APO 3.5m User's Committee Phonecon, 10/06/03 Attending: Ed Turner, Bruce Gillespie, Michael Strauss, Bruce Balick, Rene Walterbos, Mike Shull, Jon Holtzmann Absent: Al Harper, Don York, Karl Glazebrook, Jim Green, Russett McMillan This was quite a brief meeting. ***********Upcoming Board of Governor's Meeting*************** The meeting is now seven weeks away. There are no suggestions yet for science highlights to be presented at the meeting; please let Ed Turner know if you have something good. Also, Rene still needs UC representatives to send him lists of publications based on 3.5m data over the last year. Ed plans to talk about plans to build an IR spectrograph (see below). Other than that, it should be a fairly routine meeting. One subject that might be worthy of discussion is the future of the 3.5m in the light of the uncertainty of the future of the SDSS operations. There was essentially no discussion at the recent SDSS Advisory Council meeting of possible joint operations of the two facilities, although at their meeting a year ago, the 3.5m connection to the SDSS was considered by many to be a strong asset. **************IR spectrograph prospects************* There is strong interest in the collaboration in the proposed R~4000 infrared spectrograph that has been designed by Alan Uomoto and his colleagues at Johns Hopkins. This project has been dealt two serious blows recently: a proposal for funding to the NSF was turned down, and Alan has left JHU. There are discussions at JHU for identifying a PI. The detector is the principal item whose source of funding is the topic of speculation. ********************NA2 guider****************** This has been returned, and is now functional. We will get an updated pointing model at next engineering time (Wednesday/Thursday night). However, there is the remnants of a hurricane bearing down on the site; if this doesn't allow the pointing model to be done, it may be necessary to pre-empt a bit of science time to get it done, later in the week or next week. ***********************CORMASS***************** Jon Holtzman sent around a description (apo35-general 708) of this low-resolution (R~300) near-infrared spectrograph that John Wilson and Mike Skrutskie want to bring to the mountain as a visitor instrument. He has gotten some expressions of interest, but the response has not been overwhelming. Everybody, if this is an instrument which you would like to use, let Jon know! On a related matter, John Wilson is planning to visit APO this weekend, to discuss what would be involved with using it on the 3.5m. Last month's minutes are approved. Next meeting Monday, November 10, 11:30 AM Eastern Time APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 713 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