Apache Point Observatory 3.5m User's Committee Meeting November 27, 2000 Attending: Bruce Gillespie, Lew Hobbs, Ed Turner, Michael Strauss, Alan Uomoto, Rene Walterbos, Chris Stubbs The Board of Governor's meeting was held last week. Rene Walterbos was elected the new chair of the Board, as of January 1, 2001, replacing Tim Heckman. The various budgets were approved as requested; in particular, our full operations budget was approved, including a request for an additional 1/2 FTE observing specialist, making a total of 3.5 FTEs. This will much reduce the strain when somebody leaves, as it takes time to hire new people, and to train them. We're looking into various options to fill the other half-time of the person to be hired. The overall increase in the operating budget is 8% over last year. The Capital Improvement Fund has been kept at the same level as last year ($295K). The board wanted a clearer long-term vision for how this money would be spent, although they were happy with progress over the last year. The ideas from the Decadal Survey and the National Observatory future plans were all in the air, and were discussed at the meeting. So this is a sensible time to think about longer-term plans, and how we fit into all of this. The idea has been floated that moderate-sized telescopes like ours may eventually need to develop specialized/niche capabilities to maximize their sceintific contribution; this would be a challenge for APO because of how the telescope is allocated and used by a fairly large and diverse user community. The board has recommended that Rene think about organizing a retreat for telescope users and board members to discuss the future of this telescope. The improvement in the image quality was presented at the meeting, as was the improvement in operating robustness; the fraction of time lost to failures of hardware or software is now at a level comparable to other mature observatories (i.e., about 2% of the time is unscheduled downtime). Areas of concern: Staff retention and hiring Slow progress on instrumentation progress Scientific productivity Committee members should talk to their observers asking what things (if any) are limiting them in doing science with the telescope. Note that some institutions may be using the 3.5m primarily for supporting proposals for other telescopes (e.g., HST), and therefore the observations may not as directly result in publications. Rene makes the point that the seeing, although better than last year, is not obviously better than two years ago. This is unclear; the statistics would probably look better if we didn't just look at the seeing histogram for calendar year 2000, and based it instead on data since the summer shutdown. Gillespie: We're still working on thermal control of the primary, and oscillations of the support system, so the work to improve image quality is not yet done. Turner: To some extent, the work on image quality has happened at the expense of attention to instrumentation development. Stubbs: We are indeed working hard on the instrumentation front at UW, but I remain quite concerned about the status of infrared instrumentation. Hobbs: The upgrade to the DIS slitviewer should make a real difference in scientific productivity for the Chicago users. The slitviewer on the Echelle can't go very deep; it is difficult to acquire objects fainter than 14 or so. This makes it difficult to do any extragalactic work. Some discussion ensued on the S/N limits that stellar vs. extragalactic astronomers need to carry out their science; it was generally felt that extragalactic people would be happy to have the ability to go fainter, so there is definitely a need for an upgrade to the slitviewer. Negotations with the University of Minnesota to buy the Washington State University share have unfortunately fallen through. Negotiations are on-going whether WSU will keep their share, or part of it. Congratulations are given to Camilla Kirhakos Strauss, born roughly 12 hours after her father left the Peyton Hall observing room... Last month's minutes are approved. Next meeting on January 8, 11:30 AM east coast time APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 467 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