Some comments: > Chris Stubbs > Our telescope is doing science, but performance can be improved > Improvements are more than just those listed in the 3-yr. plan > Coordinated effort between site staff and universities "doing science": The community would be well served by coordinating the PR of the science that is being done. This could take the form of any or all of the following sorts of things: () most important: aggressively push the observers to produce papers, publish them, and present them at conferences...with the important and appropriate nod to the facility itself. () collect the science results (pretty pictures with plenty of words on up through preprints and references to publications) and make them known within and outside of the community. web pages. () heighten awareness inside of the member universities of the science that is being done by the ARC facilities. I suspect that many people would say "what science?" at this point. show them. colloquia, etc. () organized presence at meetings. > Chris's Attitude: Engineering tasks take priority. Coordination of the > tasks is not outstanding; to improve this would require a Project > Manager working at least 1/2 time. > Note all the people involved with 3.5m upgrades are also involved > with Sloan. > Given the difficulties of scheduling engineering time, we are > starting a policy as of 1 October of letting engineering time "fall > like rain" on the schedule, pre-empting scheduled observers. Note > that observers can indicate in their proposal if their program is > time-critical, and thus *must* not be pre-empted. Yes! Flexibility is a key asset designed into the ARC telescope. Letting engineering time "fall like rain" COULDN'T be done anywhere else in the world...though not for long. IMHO not enough has been made of the fundamental shift in approach represented and pioneered with our telescope. Fatter cats are getting more credit for "remote obs", "automated observing", and "flexible scheduling" than is their due: and it's our piece of the pie that they are munching. We should pursue this approach. We should extend it as necessary with newer and better software and ideas. And we should aggressively advertise our successes and lessons learned from less fruitful approaches tested. - Mark APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 194 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