APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 6/11/12 Attending: Suzanne Hawley, Mark Klaene, Al Harper, John Stocke (for John Bally), Scott Anderson, Bill Ketzeback, Sean Moran, Jon Holtzman, Rene Walterbos, Jenny Greene (Princeton rep) Absent: Remy Indebetouw, Bruce Gillespie ********************************** User feedback and comments from institutional representatives: o Chicago (Al Harper) - Al had nothing new to report. o Washington (Scott Anderson) - Scott had nothing new to report. o New Mexico State (Jon Holtzman) - Jon had nothing to report. o Princeton (Ed Turner) - Jenny had nothing new to report. o Colorado (John Stocke) - comments given below during meeting. o Virginia (Remy Indebetouw) - No report. o Johns Hopkins (Sean Moran) - Sean had nothing new to report. ********************************** Discussion of telescope/instruments report: Mark gave an overview of the weather, telescope, and instrument report. In addition, he mentioned the Little Bear fire in Ruidoso and smoke from the Gila fires. There was some discussion on the NIC-FPS status report. John Stocke mentioned that Ed Chang from Goddard has offered help. The instrument would have to go to Goddard. John Stocke will investigate the cost and scope of work but there was mention that it would be low-cost compared to having UVa work on the corrupted-image problem. A conversation on this topic has started between Ed Chang and Jim Greene, and Stocke will investigate further and report details back to Mark and Suzanne. There was additional discussion regarding the NIC-FPS etalon. Etalon work could still proceed at UVa. CU is open to Fred Hearty and the UVa instrument group working on it. Waiting to hear back from UVa on their interest in taking this on. Mark Klaene's detailed report for the reporting period follows: ************************* 3.5-m Telescope and Instruments Highlights 05/03/12 through 05/30/12 0) Overview Telescope continued to run well, but the overall good weather was marred by smoke from a large fire in the Gila National Forest to our west. The observers have been doing well, closing only when smoke levels rise to extreme conditions and using the louvers and pressurization fan when possible to keep the shutter open. The local fire danger dropped to moderate with arrival of some rain this month. 1) Telescope The telescope has been operational with no issues of note. 2) Instruments DIS Blue still shows some signs of contamination after vacuum servicing. Significant dewar work is planned for the summer and we are focusing on keeping it operational until then. Agile had no issues this period. SPIcam is still running 5-10 Deg K warmer than we would expect with a good vacuum and new coldhead. Average temperature is around 180K and it varies with ambient temperature -- warmer during the day, cooler at night. Dark current appears to be very good still at these temperatures. The camera is ready for use. We are continuing to investigate the temperature issue. The TSpec maskfile has been remade and tested at various binning factors. Some issues have been isolated and we are looking at other ways to make improvements. Echelle is operational. Plan is for installation of the new grating during summer shutdown. The new ECam had a shutter failure due to a failed motherboard. Ed and Joe built an external driver and Fritz implemented a software change that got Echelle operational again over the Memorial Day weekend -- thanks very much for their efforts. A permanent repair to the motherboard is in work with the manufacturer. NIC-FPS has been operating in shared-risk observing mode due to occasional image corruption issues. After last meeting's discussion, we are currently discussing with UVa a proposal to address the etalon issue and evaluate the possibility of an upgrade path. ********************************** Summer meetings, scheduling Suzanne will be out of the office this summer, so she suggested skipping July and August. The tentative next meeting will be Monday Sept 10. Preparation for the annual ARC board meeting will be earlier this year. Please tell your institutional members to start preparing science slides by the end of August so you can get them to Suzanne and Mark in September. Time-trade requests while Suzanne is out will be handled primarily by Russet McMillan, with oversight by Mark Klaene and Rene Walterbos. Please send ToO and time-trade requests to all of Suzanne, Russet, Mark and Rene (email addresses in cc line above). A reminder that summer shutdown for the 3.5-m starts on July 23 with a return to science on August 10th. Echelle may not return to science until August 20th to give extra time for alignment and characterization of its new grating. ********************************** New Observing Specialist position: Mark said that we are looking for a replacement for Gabrelle Saurage, who will be leaving us this summer. The position requires a B.S. at a minimum. There is a posting on the APO website as well as in the AAS Job Register. ** note added in August - new Observing Specialist Alysha Shugart has been hired. Gabrelle's last day was August 13. We appreciate all her effort and hard work for the Observatory in the last several years. ********************************** New DIS slitviewer camera: Mark queried the Users Committee members about increasing the FOV to 4 arcminutes. Bill Ketzeback has been looking into possible designs. John Stocke thought this sounded good. No one else had comments. Bill will be looking into this again after the shutdown. ********************************** Other business: Jon Holtzman brought up an issue regarding how to handle alternative scheduling and backup programs when a scheduled instrument is unavailable. He asked if it was advisable to start an observatory-wide backup program, most likely as service observing. John Stocke wanted to know if this should be done more informally on an institution-by-institution basis, by giving each observer a cache of targets with backup instruments. Suzanne suggested we talk more about this in the future. John Stocke added that CU would like to test a commercial off-the-shelf tip-tilt mechanism on the 3.5-m. John Bally and he would like to investigate this further. This would be basically applying an amateur-type system to the eyepiece mount for the 3.5-m with a CCD camera as a study for a system we could incorporate for imagers such as NIC-FPS and SPIcam. Jon Holtzman also expressed an interest in trying such tests on the NMSU 1-m. Mark and Jon Holtzman should be contacted for details. Suzanne suggested such tests could be scheduled for Quarter 4. ********************************** ACTION ITEMS: [open from previous meeting]: ===> ACTION: Send new ARC partner suggestions to Suzanne and Rene (before next meeting). Status: Suzanne has received a small number of suggestions, and is still looking for more. Please send your suggestions of an institution and a contact person to her and Rene. Within two years Princeton will be leaving ARC, and Chicago will also be looking at parting ways. This leaves 1/3 of 3.5-m time available soon. We are pursuing a targeted approach for now. A few feelers have produced some positive feedback. [new actions from this meeting]: ===> ACTION: Science slides for BOG meeting should be to Suzanne and Mark by September. ********************************** Next meeting: The next Users Committee phonecon will be on Monday 10 September 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 1285 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