APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 10/18/04 Attending: Ed Turner, Suzanne Hawley, Jon Holtzman, Michael Strauss, Russet McMillan, Karl Glazebrook, Rene Walterbos, Don York, Bruce Balick, Bruce Gillespie, John Bally Absent: Al Harper Minutes taken by Bruce Gillespie ********************************** ARC Board of Governors meeting preparations: Ed Turner pointed out that the "Science Highlights" section of the annual report is very important, especially to the administrative board members who like to see their institution highlighted. We have received so far only a couple of highlights, and implore the users committee members (or users themselves) to send us their 3.5-m science highlight from the past year, preferably with images and/or graphics. Please send these to Ed Turner and Bruce Gillespie, not later than the end of next week. Also, Rene Walterbos generates an annual list of publications and theses for inclusion in the annual report. So far, he's received nothing from the committee members and he would much appreciate your sending him these, even if incomplete. If he gets no direct input, he'll use "Ed's list" as a starter, which is compiled from the publications given in the 3.5-m observing proposals. Any paper submitted since 1 October last year qualifies, whether or not it has been refereed or published. Also, he will list theses in progress, whether or not they've been defended. Rene would like to have these in hand by the end of this week. On policy and strategic issues, Ed stated that the Futures Committee will meet the day following the annual Board meeting. Don York, who chairs the Futures Committee, may be invited to attend the Board meeting. Ed said the major strategic events of the coming year are Suzanne Hawley's appointment as 3.5-m Director, negotiations with potential new ARC partners, and whether or not SDSS-II is awarded NSF funding. Since the NSF proposal outcome will probably not be known until next spring, it is unlikely that the Board will take any major strategic decisions next month. Suzanne said she will present some strategic material to the Board in November. Ed mentioned that there are significant APO staff retention issues looming with the SDSS-II being uncertain, and discussions are underway to find ways to mitigate the effects of next year's funding uncertainties. Don mentioned that one of the roles of the Users Committee is to "use the telescope," and its recommendation should be to find ways to maintain staffing so that the telescope can continue to be used effectively. ********************************** NIC-FPS status: Ed Turner announced that during the past month NIC-FPS successfully completed its "pre-commissioning" run at APO, in spite of some unusually bad weather. John Bally reported that the instrument had "first light" and exhibited superb image quality. There were problems with sticky filters wheels that have since been resolved by replacing some bearings. Also, there is a 61kHz noise pattern in the data, which went away when NIC-FPS was returned to Boulder for clean-up and installation of the science-grade chip prior to the November commissioning runs. The noise must be some kind of pickup when the instrument is in the dome, and could be a RF pickup and/or shielding problem. The APO site staff are looking into possible sources of the noise, and this will hopefully be dealt with before or during the upcoming commissioning period. The IR Fabry-Perot etalon is now up and running, and the science-grade chip will be installed next week. After commissioning in November, we hope to leave NIC-FPS at APO. Information on expected performance will be posted by the end of this month (including a list of built-in filters) and ARC users will be invited to propose to use NIC-FPS in "shared-risk" mode in Q1 2005. User support information and some hand-holding will be provided, and proposers and institutional TACs should have back-up programs ready if awarded NIC-FPS time. We expect NIC-FPS to be used largely in campaign mode during the bright time in Q1. ********************************** CorMASS hits the road: Bruce G. reported that UVirginia and VATT staff arrived at APO this weekend to pack up CorMASS, and they left this morning to return it to the VATT where is has observing obligations. Early next year, CorMASS will again hit the road for a short test run at Magellan. Afterwards, it is currently TBD where CorMASS will reside when it returns to the U.S. If negotiations with UVa for joining ARC are fruitful, one scenario has CorMASS residing at our 3.5-m more or less permanently. Suzanne said it would be useful for her to know the level of user interest in CorMASS while we are holding discussions with UVa. ********************************** UVa, Triplespec discussions: Suzanne has been in touch with John Wilson and Mike Skrutskie at UVa, and she's asked them for a Triplespec near-IR spectrograph proposal by 22 October. This will be reviewed by friends and family such as Chris Stubbs, Jim Gunn, Alan Uomoto, and Connie Rockosi, among others. Don York suggested also asking Al Harper to review the proposal, if he has the time. The question of UVa participation as a member of ARC is also being worked. Suzanne has determined that the consortium has enough telescope time to sell to be interesting to UVa, and even with some margin. ********************************** UWashington High-speed Photometer: Suzanne said that as a follow-up to last month's announcement of a pending proposal to build a high-speed camera for the 3.5-m, Anjum Mukadam and her collaborators have updated and expanded their white paper [contact your Users Committee rep or Anjum at anjum@astro.washington.edu for a copy]. Suzanne needs prospective users from ARC institutions to express their interest in using this instrument at APO. The plan is to ask for partial funding by the NSF, and matching funding from ARC. It was not clear how soon this proposal is to be submitted, but if ARC fund-matching is proposed, it will need some form of Board endorsement which will take a little time to arrange. Jon Holtzman pointed out that the proposed field-of-view is smallish, such that it may be difficult to have bright and suitable comparison stars in the same field. There was discussion of potential interest: Yes from UWashington and NMSU, maybe at UChicago, probably no from PU, and no comment from JHU or Colorado. It was pointed out that having this instrument at APO is nearly a unique capability--the only other comparable is at McDonald on a smaller telescope. Don York wondered if we could sub-raster the Nasmyth guider to a fast frame rate which would give us the performance being looked for. Russet said that the guider read time was about 8 seconds full-frame 3 x 3 binned, and we don't have the s/w in place to sub-raster the chip. Suzanne concluded by asking the Users Committee members to poll their communities for expressions of interest in a high-speed camera, and to get back to her before the Board meeting (15 November). ********************************** Telescope, Instrument, CIF reports: Bruce G. reported that not much has changed since last month. The telescope and instruments are performing generally very well. Jon Holtzman mentioned that the episodic noise in DIS is an unsolved problem, and is likely affecting some science being done with DIS, especially full-slit spectra of extended objects. We need to collect more samples of these elusive noise events with DIS, and users who see them should notify the Observing Specialists and/or techstaff@apo.nmsu.edu. The major CIF projects in work include TUI, which is having its guiding modules merged into a unified subroutine, and the new top-end design, for which a significant amount of design work was accomplished in the past month. ********************************** Last month's minutes were approved without comment. Next phonecon will be on Monday, November 22, 2004, at 11:30 AM Eastern Time APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 847 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