Subject: 3.5-m Users Committee minutes 6/11/07
From: Bruce Gillespie
Submitted: Wed, 13 Jun 2007 13:55:26 -0600
Message number: 1032
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APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 6/11/07
Attending: Suzanne Hawley, Bruce Gillespie, Mark Klaene, Michael
Strauss, Jon Holtzman, John Bally, Al Harper
Absent: Scott Anderson, Jon Fulbright, Remy Indebetouw
Minutes taken by Bruce Gillespie
**********************************
User feedback, comments from institutional representatives:
Princeton (Strauss) - Michael said everything is going fine with the
PU users.
JHU (Fulbright) - no report.
Chicago (Harper) - Nothing to report from the users. Al was
interested in the status/plans for the upcoming NIC-FPS upgrades.
John said that the engineering detector is now at Rockwell for
modifications to enable the 16-channel readouts (the science-grade
detector will get the same treatment during the shutdown), and that
they are waiting for the test dewar to be delivered to CU. The plan
is to take NIC-FPS to Boulder in the third week of July, and if
things go well with the detector upgrades and Fabry-Perot work, the
instrument may be returned to APO near the third week in September.
The return date should be better known in early August, and users
should be aware that NIC-FPS availability in the 3rd quarter is
somewhat uncertain for the moment.
Washington (Suzanne) - Suzanne reported that UW observers had no
problems other than weather-related. Lucianne Walkowicz did get some
decent observing weather and was able to finish her thesis data
collection.
NMSU (Holtzman) - Jon had nothing to report, other than weather woes.
Virginia (Indebetouw) - no report.
Colorado (Bally) - John said that things were going OK.
**********************************
Discussion of telescope/instruments report - Klaene:
The report is given below; Mark walked through the highlights. All
three of the old, refurbished drive boxes were installed on the
telescope with minimal lost observing time, and the telescope
pointing/tracking performance has shown improvement. The new boxes
that were removed had been in service for about a year and had begun
to show signs of wear after 9 months. They will be refurbished in
reinstalled next year. Everything is on schedule for the summer
shutdown (dates below); the main item on the shutdown is the
realuminization of the primary mirror at KPNO.
For the new TUI/SPIcam software, it is being test-driven by users and
we are collecting feedback. We're still working on scripting and sub-
framing issues. We expect that TUI/SPIcam will be the default for
users in Q3. In order to use SPIcam with TUI, users need to install
a new version of TUI. This will be announced with the general
availability information after the user tests.
Mark added that since the report was written, the power supply for
the echelle quartz flat-field lamp had failed. We expect a
replacement this week, and in the meantime recent archive flats have
been furnished to echelle users.
On the CIF projects, Mark mentioned the redesign of the tertiary
mirror supports, which will improve stability and maintainability. A
tip-tilt capability is under discussion for the tertiary rebuild, and
we are looking for science- and experience-based input and advice on
whether to include hooks in the design for tip-tilt actuators.
Hooks in the top-end rebuild have been left for tip-tilt with the
secondary mirror, but it is unclear whether doing tip-tilt with the
secondary or tertiary mirrors is preferable, if we do it at all.
Anyone who has experience and/or interest in tip-tilt and its
implementation on the 3.5-m and would like to contribute to this
discussion should contact Suzanne and Bruce right away, as we will be
deciding on the tertiary design parameters this summer. Also, a
project has begun to design a direct-drive system for the alt and az
motions on the telescope to improve performance and maintainability.
Lastly, a mirror-cell port instrument rotator is being considered,
first for Agile and then as a general-purpose rotator for small
instruments.
*************************
3.5-m Telescope, Instruments, and CIF Projects Highlights,
5/10/07 through 6/8/07
Mark Klaene
0) Overview
Spring weather continues to be intermixed with cloud cover and light
precipitation. Fire danger is unlikely to reach extreme levels this
year, but is increasing. Some fir trees near the observatory
attacked by defoliators are showing signs of foliage regeneration.
We are working with the USFS on possible treatments.
1) Telescope
No significant problems this period. Engineering time in May was
used to swap out azimuth and altitude drive boxes and service the
main azimuth bearing. Tracking performance is very good coming out
of this shutdown.
The summer shutdown will be from August 20 through September 16. The
schedule driver is the re-aluminization of the primary mirror. We
have a limited number of days on the sky for recovery; hopefully the
weather will cooperate.
2) Instruments
Agile is preparing for its next commissioning run in July. The
camera recently went back to Princeton Instruments to get the fiber-
optic interface to work.
The modified grating holder (version 2) for the DIS gratings was
tested and found to be safer to install and still be repeatable. The
new holder has mid-size kinematic bushings that will be retrofitted
into all grating holders this summer.
The replacement DIS red high-resolution grating has been received and
is at JHU for testing. We expect delivery to the observatory this week.
The flip mirror motor on the Echelle was replaced.
Incorporation of SPICam into TUI (TUI 1.4.a5) has been released for
initial user testing. Some user scripts are still in work.
The NA2 Guider camera had an intermittent network connection failure
develop. The cause was traced to a broken cable retainer clip which
has since been repaired.
3) Engineering and CIF projects
2007:
Final quotes have been obtained for the rotator upgrade and we are
issuing purchase orders.
Bench setup has been built up and we will begin testing the new axis
controllers this week.
2008:
Plans are underway for two major telescope projects:
The first involves an upgrade to the tertiary mounting. This will
stiffen the tertiary mounting to improve pointing and improve
reliability. Discussion is ongoing as to the need for tip/tilt to be
incorporated.
Secondly, we are pursuing a design for putting direct drives on the
azimuth and altitude axes. This can be implemented only after the
new axis controllers are ready for the axes. Direct drives would
improve tracking performance and stability and reduce maintenance and
increase reliability. Some improvement in slew speeds could also be
realized. We are going to get some experience with a direct drive
system in the 2007 rotator upgrade project, which will be useful in
the design and implementation of direct drives for the telescope alt
and az axes.
4) Miscellaneous
Jim Davenport will be at APO starting this week as an extra Observing
Specialist to help fill in during summer staff absences.
**********************************
New SPIcam/TUI interface - Group:
[see discussion above]
**********************************
Interest in a new imaging camera - Hawley:
John Bally said he'd be very interested in a wider-field, visible
imager with a new detector. Suzanne mentioned that there is
discussion of a new NSF program for medium-sized telescopes that
could enable either a new camera for us, or access to comparable
telescopes with wide-field imagers (e.g., the ODI on WIYN). The
question for our community is whether or not there is sufficient
interest to go after a new imager or access to one on another
telescope. Bruce said that there still is an open question of if
there is an existing wide-field corrector for the 3.5-m, one that was
purportedly built by Chris Stubbs but seemingly lost in storage
somewhere. John Bally said that when he previously looked into wide-
field imaging, he found that some kind of field correction would be
needed if we were to image fields 10-arcminutes or larger.
With respect to the NSF mid-sized telescope system program mentioned
above, shortly after the users committee meeting, the solicitation
for input to the ReSTAR committee that is charged by NSF with
documenting the
science case for 1- to 5-meter class telescopes in the next decade
was released. Suzanne forwarded this solicitation to apo35-general.
Users should go to the ReSTAR website at: http://www.noao.edu/system/
restar and fill in the web-based form to provide input about how the
3.5m telescope (and other 1- to 5-meter telescopes) are useful for
their research.
**********************************
Actions from earlier meetings - group
[open from previous months]:
none
[new actions from last month]:
none
**********************************
Next meeting:
The next Users Committee phonecon will be on Monday, 16 July, at 8:30
AM Pacific Time. Agenda and other materials will be sent to the
committee members during the preceding week.
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