Apache Point Observatory 3.5m User's Committee Meeting July 17, 2000 Attending: Bruce Gillespie, Jeff Brown, Lew Hobbs, Ed Turner, Michael Strauss, Rene Walterbos Missing: Alan Uomoto and Chris Stubbs. ****************Status of the Shutdown********************** Gillespie: Things are going well. We're pretty much on schedule to get the telescope back on the air at the end of July (current schedule has first night of science operation on July 29). The primary mirror is out of the telescope. It has been cleaned, and work has been done on the mirror cell, which we hope will get rid of the astigmatism it is thought to be causing. We have removed all the plates that the ventilation tubes contact, so now the ventilation tubes are no longer in physical contact with the back of the mirror. Also, the "P" gasket that seals the back of the mirror has been removed as part of this experiment. Various electrical and mechanical problems with the tertiary rotation have been fixed. SPICAM has an electrical insulator added between the dewar and the cryotiger, which should reduce some noise feedback. However, the cryotiger is not starting again; it apparently needs some purging of contamination, and the cryotiger company want us to buy a purging kit to do this. It will be a rush to get this done before we're back on the air. Inspections show that the cracks in the back of the primary have *not* grown since October; this is very good news. However, unfortunately, there are some cracks that can't be seen now without removing aluminum from the front of the mirror. What we can see there is consistent with the cracks not having grown... There is a controlled burn going on at APO and Sunspot. Thus far, there have been no "creep-aways" (i.e., fires getting out of control), or serious smoke problems. This will continue to the end of the month, but the burning is nearly completed, without incident. Things are quite wet, because it has been raining quite a bit lately. *********************APO and the decadal survey********************** The decadal survey, now available on the web, although not in hardcopy, at: http://www.nap.edu/books/0309070317/html/ has recommendations about a variety of things that would affect the observatory. Optical/Infrared astronomy is paid for by the NSF, state government, and private funds, so it is not all answerable to the decadal survey. The survey has remarks about the relationship between NOAO and private observatories. In particular, they recommend that NOAO develop a strategic plan for instrumentation for *all* of US optical/IR astronomy; they want a sort of coordinated national observing system. It is not clear how this will work in practice, as NOAO has no contractual relation to private observatories. The carrot here is that NSF funds (especially for instrumentation) could be strategically spread out among the observatories, following the strategic plan. So this will be a big incentive for a small observatory which is having difficulty finding instrumentation funds. It is not clear whether the decadal survey is calling for NOAO to put all its effort only into this coordination effort, and to privatize mountaintop operations at KPNO, or that NOAO should become more dominant in the astronomical community, and take on responsibilities like the 30-meter telescope that the decadal survey is calling for. There is an old plan for sharing instrumentation between ARC and WIYN. WIYN is thinking about going more into remote observing, and want to learn from us. They are dropping the queue observing option. Walterbos points out that our limiting factor on instrumentation is not so much financial, but people. ******Recent Developments in Instrumentation************************ Tony Tyson had expressed interest in getting the Big Throughput Camera to APO. Tony and Jon Holtzmann have been discussing the details. Jon is still waiting for the arrival of the new, upgraded slit-viewing camera. We are considering putting in the low-resolution grating in place of the direct imaging mode in DIS. No-one is using DIS for direct imaging, and this would have all three gratings in, thus precluding the need to continuously change between gratings. If one did want to carry out direct imaging, or observe with slit masks, then one would have to change things out, but this would happen much less often than the current several-times-a-week switching of DIS gratings. Interestingly, in the last quarter or two, almost all echelle users have been from UC (it is the most used instrument among UC observers). People have been saying that they've been having trouble reducing the data, given the crowding between the orders. The UC people have developed methods within IRAF to carry out these reductions, and will communicate this to the collaboration soon. Last month's minutes are approved. Next meeting, 11:30 Eastern time, September 11, 2000 APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 444 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