APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 12/20/04 Attending: Ed Turner, Suzanne Hawley, Michael Strauss, Russet McMillan, Karl Glazebrook, Bruce Balick, Bruce Gillespie, Don Lamb, Jon Holtzman Absent: Al Harper, Don York, Rene Walterbos, Fred Hearty, Jim Green Minutes taken by Bruce Gillespie ********************************** Observer auto-reminder system implemented: Ed reported that APO has recently started sending automated reminders to observers about their upcoming observing runs (see message 874 in the apo35-general archive). He wants the Users Committee members to be alert for any feedback about the system from users, e.g., is it too much like SPAM, and is the 48 hour advance alert the correct warning time for most programs (it may be too long an interval for an extended observing program that uses several contiguous nights)? Ed suggested that Suzanne poll the committee next meeting for comments. ********************************** Upcoming Gamma-Ray Burst Targets-of-Opportunity programs: With the successful launch of the Swift GRB satellite (Swift is not an acronym: "The observatory is actually named after a small, nimble bird, ..." says the NASA website), at least three groups within ARC have proposals and/or plans to mount fast-attack imaging and spectroscopic observations of GRBs in the coming quarter. About four years ago, we had set up a system and protocol for observing targets from alerts from HETE and LINEAR, but the positional accuracies from these satellites turned out not be be as good as hoped for, at least not for Karl Glazebrook's echelle part of the APO observing. Don Lamb was able to get several GRB observations at APO using UChicago time, and these were arranged relatively informally, with hours/days lead time. In the past year, these alerts have been used to trigger APO observations relatively infrequently. With Swift, things may be different. Swift alerts should be rapid and with better pointing and V magnitude information. This perhaps uniquely enables APO to quickly put large glass on these targets for echelle spectra (if the target is bright enough), and/or get deep near-IR photometry with NIC-FPS if the target is extremely reddened. Proposals from several ARC teams have been received for next quarter, and Suzanne stated that we want to see if there is a way to coordinate these programs to maximize science efficiency while minimizing the impact to the rest of the science programs on the 3.5-m telescope. Don and Karl pointed out that the telescope has several unique advantages for GRB work, including fast instrument change capability, the other robotic ground-based telescopes chasing GRBs have much smaller aperture, and we now have a state-of-the-art near-IR imager. The details of the alert protocols, the frequency, and the lead time will all be factors on how well the community will tolerate the interrupts. Anything but rapid response might not allow the maximum science return from the Swift alerts. Karl suggested that we make this an ARC "Key Project." Don thinks that Swift may be hugely productive in Q1, and that we should be aggressive and not miss out on the initial big science opportunities. Jon Holtzman said this is a great opportunity for our telescope, but there is a need for rapid publication of results in order that the effort and disruption are felt to be worthwhile. Bruce Balick thought we should go all-out during the first two quarters of 2005. Karl predicted that there will be ~100 bursts/year, and that 25-50 of them will be observable at APO. Don thought that the number of bursts that can be observed with the echelle is probably only 2-4 per quarter, and for NIC-FPS, 10 per quarter. Russet pointed out that it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the Observing Specialists to perform service observing with NIC-FPS in January, and she feels it is imperative that the CU instrument team be in the loop during all of Q1 for NIC-FPS observations. Suzanne said that during January, NIC-FPS will only be available as a ToO or backup instrument during 21-30 January when the NIC-FPS observing block with CU support is scheduled. We can't commit the instrument or the Observing Specialists in the first three weeks of January. This is to protect the health and safety of the instrument during commissioning and OS training. We will evaluate the situation again at the end of January. To explore the best way to implement an ARC-wide program for GRB followup, Suzanne will ask the interested parties to put together a plan for review. It should cover such things as how a GRB is triggered, a decision tree for what observations are to be made, and a discussion of data dissemination and payback of time to users whose observations are interrupted. This plan should be prepared quickly so that we can be ready to take advantage of the Swift opportunity. The users committee will be updated at the next meeting. Members of the committee who were not present are encouraged to communicate their views to Suzanne and Bruce. ********************************** Triplespec and UVirginia: Suzanne reported on a visit to UVirginia by herself and our Triplespec "Instrument Implementation Team." Suzanne, Mark Klaene, Craig Loomis, and Alan Uomoto recently attended meetings at Charlottesville with the instrument developers on design, fabrication, and operational issues. Many technical issues were worked on, and there was a good dialog on all feedback from earlier review comments. Things are going forward well; we will review the proposed changes to the optical design that has been proposed to better match our telescope. There is a phone meeting planned for January and a face-to-face meeting at APO in April. Suzanne also held largely productive discussions with Bob Rood about potential UVa membership in ARC. ********************************** Director Transition: Ed Turner noted that he had been contacted by some users who were wondering when the transition will occur. For the record, the official transition date for Suzanne Hawley to become the next 3.5-m Director is 1 January 2005. ********************************** NIC-FPS Commissioning Russet McMillan and Bruce Gillespie reported that NIC-FPS commissioning is going well. It's a "very nice instrument" that is easy to use and already has a competent TUI remote interface. The instrument seems to have a minor vacuum problem, and the Fabry-Perot etalon is not yet working to specification and probably won't be usable in Q1. More commissioning is scheduled during the remainder of December. ********************************** SDSS-II NSF Proposal: Bruce Gillespie and Michael Strauss mentioned that the NSF is planning a panel review of the SDSS-II proposal in February. ********************************** Last month's minutes were approved without comment. Next phonecon will be on Monday, January 24, at 11:30 AM Eastern Time. Note: Call-in details will be different because we'll be using a commercial teleconference service. APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 885 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