Apache Point Observatory 3.5m User's Committee Meeting ****************September 28, 1998********************** Attending: Michael Strauss, Rene Walterbos, Bruce Gillespie, Ed Turner, Jeff Brown, Chris Stubbs, Alan Uomoto, Ed Kibblewhite, Chris Stubbs. **********Current developments on the mountain************ Gillespie: Tia Hoyes is leaving, as she has a job offer in her hometown (Phoenix), thus much reducing her commute. We're confident we will be able to find someone else from the list of resumes left over from the last round of hires. We're covered, in any case, through the month of October using existing site staff. Recent developments at the telescope: The cloud camera broke, and is now repaired. The dewpoint sensor recently also was repaired. The rotator problems, which were so apparent about 3 weeks ago, have been under control, and there have not been any complaints recently. Since the shutdown, the telescope has been behaving very nicely, and we've been getting some great sub-arcsecond nights! Spicam is also back on line, and seems to be working well using the new Cryotiger refrigeration system. Also, the polishing of the secondary has started (apo35-general #308). It is time to start thinking about the support structure for the secondary; it might arrive as early as next summer! Ed Kibblewhite is eager to be involved in the planning for all of this. Gillespie will convene a group to think about this. NMSU have gotten their vBNS proposal approved and funded. So we might have this on the air as early as next Spring. This should really improve the speed of remote observing. ******************Status of the Echelle:************************* Turner: 4 of us: (Turner, Gillespie, Stubbs, Ed Jenkins) visited the Chicago Echelle lab on September 17. We are in the process of writing a formal report, which will be distributed to the User's Community. The Echelle is operational, with the engineering chip and lab electronics. With that configuration, it seemed to be working fairly well. The biggest problem was that the lines were slightly broader (2.6 vs. 2.0 pixel) than specifications, and are somewhat asymmetric, but the PSF is stable and uniform, and this therefore can be taken out in reduction. There is not yet a measurement of the throughput of the instrument, which is best done with observations of standard stars, on the telescope. They are working now to replace chip, electronics, and computers with "flight", science grade versions, and start sending things to APO. They hope to install as early as the November bright run (in which case, some scheduled science programs may be bumped). They are planning only roughly ten days of testing at Chicago with the final chip, etc., before sending it off to APO. The visiting committee was basically happy with this, given peoples' schedule, *if* the Chicago people meet the following requirements: 1. The final chip and hardware are installed. 2. There be usable software for users to operate the instrument (although it is understood that the interface for remote observing will take somewhat longer). 3. There be documentation, or a plan for generating documentation, covering both the engineering and user interface for the instrument. 4. The performance of the instrument (readnoise, resolution, etc.) is re-characterized after installation of final hardware, and before shipping. 5. Some sort of guiding capability is in place. (There does exist a guide camera now, but it is not yet hooked up to a computer to use the data it produces.) 6. There is a commissioning plan in place, which includes training for APO staff. Don York and Doug Duncan have agreed to be joint instrument scientists for the echelle, and both are expected to be active users of the instrument. Don York's suggested definition of a "successful" instrument: It should perform at least as well as the 4-m echelle at KPNO (in terms of S/N ratio on a given object in a given amount of time); they are expecting to do substantially better than this. There are a number of suggested future enhancements for the instrument, including: -An Atmospheric Dispersion Corrector. The slit is 1.6"x1.6"; atmospheric dispersion will be a real problem. -A field stop for better imaging. Ask Bruce Gillespie if you want copies of viewgraphs from the meeting, before the review committee issues them in their report. If the agressive schedule above is held to, we may be able to make the echelle available to the community on a shared-risk basis in the 1st quarter of 1999. If people are interested in taking part in the commissioning activities, please contact Bruce Gillespie. An issue: tertiary rotation required in the setting from Echelle to other instruments. Stubbs is working on various aspects of this problem. A crude manual system is available now, but we plan to soon implement an electrical control for this motion. ******************Proposals on the Web************************* Web version of the schedule includes the proposals themselves; it is not clear whether we want this public to the world. A simple solution is simply to inform users that they need not put, e.g., exact coordinates in the proposal, or to simply inform the user that any sections that they deem confidential should be clearly marked as such. Another possibility: have the TAC edit the proposal to give Ed Turner just that information he needs to schedule (i.e., priority, and time needed), not the scientific contact. There may be a need for the users to modify the proposals after getting the time allocation from their local TAC. ******Possible upgrades to the DIS slit-viewing camera************ Jon Holtzman would like a faster turn-around on the readout of this camera. One possibility: Use a Spectrosource camera with much faster readout, which Jon has. Unfortunately, the one available has a much smaller field of view. But if we can find a camera with a larger field, we might be able to speed up readout time substantially. Gillespie is looking for such a camera from our existing stock. Upcoming User's Community meeting in Seattle: People have been signing up to come from all the ARC institutions; we expect of order 20 people there. There may be some discussion with the Board of Governors at the meeting about various issues. We are eager to have some representation from the echelle folks at the meeting. ***************Musing on future instrumentation:*************** There is wide-spread concern about the rate of development of new instruments for APO, and the level of support that exists for the present suite of instruments. We had a energetic discussion of this, prompted in part by Chris Stubbs' draft suggestion that we downplay the model of facility instruments, and instead emphasize a model in which instrument builders are rewarded directly by, in effect, an expanded Director's Discretionary time budget. This will surely be one of the main topics of discussion at the Seattle meeting. In the meantime, the User's Committee has drafted an expression of their concerns, and a desire that funding for new instrumentation be put at the top of the agenda for future developments at the observatory, in a letter to Ed Turner; this will be forwarded to the Board of Governors. Last month's minutes are approved. Next meeting, Monday, November 9, 12:30 PM APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 310 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