Minutes of APO 3.5m User's Committee Phone Conference June 3, 1996 Attending: Alan Uomoto, Bruce Gillespie, Ed Turner (Chair), Lew Hobbs, Julie Lutz, Michael Strauss (taking minutes), Rene Walterbos, Chris Stubbs, Tim Heckman Last month's minutes are approved. Fire danger continues to threaten (see last month's minutes). Dry lightning storms are a particular danger. We took an informal poll to ask the question whether the observatory was found to be satisfactory to users at all the institutions Lew Hobbs: Partially satisfactory. GRIM users are the happiest, in general. Julie Lutz: Partially satisfactory. Mostly using GRIM. Michael Strauss: Two thesis students are getting good data. The Princeton time is somewhat undersubscribed; there is a general impression that the telescope is not yet ready for people to start using it intensively. In particular, it is clear that it is not yet possible to do challenging observations. Chris Stubbs: Frustration is quite high at U. Washington (most people use DIS, and haven't been able to do challenging science). Alan Uomoto: Unsatisfactory. Can't do front-line science, due to state of instrumentation. Rene Walterbos: Doesn't feel like a 3.5m telescope, unsatisfactory from that point of view. People are doing good science, but doing projects appropriate for a 2m telescope. Bruce Gillespie agrees with these assessments, but notes that the goals set 6-8 months ago have largely been met. We spent most of the meeting discussing two documents. Chris Stubbs has written a 3.5m status report (to be distributed to the APO user's community in a few days when it is finalized), which discusses what he sees as the outstanding issues which keep the observatory from being a first-class facility. Alan Uomoto has written a more informal document discussing the experiences of the JHU group who recently had a several-day on-site "training run", with recommendations. Stubbs: Deficiencies with systems are well-defined; we have characterized all the relevant anomalies; now it is time to go fix them! We are not yet serving the needs of the user community. Turner: one exception: What is the status of the throughput measurement for the various instruments? It remains unclear; is the problem in the telescope optics, or the instruments themselves? Stubbs: Have measured reflectances of all mirrors; they seem to be OK. Throughput degradation seen in DIS must be interior to DIS [Note, see the results of a recent measurement of the DIS throughput on http://www.astro.princeton.edu/APO/DIStests.ps, and Turner's recent discussion of related issues on apo35-dis message #17]. Similarly for DSC. GRIM throughput seems to be OK; more throughput data have been taken in the last week, but not yet analyzed. There has been a lot of progress over the last year, especially on mechanical aspects of the drive system, etc. Lots of things to do: getting the guider working well, beating down telescope oscillations, etc. Given the current resources (money and personnel) it will take *years* to get everything fixed. In particular, there are no reseources to work on instruments (and to start thinking about next generation instruments). Uomoto: To whom is this document written? Send it to the Board, together with priorities, price tags. Gillespie: Thermal management: work is needed to get quantify thermal contribution to seeing. and to ameliorate it. Stubbs: Will try to get a distributable version of this out soon. We then discussed the JHU document from Alan Uomoto. Alan Uomoto: Telescope works well: it points well. Images are OK. Were disappointed by the instrumentation: out-of-date and neglected, not kept in working condition (e.g., noise problems in various CCD's, etc). Gillespie: Steve Knapp is nominally half-time for new instrument development. Has put a lot of effort into DSC Filter Box, and new DIS slits. Turner: Some of the problem is that the APO people don't have the authority to work on some of the instruments (e.g., they have not been released the relevant documentation, or have been told that they do not have permission to open up instruments to start mucking around). Stubbs: There is no well-defined person whose responsibility is to measure, characterize, and fix problems with instruments. We really need an instrument scientist and instrument engineer. In practice, you need an instrument scientist who is actually using the instrument. For future instruments, team must commit to play the role of instrument scientist, and also promise to hand over relevant documentation and control to observatory at the appropriate time. Stubbs: Got NSF funding (~$800K) for a new imaging camera. Turner: An attempt to break our problems down in a series of areas: 1. Communications (internet, connectivity issues; various possibilities for improvement). 2. New Secondary. Rough figuring of secondary (to a spherical surface) is approximately finished. Plan to get together small group to send out letters to possible vendors for the polishing contract. 3. Instrument-related things: Problems with existing instruments, plans for the next generation. Let's have a meeting of instrument engineers, instrument builders, to come up with a more coherent strategy. How are we going to fix the DIS? Take it off the telescope for a few months, perhaps? 4. Software. We need to rewrite a good deal of observatory software (especially Remark and mc code; move to X-windows). Board has declined to fund this yet. 5. Telescope: tracking, pointing, scattered light. Telescope improvement group does exist (including Stubbs et al, Klaene, Davis, etc). 6. Finding resources for tackling some of these problems. Rather unclear (the NSF, and the institutions). Stubbs thinks the NSF will be open to a proposal for improving existing instruments. There is also an NSF program to which we might apply for funding to improve the network access of the telescope. Next meeting: July 8, 1996 at the usual time. Put off until next meeting: o data archiving at APO--is a minimal semi-automated archive of image data at the site worth the cost and added work? Something on the scale of the "Save the Bits" program at KPNO. APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 67 in the apo35-general archive. You can find APO the archive on http://astro.princeton.edu:82/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