APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 5/01/06 Attending: Suzanne Hawley, Bruce Gillespie, Jon Holtzman, Remy Indebetouw, Michael Strauss, John Wilson, John Bally, Bruce Balick, Don York, Karl Glazebrook Absent: Al Harper, Russet McMillan Minutes taken by Bruce Gillespie ********************************** User feedback, comments from institutional representatives: Princeton (Michael Strauss): The Princeton users are happy. As to the Target-of-Opportunity questions posed at the last meeting, Michael said there is strong PU support for the idea of promoting ToO use of the telescope--it's what the 3.5-m telescope excels at, plays to our strength, but that ToO programs should be vetted and held to the same science standards as regular observing programs. Suzanne added that unplanned last-minute ToO proposals will be considered without a written proposal, but in these cases she expects one to be submitted rapidly (within 1-2 days) if the ToO program will be ongoing. Such proposals need to submitted through the institutional scheduler as discussed at the last users committee meeting. Colorado (John Bally): No CU user feedback to report, and John also feels strongly that ToO programs should be supported. NMSU (John Holtzman): Nothing to report from users or on the ToO questions. Johns Hopkins (Karl Glazebrook): Only complaint is about the weather [editor's comment: JHU observers must have been unlucky recently], and Karl said he got no user response to the ToO issue. Chicago: (Don York for Al Harper): Don said that the UC faculty strongly supports ToO use of the telescope, and he also agrees that a proposal and review should be required for ToO programs. UWashington (Bruce Balick): Nothing to report from the UW users. Univ. of Virginia (Remy Indebetouw): UVa users are generally happy, but Remy has received no user feedback to the ToO questions. ********************************** Discussion of telescope/instruments report: BruceG summarized highlights from the report (see below). BruceG also mentioned that there was an accident on the APO road last week where two electric company linemen were killed in a fall while attempting to replace a defective power pole. Several staff members from APO and NSO/Sunspot were first responders at the accident scene, and the deaths of two young men, both from Cloudcroft, is a terrible tragedy for the community. ************************* 3.5-m Telescope, Instruments, and CIF Projects Highlights, 3/30/06 through 4/27/06 Bruce Gillespie 0) Overview Highlights include continued dry conditions at the site (good for observing, bad for forest-fire risk), a well-behaved telescope and instruments, good progress on the new top-end and DIS-upgrade projects. 1) Telescope The 3.5-m telescope was again largely well behaved during the past month and on the sky nearly every night. An investigation into why we occasionally see slightly elongated images has suggested a problem with one of the tertiary mirror actuators. Replacing a suspect encoder did not solve the problem, and we believe that the tertiary will need to be removed to find the root cause, which is probably a damaged flex pivot. In the meantime, we have turned off the servo that does fine alignment of the tertiary, in an attempt to eliminate residual image wander at the expense of slightly degrading pointing accuracy. Also, a new version of the TCC software was installed and tested, a pointing model was made, and a method to improve the speed of computed telescope offsets was successfully tested. Lastly, there was in unexplained sudden occurrence of a telescope pointing glitch of a few arcminutes--this was corrected for in a subsequent pointing model, but the root cause remains a mystery. 2) Instruments The performance of all the instruments was generally good. Noteworthy was the installation and successful testing of a new control computer for SPIcam. 3) Engineering and CIF projects Design and fabrication work continued on the new top end, and the project remains on track. The DIS upgrade project (gratings, optics, new detector) continued; parts are being ordered and components are being machined, and a schedule for their installation was drafted. The new red detector has still not been delivered from e2v. 4) Miscellaneous The dryness, wind, and onset of the pine-pollen season has elevated the dust/particulate levels at APO to nearly double the normal levels. We are liquid-CO2 cleaning the telescope optics several times a week (which has resulted in LC02 shortages from our vendor) in an attempt to keep the telescope on the sky as much as practical. We have completed the fire-protection enhancements to the site, including outside water sprinklers, tree removals, a fire truck on station, leak repairs to our water-storage tank, and the installation of exterior metal shutters on building windows. ********************************** DIS upgrade plans - Hawley, Holtzman: JonH reported that it's time that the users became aware of the soon- to-happen upgrades to DIS. In mid-June, two new grating and mounting assemblies will be installed. On both the red and blue sides of the instrument, the medium and low gratings are being replaced with new medium gratings that we hope become the "standard" for low/medium resolution. The blue-high grating is not being changed, but a new red-high grating is being added sometime later to replace/supplement the existing red-high. All the old gratings can be swapped back into DIS on request, but this should be done sparingly, if at all, because the new gratings should give better overall performance if they work as advertised. Jon said he'd post a fact sheet about the new gratings shortly so that users can learn what the changes will be. Later in June, we plan to install a new prism into the blue side of the spectrograph to recover UV sensitivity (hopefully to the atmospheric cutoff), and replace the red detector with a thick-substrate version that should reduce or eliminate the red-fringing problem. ********************************** Visiting instrument proposal - Hawley: Suzanne reported that we have received a proposal from a non-ARC astronomer to build a wide-field NIR camera and grism spectrometer with a 15-arcminute FOV and a programmable slit mask, and bring the instrument to the 3.5-m for their and our use. This would be in exchange for telescope time much like the arrangements we currently have for CorMASS and the Goddard Fabry-Perot instruments. Several of the Users Committee members expressed strong support for continuing to pursue this initiative, and commented on how such an instrument would complement NIC-FPS and further our interests in general NIR science capabilities. ACTION: Suzanne asked each Users Committee member to send her a paragraph or two in the next two days with an expression of interest and/or questions regarding this proposed NIR instrument. ********************************** Futures Committee news - York: Don will send BruceG copies of two Futures Committee documents that will be forwarded to the Users Committee members, who are then to help their institutional Futures Committee member share them with their constituent faculties and collect feedback. Don reported that the Futures Committee report will recommend that the 3.5-m telescope continue to be operated after 2008 much the same as now, with new instruments, remote observing, CIF funding at current levels, and with no general repurposing needed to remain viable and productive. For the 2.5-m telescope, there is now a substantial list of post-2008 proposals, which Don summarized, to use the wide-field capabilities of the telescope to do a host of interesting and largely unique science projects, some with the existing instrumentation and others requiring the advent of new instruments. In figuring out which of these programs to push forward, there are difficulties relating to the continuing lateness of the NSF Senior Review, and in blending several of these proposals into an integrated program like SDSS-II; it will take months and lots of back and forth dialog within ARC to resolve this. Furthermore, the committee will recommend consideration of restructuring ARC in a manner that can allow continued operation of both telescopes in the absence of agency funding support. ACTION: BruceG to forward Futures documents to Users Committee members, who then help the institutional Futures Committee member share them with their faculties and gather feedback. ********************************** Previous Meetings Action Items report: [open from previous months]: ACTION: The Users Committee members will need to help disseminate the [Futures Committee] draft report to their users. STATUS: Draft coming soon. ACTION: BruceG will ask Russell Owen what the pros and cons are of keeping TUI compatible with older versions of operating systems and libraries. STATUS: Discussed with RO, no final decision yet. ACTION: Users Committee members should poll their users to ask if there are compelling reasons to keep TUI operable without using the latest version of operating systems. STATUS: Open, only little feedback so far. ACTION: [re Triplespec white paper] The committee members are to forward any feedback to Suzanne within a week, from which she will report our assessment to the ARC Board of Governors. STATUS: Completed. [new actions from last month]: ACTION: BruceG to discuss issues of computer and network security with Fritz Stauffer. STATUS: Working group (staff and invited users) being formed to frame requirements. ACTION: UC members should poll their constituents about ToO observations on the telescope. Do they envision doing this type of science? Would expanding ToO opportunities be useful to them? How do they feel about being asked to voluntarily give up time, and to having their time pre-empted (perhaps with later payback)? STATUS: Discussed in 5/1 Users Committee meeting. ACTION: BruceG will ensure that the orientation checklist is up to date and available on-line, so that prospective new users can review it prior to their orientation site visit. STATUS: Open, plan to complete in early May. ACTION: Jon Holtzman to talk to Fritz Stauffer and BruceG about installing a RAID backup at NMSU. STATUS: Discussed, system components ordered. ********************************** Next Users Committee phonecon will be on Monday, 12 June, at 8:30 AM Pacific Time. 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 963 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