NOTE: Information item on echelle received after the June meeting The ThAr lamp was replaced on June 6, and the replacement lamp has a quartz window which makes many of the lines, especially in the blue, very faint and unusable for wavelength calibration. Echelle users who have data from before June 6 are warned that they will likely not be able to use their existing wavecal template. Instead, many of the faint blue lines must be manually removed from the wavelength solution. We will discuss further at the next users committee meeting on August 8. *********************************** APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 6/06/11 Attending: Suzanne Hawley, Al Harper, Bill Ketzeback, Bruce Gillespie, John Bally, Jon Holtzman, Michael Strauss, Russet McMillan, Scott Anderson Absent: Mark Klaene, Remy Indebetouw, Sean Moran ********************************** User feedback and comments from institutional representatives: o Washington (Scott Anderson) - Scott had nothing new to report. o Colorado (John Bally) - John had nothing new to report. o Johns Hopkins (Sean Moran) - No report. o New Mexico State (Jon Holtzman) - Jon had nothing new to report. o Princeton (Michael Strauss) - Michael had nothing new to report. o Virginia (Remy Indebetouw) - No report. o Chicago (Al Harper) - Al had nothing new to report. ********************************** Discussion of telescope/instruments report: Bill Ketzeback gave an overview of the past month's activities. Although forest fires have been and are burning in the local area, there has been no significant impact to site operations. We have had a small amount of rain in the past week, the first since January, and although the rain is appreciated we worry about so-called dry lightning. Observing conditions have been generally good. The telescope has behaved well; a small change in implementing pointing model corrections was effected that should improve telescope pointing and tracking slightly. The replacement camera for the Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor has just arrived, and will be installed in the coming weeks. The driver card for the DIS grating turret motor failed, and has been fixed in spite of trouble using the documentation for it. SPIcam is OK, although it is running a little warmer than we would like. The problem with the Agile instrument rotator was fixed. Some shims and adjustment to the NA2 clamps has fixed the TripleSpec mounting problem, but a generic redesign of the clamps in being considered. The echelle shutter failed this past weekend [ed: since fixed by wiggling a cable, which will be replaced]. The NIC-FPS reset failures when upside down persists -- the operational workaround is being used, and the instrument will go back to CU to have its internal cables replaced next month. The Goddard team is back at the site to continue the integral-field and detector upgrades to the GFP. Mark Klaene's detailed report for the reporting period follows: ************************* 3.5-m Telescope, Instruments, and CIF Projects Highlights 5/6/11 through 6/1/11 0) Overview The forest closed on May 12 due to critical fire danger. Immediately following, a large fire, caused by a downed power line, started 20 miles northeast of us, ultimately burning 32,000 acres. APO operations have not been affected by the closure. Despite being through May, the winds have continued near the levels of April. Short telescope closures due to dust and smoke have occurred a few times during this period. 1) Telescope The telescope continues to operate routinely with minimal problems during this period. Some minor changes to pointing models have been incorporated. The Shack-Hartmann camera controller failed and a new camera and controller have been purchased. We will be replacing the Apogee camera with a new SBIG camera. Camera delivery is expected this month. 2) Instruments DIS performed well this period until a failure of the turret motion. The instrument was configured that the turret could be moved by hand which causes a loss of about 15 minutes if grating sets need to be changed during the night. The cryotiger was adjusted but it seems to have had little effect. The camera is still running 10-12 deg C warmer than previous when ambient temperatures are warmer. We hope to wait until summer shutdown to investigate further. SPICam operated with no new issues. Agile rotator fault was corrected; a problem induced by the new locking pin was found to be the cause. A TripleSpec problem has been diagnosed 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 and shim the pawls on the instrument was done and appears to have been successful. New clamping/mounting systems are being investigated. The Echelle worked with no problems this period. 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. The instrument will be taken to CU on June 20 for a period of approximately 6 weeks. GFP upgrade work has resumed on the mountain with an engineering run coming up next week. ********************************** Reporting JD in FITS headers: Suzanne said that there is a request to report Julian date in the FITS image headers. The issue is which time system to use as the standard. SDSS reports MJD in TA1, which is what we are suggesting for the 3.5-m instruments. Michael felt that this was fine, if things are well-labelled. Suzanne suggested that we can describe this on the web in the user documentation. Bill said that the instrument computers can and do report in multiple time systems, especially the older computers. So setting a MJD-in-TA1 standard would require changing some software for the older instruments. It was generally felt that having a standard time system was probably a good idea, but that we should see if the users really want it to justify the extra work involved. ===> ACTION: Users Committee members to ask their users if MJD in TA1 would be useful information to have written in the FITS headers. ********************************** Possible new instrument(s): Suzanne mentioned a couple of items. First, we discussed several months ago the possibility of getting a multi-band griz imager that Chris Stubbs is involved with at CfA, called PISCO. Chris in interested in possibly deploying the camera at APO and will send us a proposal. The terms of its use at the 3.5-m telescope would need to be negotiated. The camera has a FOV of approx. 10 arcminutes. There are questions about telescope baffling changes, and whether the filters are changeable. We need more feedback on the desirability of PISCO from the user committee and general users. Michael mentioned the Princeton would be very interested in the instrument. Jon Holtzman was concerned that PISCO doesn't have all the capabilities that SPIcam has (i.e., narrow-band filters), so if PISCO replaced SPIcam, it is not clear that this is win-win. There is concern that SPIcam will fail in the near future and not be easily repaired. There is also a floor-space issue on the NA2 side of the telescope -- we may need to retire an instrument in order to find room for a new one. In any case, we need to hear back from the user community about the pros and cons of this possible new instrument. Second, Jon Holtzman has been talking with Matthew Shetrone at UT about IFUs. The HET is having several built, and it may be possible to get one additional copy made for use at APO. It's not clear if this IFU would be better than the IFU upgrade underway for the GFP. Michael said that there may be people at Princeton interested in an IFU on the 3.5-m. ********************************** Misc. topic - ReSTAR: Jon mentioned that he got a note from NOAO that they are starting to write the joint ReSTAR proposal for NSF funding, and we need to decide on the terms of our participation. Discussions are ongoing. ********************************** Summer telecon schedule: Suzanne said that there will be no Users Committee telecon in July during the summer shutdown. The next telecon will be 8 August. The following telecon will be in late September or early October. ********************************** ACTION ITEMS: [open from previous meeting]: ===> ACTION: User committee members to try to find users who would be interested in helping develop exposure time calculators. STATUS: Scott said that Anjum Mukadam is willing to develop exposure calculators for Agile, and likewise Sarah Schmidt for TripleSpec. Suzanne said that George Wallerstein is willing to help with the echelle. Jon noted that this really needs to be done in a single framework, and Bruce suggested that we import an existing exposure calculator architecture from NOAO or STScI, for example. Suzanne decided to leave the action item open, giving the Users Committee members more time to ask for help and to look into the possibility of importing a framework from elsewhere. [new actions from this meeting]: ===> ACTION: User Committee members to ask their users if MJD in TA1 would be useful information to have written in the FITS headers. ********************************** Next meeting: The next Users Committee phonecon will be on Monday 8 August 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 1233 in the apo35-general archive. 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