APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 5/09/11 Attending: Suzanne Hawley, Mark Klaene, Michael Strauss, Bill Ketzeback, Scott Anderson, Sean Moran, Jon Holtzman, Cynthia Froning (for John Bally), Russet McMillan, and Bruce Gillespie Absent: Al Harper, Remy Indebetouw ********************************** User feedback and comments from institutional representatives: o Washington (Scott Anderson) - Scott said that one of the UW users is interested in an exposure time calculator for the echelle. This was discussed later in the agenda. o Colorado (Cynthia Froning) - Cynthia mentioned a user question about a night log reporting a successful observing night when the primary instrument scheduled was unavailable. This was discussed later in the agenda. o Johns Hopkins (Sean Moran) - Sean had nothing to report. o New Mexico State (Jon Holtzman) - Jon had nothing to report. o Princeton (Michael Strauss) - Michael had nothing to report. o Virginia (Remy Indebetouw) - no report. o Chicago (Al Harper) - no report. ********************************** Discussion of telescope/instruments report - Klaene: Mark mentioned the highlights from the past few weeks. This period was charactized as windy, dusty, no rain, but with generally good observing conditions. "Full" closure of the Lincoln Nat'l Forest is expected to be enacted later this week; access to and operations at APO will be relatively unaffected, unless an actual fire situation near the observatory or roads leading to it develops. The telescope has behaved well, but there is a problem with the Shack-Hartmann instrument for which there is a remediation plan to replace its camera -- this is an engineering instrument, so the problem is transparent to the science users of the telescope. The DIS blue vacuum ion pump failed and was replaced with a spare. After the ion pump replacement, the cryotiger recovery has so far not been great, which is typical and is being watched. The Agile rotator problem was traced to its brake, and was fixed by adjustment. It was also discovered that the clamps that hold TripleSpec on the rotator don't work perfectly when the instrument is upside down; a clamp adjustment and redesign is underway. The echelle camera dewar was pumped. The NIC-FPS electronics problem is still with us, and we hope this will be fixed in late June when the instrument goes back to CU. The GFP upgrade project resumes in early June. Mark's detailed report for the last month follows: ************************* 3.5-m Telescope, Instruments, and CIF Projects Highlights 4/1/11 through 5/5/11 0) Overview Dry and windy spring weather continues. The USFS enacted stage 2 restrictions, prohibiting all burning and campfires. We expect full forest closure later this week. This should only affect folks wanting to walk in the forest. We had a number of severe wind events with speeds running near 60+ mph. The good news is the intensity and frequency of these usually drops in May. A few partial nights were lost due to wind and/or dust. No major fires have occurred near the observatory. A couple of fires more than 40 miles away did send smoke over us, most of which dissipated by the end of twilight. Fire prevention work around the observatory continues as we expect hot and dry weather to continue and the possibility dry lightning in June. 1) Telescope The telescope continues to operate routinely with minimal problems during this period. Some initial summer preventive maintenance work has been performed. Fritz is working on a new method to map the fiducials on the az/alt axis to improve blind pointing. The Shack-Hartmann camera controller failed and a new camera and controller has been purchased. We will be replacing the Apogee camera with a new SBIG camera. 2) Instruments DIS performed well this period until an unplanned Blue camera warm up. The warm up was due to a failed ION pump which was quickly replaced. Unfortunately restarting the cryotiger delayed getting the camera back on line. The instrument has been available with the Red camera only since the Blue camera went down. There was some confusion the first night on getting the Red camera only to read out but that was corrected for subsequent nights. The Blue camera now appears to be working again. During engineering we removed the slit-viewer assembly to investigate new mounting options and replacing the camera and optics. SPICam operated with no new issues. Agile spontaneous aborts appear to be behind us. The mechanical installation of a brake on the rotator is substantially complete. A recent rotator failure has occurred despite our belief that this issue was fixed. Investigation as to the cause is continuing. A Triplespec problem has surfaced where the instrument comes off the kinematic mounts slightly when rotated upside down. No effect on science has been reported and the instrument safety is not at risk. A temporary solution to adjust the clamps is in work, and new clamps are being investigated. The Echelle's vacuum was serviced during engineering. Chip temperature has returned to normal. The interorder light is good but slightly degraded from before pump down. A problem with ecam running during guiding has been worked on but still is showing up occasionally and work continues on this. The NIC-FPS problem of spontaneous reset of the Leach controller when rotated upside down still exists. Users are advised to start their observations at specific recommended rotation angles, depending on sky position, to avoid tracking upside down. See last month's minutes and/or the instrument manual on the APO website for more information. There is also a software alert in place that should trigger if an image is bad. We plan to send the instrument back to CU in late June so the problem can be addressed during the summer shutdown. GFP upgrade work will resume in June. ********************************** Night logs - Hawley: Recently, the DIS blue camera vacuum ion pumped failed without warning, and the instrument was taken out of service with only a few hours notice. The scheduled users were able to invoke a backup program that used SPIcam, and observations were made. The night log reported that the night was used, even though the primary program using DIS was not successful. A user later asked how we reconcile situations like this, i.e., how can the night be successful if the primary program failed. Suzanne said that the telescope use and logging tools definitions for a usable night have always been such that if the telescope collected data, the night was considered useful (we do not use the word successful in the night logs), and no value judgement is applied to the science. (Note that this also applies to the much more frequent case of less than perfect weather - if the weather was good enough to be open and observing, we log the time as used.) At one time in the past, we tried a policy where the PIs of the observing programs were requested to write a short summary assessment of the night's observing, which would be appended to the night logs. This was discontinued because the PIs were largely reluctant to provide any feedback. Without this input from the PIs, we have no tools for evaluating the quality of the results of observing time when the telescope is used on the sky. We want to take this opportunity to remind users that they should always come to the telescope with a backup program using a different instrument for the rare case that their primary instrument is unavailable (and in general with backup programs for poor weather). In cases of instrument failure, it has been our policy to try to recompense the affected programs with upcoming OPEN/DD time, which is usually possible and was done in this case. There followed a discussion by several committee members that indicated that people feel that our system seems to work well and is quite flexible. ********************************** Exposure time calculators - Hawley: A user has proposed that an exposure calculator be provided for the echelle. We should consider doing this for all instruments. There is an exposure graph/table for the echelle on our website, but it is not easily found and there are some questions about it. But the committee felt that exposure calculators would be useful tools for observers, and their development would be a good project for interested members of the observing community with assistance from APO staff to provide the necessary instrument parameters. This led to an action item for the committee: ===> ACTION: User committee members to try to find users who would be interested in helping develop exposure calculators. ********************************** Q3 schedule - Klaene, Hawley: The summer shutdown will run from 5 - 27 July, with the main work being the realuminization of the primary mirror at Kitt Peak. There will be a brief engineering period in August for cleanup items. NIC-FIPS will hopefully be back at APO in late July and available after the shutdown. There is a UW class trip to APO 11-15 August. Housing is tight at APO this summer -- a number of people are at the site for the SDSS-III APOGEE commissioning and other 2.5-m summer work, and NSO housing at Sunspot has dried up because of the many people being brought there to work on the ATST project. If any institutions are planning trips to the site this summer, please contact us as soon as possible to facilitate accomodation schedules. ********************************** Final word on logging scripts - Ketzeback: Bill said that there are now scripts on Newton that match guider images with the nearest science images, for all instruments. See the link below, and this will also be announced to apo35-general. We invite feedback from users. http://users.apo.nmsu.edu/~bketzeba/ObsTools/Guiders/match.html ********************************** ReSTAR proposal update - Holtzman: We received a letter from NOAO that our ReSTAR collaborative proposal was accepted. We are invited to be part of an NOAO proposal to NSF for ReSTAR funding that would allow NOAO to lease 3.5m telescope time for use by the community. The details and extent of the arrangement are still under discussion. ********************************** AS3 call for proposals - Gillespie, Hawley: Although the AS3 call for proposals is mainly targeted to future programs for the 2.5-m Sloan telescope, some of these proposals may call for coordinated observing support using the 3.5-m telescope. In these cases, proposers must contact Suzanne to discuss the feasibility and institutional arrangements for acquiring access to the 3.5-m prior to submitting their AS3 proposals. ********************************** ACTION ITEMS: [open from previous meeting]: ===> ACTION: User committee members to poll their users to determine who would be interested in using ARCSAT, willing to help with an upgrade proposal and its implementation, and for what scientific objectives? STATUS: Closed. Princeton and JHU showed no interest, while UW, NMSU, and UC have all indicated some interest. Suzanne will take these inputs and proceed. ===> ACTION: Bill Ketzeback to look into and suggest fix to permissions and/or IP issues in TUI related to slit-viewer and guide camera images. STATUS: Closed. Bill Ketzeback said this has been fixed. ===> ACTION: Users committee members to advise NIC-FPS users about instrument rotation angle issue and need for vigilance. STATUS: Closed. ===> ACTION: Remy Indebetouw to get the logging script specifications for TripleSpec. STATUS: Closed. Logging scripts have been implemented. [new actions from this meeting]: ===> ACTION: User committee members to try to find users who would be interested in helping develop exposure calculators. ********************************** Next meeting: The next Users Committee phonecon will be on Monday 6 June at 8:30 AM Pacific Time. 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 1226 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