Apache Point Observatory 3.5m User's Committee Meeting February 15, 2001 Attending: Bruce Gillespie, Chris Stubbs, Paula Szkody, Ed Turner, Michael Strauss, Alan Uomoto, Rene Walterbos, Lew Hobbs, Jon Holtzman Paula Szkody is taking over from Chris Stubbs as the new User's Committee representative from the University of Washington. Welcome, Paula! Chris will continue to take active part in these meetings as Telescope Scientist. Ed Turner is leading a large group of people which is starting to put together a plan for improvements to the observatory over the next year; in particular, how to budget the Capital Improvements Fund (CIF), the money for telescope and instrument improvements from the ARC BoG. They endeavoured to make a plan that made sense both in terms of budget, and terms of the people available. They've tried not to bite off more than we can chew, a mistake we've made to a certain extent in the past. This year, we also have the luxury of not being in crisis mode. The decision was made to put more emphasis on instrumentation, in terms of budgetary work, relative to previous years. Previous years put much more emphasis on telescope improvements. It now seems that the fact that our instrumentation is getting out of date is the principal limitation in doing science. Having said this, the plan aims to maintain momentum in several key telescope improvement projects as well. The single largest item in the spending plan is the DIS upgrade: new chips and electronics, in particular, with leverage from NSF funds. The bulk of the work is being done by Stubbs' group in UW. The goal is to get this all done by the summer shutdown. Stubbs reports that things are on track for this goal. With the new chips, we'll get of order 1600A of spectral coverage on each side. Walterbos: We really could use a higher-resolution grating, especially for kinematic studies of extended objects. Uomoto: We're working on a new, improved slit wheel for DIS, that would allow more slits to be available at one time. Another big initiative is work on the baffling for the telescope. The very strong hope is that this will be a photometric telescope at the end of this process, even for Stubbs' wide-field instrument. The Capital Improvement Funds will also contribute some labor to Stubbs' wide-field camera. 8-10 chips are in hand; the balance should arrive in the summertime. The camera will have a total of 20 2KX4K Lincoln Lab chips, and will have a roughly 15'X30' field of view. There will be of order 4 filters. Pixels are 15 microns, or 0.08"; one has the option of binning down. The camera will have a very fast readout. On the infrared front, human resources are the limiting factor. Perhaps the negotiations between Chicago and JHU will address work on an IR camera. There are funds earmarked to the echelle for a design for a new guider. At the site, work will continue on telescope performance itself, including the new top end (Jon Davis is leading the effort on the design on that). Uomoto: Can an instrument be mounted at prime focus with the new topend? Stubbs: We're really not set up to support such a structure mechanically. Also, switching instruments would be quite time-consuming in the middle of the night. Further work is also happening on stabilizing the optics, and vibrations thereof. Russell Owen, Craig Loomis and others are working on a new remote observing software system that is platform-independent. Walterbos is leading an effort to put together medium-range and long-range plans for the telescope. The latter should be in the context of the Decadal Survey, and the end of the SDSS. A variety of people would be asked to give their individual visions for the telescope. These would be collated, and presented at a Fall user's community meeting. Who should be asked for their input on this? Send your suggestions to Rene (rwalterb@nmsu.edu) and Ed (elt@astro.princeton.edu). Should this just include people from the APO community? Perhaps some outside people to give ideas, e.g., George Jacoby as the director of WIYN. Gillespie: The role of mid-size telescopes over the next 10-20 years is now hotly debated in the astronomical community. Might they become 'niche' telescopes, streamlined for doing one thing very well? All of this is tied to the future plans for the SDSS 2.5m telescope (whose operating costs are much higher than the 3.5m). Remember that the 3.5m operating costs are as low as they are partly because of the sharing with the Sloan. Karl Glazebrook's program to observe GRB's with the echelle (see last month's minutes) went through a technical drill; it is been shown to be technically feasible. Szkody: Remember that a 1/2 hour interruption can really screw up synoptic observations, of which UW people do quite a bit. Stubbs: Such people could be reimbursed with Director's Discretionary time later in the quarter, presumably somewhat more than the 1/2 hour of time that was taken. In any case, before this program goes into effect, the observatory will have to get a detailed plan from Glazebrook about its implementation. No comments on last month's minutes. Next meeting, March 12, 11:30 AM East Coast time. APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 490 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