Apache Point Observatory 3.5m User's Committee Meeting ****************November 17, 1997********************** Attending: Jeff Secker, Michael Strauss, Bruce Gillespie, Rene Walterbos, Alan Uomoto, Ed Turner Ed Turner was late today, so the meeting was a little haphazard Agenda: Status of DIS gratings and Grim filters Status of Secondary schedule Upcoming Board meeting; next year's budget Miscellaneous DIS medium-resolution gratings: Alan has the blue grating now. The vendor is not in a position to make the red grating. Alan is looking for vendors to make the blank; Hyperfine will rule it. Installing these is not trivial, as it requires opening up DIS. GRIM filters: Stubbs was to order continuum filters for H2 line work. Because installing these requires opening up the dewar, it may require a trip by Mark Hereld or someone in his group to install them. Spectrasource makes a 512x512 slit-viewing/acquisition which could read out every 3 seconds; Jon Holtzman has this camera and is willing to try it out. APO's previous history with these cameras has shown them to have high read noise, but Jon says that this one doesn't seem to be bad. We would eventually really like to have a video rate camera... Alan Uomoto has been sick for the past three weeks, and is now back on his feet; we're happy to see that he is well. The schedule for the new secondary has slipped a bit. We're supposed to prepare this secondary in various ways before sending it off to Steward. In particular, the polishing cell may be a serious bottleneck. Looking into ways that are inexpensive and fast. We have to get it to Steward by January 1; if we are late, do we fall out of the queue? Alan will inquire. Gillespie summarized the 1998 Budget proposal to the Board. The report to be presented to the Board will also be distributed to members of the user's committee. The budget now has an engineering maintenance person (shared between Sloan and 3.5m): site preventative maintenance, spare parts inventory, lightening suppression, etc. Ed Turner will discuss the results of the mid-September Sunspot meeting at the Board meeting. In particular, he will informally bring up the possibility of funds for the DIS upgrades. One possibility is to turn the planned JHU/Chicago instrument into a series of upgrades for DIS. Johns Hopkins has access to ACS chips that could be used in DIS, with technical help from the UW folks. In any case, this will not be a formal budget item now, but will be discussed, at least at an informal discussion at the Board meeting, in the larger context of updating instrumentation for the telescope. The issue of Director's discretionary time will be formally requested at this meeting (see the discussion in the minutes of the Sunspot meeting, apo35-general #193). Snow season has started; Gillespie and Corson are looking into propane heaters to heat up the enclosure when snow is on the roof. Question: Does it leave any nasty residue? Alternatively, look into pumping up the amount of electricity to the roof. Last night, the 3.5m telescope was closed due to smoke from wood-burning stoves from Sunspot. Bruce will talk to Jacques Beckers about an appropriate policy. [Post-meeting note from Gillespie: I talked to Rex Hunter at lunch, he is sympathetic to setting a no-fires policy for NSO on clear nights with wind out of the north. We need to look into our weather logs to see how frequently this had been the case--many people at NSO burn wood to save on utility bills, so if they were shut down frequently, unhappy campers. On the other hand, Rex said that we're all here to do astronomy, and if people's personal behaviour gets in the way of that, astronomy takes precedence. ] Previous month's minutes are approved. Next meeting, December 8, 1997, 12:30 PM APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 216 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