****** in case you don't read this whole message, be aware that the main action item is to send science highlights to Suzanne Hawley, Mark Klaene and your Users committee representative before Oct 5, 2009. All email addresses are above. ********************************************* APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 9/14/09 Attending: Suzanne Hawley, Ed Turner (for Michael Strauss), Scott Anderson, Mark Klaene, Guy Stringfellow (for John Bally),Remy Indebetouw, Bruce Gillespie Absent: Jon Fulbright, Al Harper, Jon Holtzman ********************************** User feedback, comments from institutional representatives: Princeton (Ed Turner) - Ed had not heard of any user comments. Colorado (Guy Stringfellow) - Guy had not heard of any user comments. Johns Hopkins (Jon Fulbright) - No report. Washington (Scott Anderson) - Scott said that a group of UW students are descending on APO later this week. Chicago (Al Harper) - No report. New Mexico State (Jon Holtzman) - No report. Virginia (Remy Indebetouw) - Remy mentioned the upcoming UVa student trip to APO in November. ********************************** Discussion of telescope/instruments report: Regarding the more detailed report below, Mark said that it covers a two month period, mostly in which the telescope was shut down for upgrades and annual engineering maintenance activities. The primary mirror was washed in situ again, with good results. July was mostly lost to bad weather, while August and September were mainly spent on the conversion to direct drives for altitude and azimuth. We now have functioning direct drives on all three telescope motion axes, using largely identical hardware and software. The installations went fairly quickly, but the debugging and tuning of the axes controls took more time. At this point, the new drive systems are declared to be operational for science observations, but further tweaking and characterization will continue over the next few months. Users should be watchful for tracking and guiding anomalies, especially when their targets cross the zenith or meridian, and during windy conditions--any problems noted should be reported to the APO night and day staff. Also, one of the operational benefits of the new drives is that the primary mirror covers can now be opened and closed while tracking, i.e., not only at the zenith position as with the old drives. This will enable observers to obtain flat-field and wavelength calibrations while simultaneously tracking their science targets. There is not much to report on the instruments. Their annual maintenance procedures were accomplished, new bigger ion pumps were installed on DIS, Agile now has 2-inch filter holders and improved filter-change capability. Agile still needs more scattered light abatement (ongoing); users should still plan to use sky flats with Agile. Bill Ketzeback will transition to the 3.5-m day staff crew, and Nick McDonald is leaving later this year. Joe Huehnerhoff has joined the staff to replace Bill as an Observing Specialist. ************************* 3.5-m Telescope, Instruments, and CIF Projects Highlights, 7/7/09 through 9/9/09 Mark Klaene 0) Overview July saw a one-week shutdown for mirror cleaning and azimuth controller software work. Some observing was scheduled with limited results due to weather, as is typical during the summer months. August and early September were devoted primarily to the direct-drive motor installation on azimuth and altitude axes. To date, we have resumed science observations with all summer work completed. However, we do anticipate further commissioning and characterization work to continue on the direct drives and new axis-controller software over the next several months. 1) Telescope Both azimuth and altitude were converted to direct-drive motors (similar to the NA2 and TR2 rotators). These four axes also now run with similar hardware and software controllers. The mechanical installations went very well on azimuth but were a little more involved for altitude--minor machining was required to get the proper preload set for azimuth. The mechanical installation was 85% complete after the first week and 100% complete after week two. Electrical work went well. The most significant issue is that despite manufacturer claims, the amplifiers can overheat in some conditions so additional cooling was required. The remaining time consisted of getting the axis controller software running with the new motors. This was no small task and required a lot of tuning and re-configuring. This is not 100% complete and we will continue fine-tuning over the next several months. We did not get all of our commissioning data completed due to weather, but current performance does appear quite good. 2) Instruments SPIcam, DIS, GFP were evacuated for normal annual servicing. DIS also received two new ion pumps. The new pumps have three times the pumping capacity as the old ones, which will provide some headroom for leaks and permeation and also helps when servicing, allowing a quicker pump- down time. The echelle upper tank was evacuated. NIC-FPS and TripleSpec were kept cold; no servicing work was accomplished on these. Agile rotational pin and filter wheel were worked on. The 2" filter holder is now in place. Work was done on the stray light seen in the dome flats, however additional work is required. 3) CIF projects These are essentially complete for this year with the new axis controller, direct-drive motors and the Agile move to TR2. 4) Personnel Bill Ketzeback will be moving over to day shift in the upcoming months, he will be replacing Nick MacDonald as the 3.5-m Telescope Engineer, who will be leaving APO at the end of the year. Joe Huehenhoff has been hired to replace Bill on the night crew. He will start training on the 10th of this momth. ********************************** Instrument Studies (Hawley): Suzanne gave an update on the ongoing new and upgraded instrument studies. Regarding the echelle upgrade (led by Eric Burgh) and new imaging camera (led by Cynthia Froning), Eric has been talking with Dale Sandford regarding costs estimates for a new detector and optics coatings. For the imaging camera, Jon Holtzman, Suzanne, and Cynthia met with Chris Burrows to discuss a camera design for the widest possible FOV at the NA2 instrument port. The e2v CCDs have smaller pixels than SPIcam, so an f/2 optical system is required to yield a 10- arcminute FOV. This would necessitate a major change in the NA2 light baffling system. Another option is to look at an f/5 design that uses a detector with larger pixels. This trade study should be completed by the end of October. One of the wide-field design issues is that we would need a new set of larger filters, and that a faster beam would compromise the performance of narrow-band filters--we need to know how important narrow-band filters are for users. Guy Stringfellow said that the narrow-band filters are quite important. The f/5 design might be made to work with our existing 3-inch filters. Another option still being considered is the loan to APO of the QUOTA camera from WIYN, which would entail possible significant requirements on instrument control and user interface software. We are also continuing to think about Jian Ge's FIRST instrument, for which a white paper was distributed to the Users Committee last year. FIRST is a NIR high-resolution spectrograph and interferometer that is predicted to enable radial-velocity measurements with a precision of ~1 m/sec. A new wavelength calibration possibility using a laser frequency comb developed at the University of Colorado is being considered as part of this instrument. If members of our user community are interested in single-target high-precision RV science programs in the near infrared (e.g., exo-planet candidate follow-up, stellar oscillations, binaries, etc.), they should express their interest to their Users Committee representatives. Suzanne added that since the direct-drives project is essentially completed, we will increase the priority of instrumentation projects in the next annual planning cycles. Mark reported on the Goddard Fabry-Perot instrument. The GSFC team has a new photon-counting detector for the GFP running in the lab back in Greenbelt, MD. They also have the parts delivered for the IFU, and the plan is to install the new detector and IFU in the GFP sometime in the future. We may also place the GFP under TUI control, depending on how wide the user interest is in the upgraded GFP. In the March/April time frame, we posted a document that described the new performance expectations for the upgraded GFP. Again, expressions of interest in this instrument by users to their Users committee representatives are desired. ********************************** ARCSAT, SDSS-III status (Klaene): ARCSAT (the 20-inch, aka "Photometric Telescope) has not been operated recently. There are problems with its control system, and we are getting in touch with DFM on diagnosing it. Since there hasn't been much spare staff support time available during the shutdown season, we hope to be able to get the telescope operational in the near future. [note added 9/23: the problem was found and the telescope is now operating nominally] For SDSS-III, the imager is ready for its fall observing season, which may be its last. MARVELS is operational, and the BOSS spectrograph upgrades are installed and appear ready for commissioning tests. There are issues being worked on guiding, operations software, and plate marking and mapping. Lots of SDSS-III people have been on site, and will continue to be so through the fall season as BOSS commissioning is conducted. ********************************** Science Highlights for Annual Report (Hawley): Suzanne reminded the Users Committee members that it is the time to provide their institutional science highlights for inclusion in the Annual Report to the ARC Board of Governors. Rene Walterbos has agreed to again gather and compile the science publications and theses lists. Suzanne needs the science highlights--one page of graphics plus text per highlight--submitted to Mark Klaene and herself not later than 5 October. Multiple highlights from each institution are encouraged. Users should send these to their Users committee representatives as well as to Suzanne and Mark. ********************************** ACTION ITEMS: [open from previous months]: none [new actions from this meeting]: ===>ACTION: Suzanne needs the 2009 3.5-m telescope science highlights-- one page of graphics and text per highlight--submitted to Mark Klaene and herself not later than 5 October. Multiple highlights from each institution are encouraged, dating back to 1 October 2008. ********************************** Next meeting: The next Users Committee phonecon will be on Monday, 5 October, at 8:30 AM Pacific Time. The 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 1145 in the apo35-general archive. 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