Dear ARC IR Community: Some of us (at NMSU) have been discussing what kind of future IR instrumentation we would like to see on ARC. With the upcoming meeting at APO on such issues, it might be a good time to collect viewpoints on this topic from the ARC community. If there is sufficient response, I will collect them together and present them at the September meeting. To get the ball rolling I will make the following comment/suggestion: Given that GRIM is a reasonable imager, but a relatively inadequate spectrograph, I propose that we think about building a stand-alone IR spectrograph. I think this instrument must be relatively simple so that it can be robust, and tolerate the lack of dedicated on-sight instrument scientist (i.e., the normal ARC mode!). Thus, I propose a simple two-grating system giving R ~ 750, and R ~1500 type resolution. It would have several different slits to suit the project and observing conditions. Since going to wavelengths longer than 2.5 microns increases the difficulty of construction (and expense), I suggest we limit its coverage to 1-2.6 microns. The only additional demand I would make is that it have a slit viewing camera. Post your responses here, or email me directly at: tharriso@nmsu.edu Cheers, Tom Harrison APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 42 in the apo35-grim archive. You can find APO the archive on http://www.astro.princeton.edu/APO/apo35-grim/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-grim@astro.princeton.edu APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO