Fabry-Perot has arrived and is being tested. There is a risk that certain key staff will not be available to work on the instrument during the shutdown, and finishing the instrument documentation is also a concern. Mark Klaene mentioned that with the 16-channel read upgrade to the detector, we may experience file-size and site-to-user bandwidth problems. We may need to look into data compression and/or next-day raw data retrieval. A reminder to users: NIC-FPS will be taken off line beginning 26 July for the upgrade work. NMSU (Holtzman) - No report available. Washington (Anderson) - Scott had nothing to report. Suzanne added that she is currently teaching a grad course on observing, and has found that the site user instrumentation documentation is still an issue. The DIS documentation is great, but the other instruments' documentation needs improvement. She also mentioned that if other institutions have observing courses using APO, they should let her know how those are going and if there are any issues that the observatory should address JHU (Fulbright) - Jon said that the recent replacement of the echelle calibration lamp has worked well. Suzanne asked if JHU and Chicago hold observing classes. Al said that UC has an experimental astronomy course that largely deals with instrumentation, not observing, and he would suggest adding an observing course to the curriculum committee. Jon said that JHU treats observer training on an individual basis. Michael said that at Princeton most of the observers are post-docs who get APO-specific training individually at the site. Virginia (Indebetouw) - Remy reported that the UVa users are pleased with their data. They have had installation problems with TUI related to firewalls and libraries [note: institutional system administrators should contact Russell Owen at UW-- rowen@u.washington.edu--for advice on TUI installations]. Remy also said that his users have tried using the new SPIcam/TUI software with mixed results. Russet said that there is still testing to be done that has been thwarted by recent cloudy weather. Chicago (Harper) - Al had nothing to add that wasn't already discussed above. ********************************** Discussion of telescope/instruments report - Klaene: The report is given below; Mark walked through the highlights. The so-called "monsoon" storms have arrived. Jim Davenport is now soloing as a summer fill-in Observing Specialist before he heads off to grad school next month. Bill Ketzeback is back at work, and Jack Dembicky is on family-related leave. The only new thing to report on the telescope is a recent glitch with tertiary mirror rotation, which was discovered last week. The rotation from port to port seems to have been become jerky and intermittent. A loose wire on the rotation drive brake system was discovered and repaired this morning, and subsequent tests so far have shown no motion failures. Further testing will be done, and Russell and Mark will devise a software change to limit the acceleration/speed of the tertiary rotation to protect the mechanicals if this anomaly repeats. Mark reminded us that the summer shutdown is still scheduled from 20 August through 16 September. There is only limited on-sky testing time available at the end of the shutdown, and we are counting on favorable weather in the last few days of the shutdown to re-commission the telescope. Mark reported that Agile is about to have another commissioning run at the telescope. Also, the DIS high-red replacement grating is being tested at JHU prior to delivery to APO and installation. The Lakeshore controller that controls the temperature of the DIS red chip has failed and is under repair. In the meantime users should make sure to take concurrent flats and biases with their DIS-red data, as these may be slightly different than before the Lakeshore failed. For the CIF projects, the instrument rotator parts are in, and Fritz Stauffer and Nick McDonald are visiting engineers at KPNO and Flagstaff to discuss various axis controller and motor questions. For the rebuild of the tertiary mirror mount, we still need to hear from users on requirements for tip-tilt so we can plan the scope of the tertiary mount redesign. Suzanne said we need to hear from users what, if any, are the compelling scientific requirements for tip-tilt are, and what the derived engineering requirements are. Jon Bally said that the CU users want the hooks left in for tip-tilt in the tertiary. Remy asked who do we talk to about tip-tilt. ACTION: Suzanne said that the Users Committee members need to identify which of their users would be willing to contribute effort and participate in a telecon to scope tip-tilt for the 3.5-m, and to communicate their names to her and Bruce Gillespie before 30 July. ************************* 3.5-m Telescope, Instruments, and CIF Projects Highlights, 6/10/07 through 7/5/07 Mark Klaene 0) Overview Monsoonal weather started a little early this year with moderate rain and evening clouds limiting observations for much of the past 2 weeks. The June engineering time was clouded out; however, some in- dome testing of the SPIcam TUI interface and further training of Jim Davenport made the time useful. Bill Ketzeback has returned from his family medical leave. 1) Telescope No significant problems this period. Tracking tuning was not accomplished, but tracking has generally been acceptable, not requiring that we pre-empt observing. The summer shutdown is still on track for August 20 to September 16. The driver is the primary mirror re-aluminization. We have a limited number of days on the sky for recovery; hopefully the weather will cooperate and allow us to return to science on schedule. 2) Instruments Agile is preparing for more commissioning runs at the telescope this month. The fiber interface was working when it left Princeton Instruments. The focal reducer is planned to be completed and ready for commissioning during July. The replacement DIS Red high-resolution grating has been received at JHU for testing. Delivery to the observatory and installation in DIS is expected later this month. The Lakeshore temperature controller failed on both DIS cameras-- repair is in work. This leaves us with no DIS red heater and only the ion pump controllers as a way to gauge temp and vacuum. We replaced the ThAr lamp on the Echelle. Incorporation of SPIcam into TUI has been released to users. Some scripts are still under development. NA2 guider camera had an intermittent network connection failure develop. The cause was traced to a broken network cable. A more flexible cable has been installed. NIC-FPS is scheduled to be taken off line and sent to CU on the 26th of July. Work will include implementing 16-channel readout capability and F-P Etalon installation and testing. 3) Engineering and CIF projects 2007: Rotator upgrades: two machining work orders have been let and the PO for the motor and accessories has been signed. Expect delivery late August. Axis controllers: bench setup has been built and is undergoing testing of the new axis controllers. 2008: Tertiary mounting: discussions are ongoing as to the need for tip/ tilt to be incorporated. Input from the scientific community is required to determine if fast guiding at the tertiary is desired. If interested please let Larry Carey know (lcarey@astro.washington.edu) Direct drives: research into direct drives for the azimuth and altitude drives continues. 4) Miscellaneous Jim Davenport completed his training as a summer fill-in Observing Specialist. Jim will be soloing during the rest of July and August. ********************************** SPIcam/TUI interface - Klaene: The on-sky testing of the new SPIcam/TUI interface has been hampered by bad weather during engineering time. The readout speed is an issue, which is being worked on by Craig Loomis at PU. Russet said that users have been trying it, and bugs are being chased down and tested, but SPIcam is not a frequently scheduled instrument. There are operational workarounds that speed things up, but they need further real-life tests. Suzanne said we greatly appreciate users who are willing to help us test and debug SPIcam/TUI on a shared-risk basis, but users can still use the old system if they prefer. We will continue to work on making the new software the default, but it will depend on how much on-sky testing time we can get over the coming weeks. ********************************** Management changes at APO - Hawley: Suzanne pointed to the recent announcement that Bruce Gillespie has been reassigned to the position of ARC Program Administrator, in which he will act as the AS2 Program Manager and also provide part- time support to her and Rich Kron for the 3.5-m telescope and SDSS- II, respectively. He will continue his role with 3.5-m Users Committee and its constituent institutions through a transitional period during the coming year. Mark Klaene has been promoted to the position of APO Site Operations Manager, and will be increasingly involved with 3.5-m planning and the user community. ********************************** Actions from earlier meetings - group [open from previous months]: none [new actions from this month]: ACTION: Suzanne said that the Users Committee members need to identify which of their users would be willing to contribute effort and participate in a telecon to scope tip-tilt for the 3.5-m, and to communicate their names to her and Bruce Gillespie before 30 July. ********************************** [Suzanne asked me to post this addendum to the minutes]: To members of the 3.5m users community: As documented in recent 3.5m users committee minutes, the NSF has charged a committee (called ReSTAR) with carrying out a survey of the astronomical community to assess the interest in supporting scientific programs on small and moderate sized (less than 6m) telescopes. This comes from the Senior Review report, and the 3rd Telescope Systems Workshop report, both of which highlighted the need for telescopes of this size. Obviously the 3.5m falls into this class. If you have not already done so, please take a moment to go to the ReSTAR web page and provide your input. An NSF program that provides funding for telescopes of this size could be an attractive option for improving our instrumentation and supporting our operations in the future. The committee web page is located at: http://www.noao.edu/system/restar and the form to submit input is linked off that page. The committee will meet next on July 30-31 to consider the input; responses received before then will be most likely to be effective. ********************************** Next meeting: The next Users Committee phonecon will be on Monday, 17 September, at 8:30 AM Pacific Time (There will be no phonecon in August). The 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 1043 in the apo35-general archive. You can find APO the archive on http://www.astro.princeton.edu/APO/apo35-general/INDEX.html APO To join/leave the list, send mail to apo35-request@astro.princeton.edu APO To post a message, mail it to apo35-general@astro.princeton.edu APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO