APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 8/9/04 Attending: Ed Turner, Jon Holtzman, Michael Strauss, Russet McMillan, Karl Glazebrook, Rene Walterbos, Don York, Bruce Balick, Bruce Gillespie, Suzanne Hawley, John Barentine Absent: Al Harper, Jim Green, John Bally Minutes taken by Bruce Gillespie ********************************** Engineering shutdown status (including the extension): Bruce G reported that nearly all of the shutdown tasks have been completed or are in a state of good progress. All the instruments have had their annual service except for GRIM2 and the Echelle, which has been pumped but the detector will not be cooled until next week. GRIM2 servicing will be done next week. The damaged mirror covers have been repaired, and the telescope reassembly has begun. This week, we are working on the air cooling hose for the new NA2 guider, which required using a bigger diameter plenum than earlier planned, so some mechanical modifications are being made. All in all, it looks like we may be ready for science as predicted on 26 August unless an unexpected show-stopper pops up. Jon Holtzman asked if we were doing additional things during the shutdown since there is more time than originally scheduled, such as TUI work. The answer is no, for the most part. Russell has been working on TUI, but Craig has been heavily involved in the software for the new NA2 guider. Also, with a more limited labor pool than in previous years, we are barely able to accomplish the routine annual housekeeping jobs during this shutdown, especially since some of the staff is shared with SDSS which has been in its own engineering shutdown for the past month. Unless more manpower can be found and applied to our future shutdowns, making any significant improvements to the telescope will continue to be problematic. Don York asked about the new NA2 guider, and in the following discussion is was agreed that we should consider sparing the new camera and making sure that our other guider cameras had ready spares, e.g., for the Echelle guider. ********************************** NICFPS status and plans: Jon Barentine has been seconded to the NIC-FPS instrument team for the past few weeks to help with final assembly and lab tests. He reported that the instrument is getting close to being finished, and he expects an initial delivery to APO and late September. According to John, the optics have been integrated and cold-cycled, as have all the mechanical components. They have had "First Lab Light" and the pinhole image on the detector is 3 pixels fwhm, or smaller--the shape of the image is OK. The mechanical cold tests all worked fine, but they haven't yet tested the IR etalon itself because they are waiting for parts. All the optical filters are on hand, and will be cold tested shortly. After the initial fit tests on the telescope in September, it is planned to take the instrument back to Boulder for some rework, if necessary. Then the instrument would return to APO in October for full commissioning tests, which are expected to take up to 10 nights. The ARC user community will be soon asked to propose science commissioning observations; the NIC-FPS team will make explicit what level of involvement in data collection and reduction will be provided for these tests. Ed Turner mentioned that having John Barentine working with the NIC-FPS instrument team has proven to be invaluable, and is a lesson we should remember for future projects. He also said that the allocation for telescope time during Q4 assumes that 10 nights will be devoted to NIC-FPS commissioning. ********************************** UVa/triplespec situation: Suzanne Hawley started the discussion by recapping the history and current status of our involvement and discussions with the University of Virginia. John Wilson and Mike Skrutskie brought their CorMASS instrument to APO in April, and had a very successful observing run in early May on targets mostly proposed by ARC scientists. This led to informal discussions between several UVa astronomers and Ed, Suzanne, and Bruce G about the possibilities of keeping CorMASS at APO, ARC's possible interest in having UVa build us a medium-resolution IR spectrometer (called Triplespec, with R~3000, which UVa has plans to build up to three instruments for other telescopes), and whether there was a mutual interest in exploring how UVa and ARC could collaborate in general. Ed, Suzanne, and Bruce G plan a visit to UVa in late August to further discuss these possibilities with their faculty and staff. Ed mentioned several potential benefits of a collaborative arrangement: we get a very desirable instrument, we develop a liaison with a strong telescope and instrumentation group, and potentially could get much-needed engineering support for the telescope. What we need soon is for the Users Committee members to poll their users to see what level of support they have for Triplespec and possible affiliation between ARC and UVa. The committee was largely supportive of the idea and encouraged pursuing further discussions with UVa. It was also mentioned that the ARC BoG is also discussing/considering possible arrangements with UVa. Don York pointed out that the data reduction software for Triplespec data would likely be very difficult to write and use, and that we should make sure this is part of any arrangement to have UVa build Triplespec for us. ********************************** Sloan SN follow-up project in 4Q2004 Ed and Don said that a proposal would be submitted to the UChicago TAC for Q4 to test the proposed SDSS Supernovae extension project. During dark and grey time, the 2.5-m will find supernovae and the 3.5-m will make followup observations of their light curves at a cadence of every 2 to 3 nights. The 3.5-m would be scheduled for these observations in advance, on the assumption that the supernovae will be readily found. If approved, this test program will create a new scheduling constraint for Ed, making it difficult if not impossible to schedule other dark or grey runs than need several consecutive nights on the telescope. On the other hand, if the tests are successful it will demonstrate the synergistic power of the 2.5-m/3.5-m working in tandem on a very important area of astrophysical research, lending support to the current SDSS extension projects proposal which is under review by the NSF. ********************************** Last month's minutes were approved without comment. Next phonecon will be on Monday, Sept. 13, 2004, at 11:30 AM Eastern Time APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 824 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