Subject: APO 3.5-m Users Committee minutes 10/18/04
From: Bruce Gillespie
Submitted: Wed, 20 Oct 2004 14:47:11 -0600
Message number: 847
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APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 10/18/04
Attending: Ed Turner, Suzanne Hawley, Jon Holtzman, Michael Strauss,
Russet McMillan, Karl Glazebrook, Rene Walterbos, Don York, Bruce
Balick, Bruce Gillespie, John Bally
Absent: Al Harper
Minutes taken by Bruce Gillespie
**********************************
ARC Board of Governors meeting preparations:
Ed Turner pointed out that the "Science Highlights" section of the
annual report is very important, especially to the administrative board
members who like to see their institution highlighted. We have
received so far only a couple of highlights, and implore the users
committee members (or users themselves) to send us their 3.5-m science
highlight from the past year, preferably with images and/or graphics.
Please send these to Ed Turner and Bruce Gillespie, not later than the
end of next week.
Also, Rene Walterbos generates an annual list of publications and
theses for inclusion in the annual report. So far, he's received
nothing from the committee members and he would much appreciate your
sending him these, even if incomplete. If he gets no direct input,
he'll use "Ed's list" as a starter, which is compiled from the
publications given in the 3.5-m observing proposals. Any paper
submitted since 1 October last year qualifies, whether or not it has
been refereed or published. Also, he will list theses in progress,
whether or not they've been defended. Rene would like to have these in
hand by the end of this week.
On policy and strategic issues, Ed stated that the Futures Committee
will meet the day following the annual Board meeting. Don York, who
chairs the Futures Committee, may be invited to attend the Board
meeting. Ed said the major strategic events of the coming year are
Suzanne Hawley's appointment as 3.5-m Director, negotiations with
potential new ARC partners, and whether or not SDSS-II is awarded NSF
funding. Since the NSF proposal outcome will probably not be known
until next spring, it is unlikely that the Board will take any major
strategic decisions next month. Suzanne said she will present some
strategic material to the Board in November. Ed mentioned that there
are significant APO staff retention issues looming with the SDSS-II
being uncertain, and discussions are underway to find ways to mitigate
the effects of next year's funding uncertainties. Don mentioned that
one of the roles of the Users Committee is to "use the telescope," and
its recommendation should be to find ways to maintain staffing so that
the telescope can continue to be used effectively.
**********************************
NIC-FPS status:
Ed Turner announced that during the past month NIC-FPS successfully
completed its "pre-commissioning" run at APO, in spite of some
unusually bad weather. John Bally reported that the instrument had
"first light" and exhibited superb image quality. There were problems
with sticky filters wheels that have since been resolved by replacing
some bearings. Also, there is a 61kHz noise pattern in the data, which
went away when NIC-FPS was returned to Boulder for clean-up and
installation of the science-grade chip prior to the November
commissioning runs. The noise must be some kind of pickup when the
instrument is in the dome, and could be a RF pickup and/or shielding
problem. The APO site staff are looking into possible sources of the
noise, and this will hopefully be dealt with before or during the
upcoming commissioning period. The IR Fabry-Perot etalon is now up and
running, and the science-grade chip will be installed next week.
After commissioning in November, we hope to leave NIC-FPS at APO.
Information on expected performance will be posted by the end of this
month (including a list of built-in filters) and ARC users will be
invited to propose to use NIC-FPS in "shared-risk" mode in Q1 2005.
User support information and some hand-holding will be provided, and
proposers and institutional TACs should have back-up programs ready if
awarded NIC-FPS time. We expect NIC-FPS to be used largely in campaign
mode during the bright time in Q1.
**********************************
CorMASS hits the road:
Bruce G. reported that UVirginia and VATT staff arrived at APO this
weekend to pack up CorMASS, and they left this morning to return it to
the VATT where is has observing obligations. Early next year, CorMASS
will again hit the road for a short test run at Magellan. Afterwards,
it is currently TBD where CorMASS will reside when it returns to the
U.S. If negotiations with UVa for joining ARC are fruitful, one
scenario has CorMASS residing at our 3.5-m more or less permanently.
Suzanne said it would be useful for her to know the level of user
interest in CorMASS while we are holding discussions with UVa.
**********************************
UVa, Triplespec discussions:
Suzanne has been in touch with John Wilson and Mike Skrutskie at UVa,
and she's asked them for a Triplespec near-IR spectrograph proposal by
22 October. This will be reviewed by friends and family such as Chris
Stubbs, Jim Gunn, Alan Uomoto, and Connie Rockosi, among others. Don
York suggested also asking Al Harper to review the proposal, if he has
the time. The question of UVa participation as a member of ARC is also
being worked. Suzanne has determined that the consortium has enough
telescope time to sell to be interesting to UVa, and even with some
margin.
**********************************
UWashington High-speed Photometer:
Suzanne said that as a follow-up to last month's announcement of a
pending proposal to build a high-speed camera for the 3.5-m, Anjum
Mukadam and her collaborators have updated and expanded their white
paper [contact your Users Committee rep or Anjum at
anjum@astro.washington.edu for a copy]. Suzanne needs prospective
users from ARC institutions to express their interest in using this
instrument at APO. The plan is to ask for partial funding by the NSF,
and matching funding from ARC. It was not clear how soon this proposal
is to be submitted, but if ARC fund-matching is proposed, it will need
some form of Board endorsement which will take a little time to
arrange. Jon Holtzman pointed out that the proposed field-of-view is
smallish, such that it may be difficult to have bright and suitable
comparison stars in the same field. There was discussion of potential
interest: Yes from UWashington and NMSU, maybe at UChicago, probably
no from PU, and no comment from JHU or Colorado. It was pointed out
that having this instrument at APO is nearly a unique capability--the
only other comparable is at McDonald on a smaller telescope. Don York
wondered if we could sub-raster the Nasmyth guider to a fast frame rate
which would give us the performance being looked for. Russet said that
the guider read time was about 8 seconds full-frame 3 x 3 binned, and
we don't have the s/w in place to sub-raster the chip. Suzanne
concluded by asking the Users Committee members to poll their
communities for expressions of interest in a high-speed camera, and to
get back to her before the Board meeting (15 November).
**********************************
Telescope, Instrument, CIF reports:
Bruce G. reported that not much has changed since last month. The
telescope and instruments are performing generally very well. Jon
Holtzman mentioned that the episodic noise in DIS is an unsolved
problem, and is likely affecting some science being done with DIS,
especially full-slit spectra of extended objects. We need to collect
more samples of these elusive noise events with DIS, and users who see
them should notify the Observing Specialists and/or
techstaff@apo.nmsu.edu.
The major CIF projects in work include TUI, which is having its guiding
modules merged into a unified subroutine, and the new top-end design,
for which a significant amount of design work was accomplished in the
past month.
**********************************
Last month's minutes were approved without comment.
Next phonecon will be on Monday, November 22, 2004, at 11:30 AM Eastern
Time
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