PLEASE READ: science slides are needed for 3.5m report at ARC Board meeting. Send powerpoint slides to your users committee representative before October 15. New ARCSAT schedule (Oct 20-Feb 8) is now published on the APO website. ************************** APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 9/29/14 Attending: Suzanne Hawley, Mark Klaene, Scott Anderson, Rachel Kuzio de Naray, Mary Beth Kaiser, Rene Walterbos, Jon Holtzman, Michael Strauss, Joanne Hughes Clark, John Stocke, Russet McMillan ********************************** User feedback and comments from institutional representatives: The only feedback was from Mary Beth Kaiser who mentioned that some JHU users had trouble installing TUI on linux machines. Jon Holtzman said some minor issues were common with linux installs often related to accessing python. Mary Beth was encouraged to contact Russell Owen if there are specific questions to address, and to provide feedback regarding the online linux installation directions so they can be updated as needed. ********************************** Discussion of telescope/instruments report: Mark presented the telescope and instruments report (below) and mentioned the weather as being particularly bad this month. The monsoon season has continued through September with remnants of several hurricanes bringing a large amount of rain to the area. There was a question about the ARCTIC schedule. We are planning for commissioning during summer 2015 and possible first shared-risk observations in fall 2015, but will provide updates on the schedule as the time gets closer. ************************* 3.5-m Telescope and Instruments Highlights 08/16/14 through 09/24/14 0) Overview Clouds and rain have been the primary issues for much of this period. Tropical moisture continues to flow into the region. Gretchen Van Doren who has been with APO for 24 years is retiring at the end of the year. A search for a replacement is in progress however finding someone to fill her shoes will likely be impossible. 1) Telescope The new TCC is working well and aside from 1 item that needs to be tested on sky this project has been completed and will be transitioned to maintenance mode. 2) Instruments DIS has been operating normally, but may have some contamination on red side. Agile is operational with no problems. Guiding with new TCC now working. TripleSpec had no operational problems this period SPICam was operational during this period with no issues Echelle inter-order light increased significantly 24 hours after being cooled down in August, likely due to condensation/contamination on the chip. Attempts to use the chip heater while keeping the instrument cold proved ineffective in improving this. The camera was warmed and held above ambient for several days then re-cooled. This improved the inter-order light to levels as good or better than pre-shutdown. Condensation was observed on ECAM and purge air was routed in to eliminate this. NIC-FPS continues to operate in shared-risk observing mode due to occasional image corruption issue. NFS less than 9 is operational. GIFS is operational. The GSFC folks will be onsite this week to work on the instrument. 3) ARCTIC The instrument development is proceeding on schedule. The CCD has been completed and final vendor testing is underway. The dewar assembly and initial vacuum testing are complete. The PO is being issued to Bob Leach (ARC Inc) for electronics integration, which should start next week. We have 2 of the 3 quotes back for the optics. ********************************** DIS red camera contamination Similar to the echelle issue above, the red camera on DIS showed evidence of contamination due to moisture in the dewar. We suspect these issues are related to the high humidity the past two months. DIS was taken offline for several days and warmed, and now looks better. John Stocke asked about the effect on the data which is most noticeable in the spatial direction, but does also affect the focus in the spectral direction. Science slides for Board annual report A couple of science slides are needed from each institution for the Board report. They should be powerpoint, with nice pictures if possible and not too much technical detail. Users committee members should gather and send to Mark and Suzanne by October 15. This is an action item. ARCSAT shutdown and Q4 call for proposals ARCSAT shutdown to realuminize mirror and work on software issues is planned for Sept 29 - Oct 13. Call for proposals for Q4+ observing (mid Oct - early Feb) will go out this week and new schedule should be available by Oct 10. NRC O/IR committee The NRC has convened an "OIR System Study" committee that is looking at the role of US optical and IR ground-based telescopes of medium and large aperture in the next decade, particularly in the LSST era. We have been asked to participate in the next committee meeting in mid-October, and Rene will be presenting information about the 3.5m telescope instrumentation and operations and about the ARC collaboration. We will emphasize time domain and flexible remote operations as usual. Input welcome. APOGEE fiber link to 3.5m SDSS-4 is planning on an APOGEE-S instrument so the current APOGEE instrument is likely to stay in the north at APO. We are therefore investigating once again the feasibilty of a fiber link from the 3.5m. However since APOGEE will be observing during both bright and dark time, it will be difficult to schedule on the 3.5m during SDSS-4 operations (ie until 2019-20). We are interested in hearing from users whether a fiber feed to APOGEE is of strong scientific interest and whether we should continue to pursue this. If we do put in fiber to connect the 2.5m and 3.5m, we can also include the smaller telescopes (ARCSAT, NMSU 1m), so we are interested in hearing of any interest in using those telescopes with fiber feeds as well. Action: users committee to gather information from users about scientific interest in a fiber feed to APOGEE (2.5m) and smaller telescopes on site. Initial planning for new spectrograph With the new imager progressing well, we are starting to consider what the next instrument would be. A new spectrograph to replace DIS is a leading candidate, with improvements such as better throughput, higher time resolution, and multi-object capability (among others). We are just beginning discussion of this idea, perhaps for a start in 2016. One possibility is to construct a new instrument room next to the arcade, and feed a spectrograph from a side port (like Agile) with fibers. This would allow quicker change than mounting on the NA2 port. Rene mentioned possibly making the echelle be fiber fed and freeing up NA1 for a new spectrograph. We will be soliciting input from users in the coming months. Forest service proposal for new site infrastructure To accomplish the APOGEE fiber feed and/or new instrument room will require new site infrastructure, which requires a proposal to the forest service. This could take up to a year to get approval, so is a long lead-time item. Mark and APO staff have started work on a proposal while we continue discussions about instruments in the meantime. ACTION ITEMS: [open from previous meeting]: none [new from this meeting]: Action: Users committee representatives to gather science slides for Board report and send to Suzanne and Mark by October 15. Action: Users committee representatives to solicit expressions of scientific interest in a fiber feed to APOGEE (2.5m) and smaller telescopes and report at next meeting. ********************************** Next meeting: The next Users Committee phonecon will be on Monday 20 October 2014. 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 1344 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