APO 3.5-m Users Committee Phonecon, 10/17/05 Attending: Suzanne Hawley, Michael Strauss, Karl Glazebrook, Bruce Gillespie, John Bally, Fred Hearty, Rene Walterbos, John Wilson (representing UVa as an observer), Jon Holtzman, Bruce Balick Absent: Russet McMillan, Don York, Al Harper Minutes taken by Bruce Gillespie ********************************** Suzanne started the meeting by going over the action items from previous meetings: [previous months] ACTION: All committee members should identify who their local systems administrator (i.e. the person who would be in charge of installing TUI and providing information on it to users) is so we can contact them. Please send the name and contact information to Bruce Gillespie (gillespi at apo.nmsu.edu) - STATUS: completed for UWashington, Colorado, NMSU. Bruce will ask the committee members from JHU, Princeton, Chicago, and UVa to provide theirs. ACTION: Suzanne asked if NAIC will satisfy Nancy [Chanover]'s needs for planetary observations, in lieu of certain special filters that were not possible to fit into NIC-FPS. Fred said he thought that some of the filters and short-exposure modes in NIC-FPS do fit the bill for planetary work, but he agreed to talk to Nancy to be sure - STATUS: not completed, Jon Holtzman will talk to Nancy. [new actions from last month] ACTION: Users Committee members need to inform their users that any remaining Remark holdouts must notify Suzanne and explain why they cannot migrate to TUI - STATUS: no comments were received, so Suzanne will declare in an e-mail to apo35general that Remark will not be available for use from here on out. ACTION: BruceG agreed to send to the Users Committee the constituents of these [Futures Committee] sub-groups - STATUS: completed, see below. 1) Planet group: Phil Armitage (CU); Eric Agol (UW); Michael Strauss (Princeton); Holland Ford (JHU); Andy Davis (UC); Kurt Anderson (NMSU) 2) NIR spectroscopy: Mike Strutskie, John Wilson (UVa), and Steve Majewski (UVa); Tom Harrison (NMSU); Al Harper (UC); Jill Knapp (PU); John Bally (CU); Scott Anderson (UW); Rosie Wyse (JHU) 3) Multislit spectroscopy: Ed Turner (PU); Bob O'Connell (UVa); Rene Walterbos, Jon Holtzman (NMSU); John Stocke (CU) ACTION: BruceG will send the GRB URL to the Users Committee to share with their users - STATUS: completed. ACTION: Send these [2005 science highlights] to Suzanne and BruceG not later than 1 November, and preferably sooner, so that your institution will be fairly represented in the report. Also, send all your 3.5-m-based publications and theses during the past two years to Rene Walterbos, also not later than 1 November - STATUS: not completed. Please submit reports by 1 November at the latest. ********************************** User feedback, comments from Institutional representatives: Princeton (Michael Strauss)--Michael had nothing much to report from the users; everyone seems "happy". Colorado (John Bally)--John said his recent class expedition to APO was a "fabulous visit, although the weather was bad." NMSU (Jon Holtzman)--Jon reported that there a lot of complaints about the recent bad weather. Johns Hopkins (Karl Glazebrook)--Karl had nothing to report, but asked if the various institution's systems administrators could be added to the APO website. ACTION: Once we collect the the names of the designated institutional systems administrators, BruceG will have them listed on the APO web pages for reference. UWashington (Bruce Balick)--BruceB had no issues to report. ********************************** Discussion of telescope/instruments report: BruceG summarized highlights from the report (see below). Fred Hearty elaborated on NIC-FPS status, and highlighted the upgrades and improvements accomplished during the summer shutdown, which included fixes to the filter wheels, correlated and Fowler sampling, noise reduction (although one source of noise still remains to be tracked down and fixed), and the installation of a grism (warm slit) with R~100s through the H-band. There is some order overlap in the spectrum, so he recommends using the Y filter to suppress the overlap, which gives relatively clean YJH spectral coverage. The dewar vacuum problem was not solved by adding a new ion pump to the system, so the adsorbers were put back in the dewar as a stopgap. The fill fitting and bellows for the LN2 are suspected as the source of the vacuum leak, and further work is underway to fix it. The instrument is down at the moment, and is expected to be back in service by the end of this week after new vacuum seals are installed. [Below is the monthly telescope/instrument attachment submitted to the committee prior to the meeting]: ************************* 3.5-m Telescope, Instruments, and CIF Projects Highlights, 9/16 through 10/14/05 Bruce Gillespie 0) Overview We hosted a large group of undergraduate students from CU, led by John Bally. Also, a group of UW donors visited site with Bruce Balick as host. CorMASS is currently being reintegrated with the telescope for its upcoming run. We had continuing problems with a NIC-FPS vacuum leak, resulting in extended trouble-shooting site visit by Fred Hearty. The problem is still unresolved, but the instrument has/is been/being used for science for a few nights this month. We finished on-sky engineering tuning of telescope after summer shutdown work, and its performance is nominal. Other instruments and systems are working fine. Weather was unusually wet and cloudy for this time of year. The 4th Observing Specialist position recruitment was started. 1) Telescope Working nominally, only problem left is infrequent instrument rotator over-current events, which is being addressed during engineering time this coming week. 2) Instruments o NIC-FPS: a serious vacuum leak in the instrument dewar developed on the day after the first night of resumption of science use of NIC-FPS, taking it out of service. Fred Hearty returned to the site to diagnose and fix the problem, and after a couple of weeks of tests, he was not able to find the source of the problem. But he was able to modify the instrument vacuum system to the point it could be used for science, which is the state it is in now. Further tests and rework are under planned for the coming week. The instrument is lightly scheduled over the coming weeks. o DIS: The blue-medium grating suffered minor damage during shipment to/from JHU, where it had been sent for throughput measurements. An insurance claim was filed with the shipper for the replacement cost, which has already been paid. The grating is seldom used, so no serious operational impact is likely. 3) Engineering and CIF projects A new version of TUI was released, which handles some of the new features in NIC-FPS, and also resolved some general guiding issues. A plan for completing the new drive-box project was developed, and the detailed design of the new top-end project was resumed in earnest, having been slowed by manpower being diverted to the summer shutdown work. 4) Miscellaneous 4th Observing Specialist position recruitment started. ********************************** UVa and CorMASS: JohnW said that the UVa astronomers and students are excited about the prospects of joining ARC, and are planning to have Triplespec at the telescope in Oct. '06, and officially joining ARC in Jan. '07. CorMASS is back at APO and has been re-commissioned for use this quarter and into next year. There are two scheduled CorMASS runs in November, and the instrument will stay in stand-by ready mode for the foreseeable future. Suzanne mentioned that the next quarter allotments will mention CorMASS availability. There was a question how CorMASS spectra compare to NIC-FPS grism spectra, and Fred Hearty said he'd look at this, but he mentioned that the principal purpose of the NIC-FPS grism capability was to get quick NIR spectra of GRBs. ********************************** Triplespec review: Suzanne said that the Triplespec Final Design Review is scheduled to take place on 6 - 7 December at APO. Alan Uomoto (Magellan) has agreed to chair the review, with Tom O'Brien (OSU) and Al Harper (UChicago) as reviewers, as well as Fred Hearty, Stephane Beland, and others from the ARC engineering staff participating. ********************************** GRB, APOLLO updates: Suzanne reported that there have been no GRB alerts observed at APO lately, largely because NIC-FPS has been down. For APOLLO, BruceG said that there is an agreement with Tom Murphy to provide support to APO that would partially enable the recruitment of the 4th Observing Specialist. ********************************** Future CIF projects: For the Futures Committee, and for our planning purposes for the next three years, Suzanne and Bruce have assembled a list of current and future CIF projects, which is given below. Suzanne asked the Users Committee members to pay particular attention to the list of instrumentation proposals from the perspective of their constituents' interests. The list is: ARC 3.5m CIF Projects during 2005-2008 1. Projects already started and should be completed prior to June, 2008 A. Telescope new top end (truss and 2ndary motions, safeties) new drive boxes TUI maintenance/upgrades B. Instruments NIC-FPS upgrades (not new detector) Triplespec (design review, funding for detector) DIS upgrades/fixes (JHU trade study, new red detector) 2. Projects not yet started, but under discussion. Some may be completed prior to June, 2008. A. Telescope drive controllers and servo replacements tertiary mount and actuators rebuild autofocus atmospheric dispersion correction new direct drives enclosure rotation servo upgrades B. Instruments SPIcam focal reducer Goddard Fabry-Perot upgrades UW high speed camera NIC-FPS upgrades (new detector) Instrument provided by UFlorida ********************************** Need for back-up programs: The group discussed the importance of having it be the responsibility of each telescope user to have back-up program(s) when they observe at the 3.5-m telescope. Preferably ones that are TAC-approved and using a different instrument, these back-up programs can be executed on short notice when an instrument malfunctions or the weather is marginal. The committee members were asked by Suzanne to talk to their users about this, and it was decided that reminding users of the importance of this on a routine basis would be a good thing to do. [ACTION: BruceG will write a paragraph about the importance of having back-up programs, to be added to the e-mail automated message we send observers prior to their runs] ********************************** Board of Governors annual meeting preparations: Rene said that this year's Board meeting should be pretty straightforward, and that he is starting to receive publication and thesis lists to include in the annual report. Suzanne also re- emphasized the need for science highlights from the respective institutions for inclusion in the report. ********************************** Next Users Committee phonecon will be on Monday, 28 November, at 8:30 AM Pacific Time. Agenda and other materials will be sent to the committee members during the preceding week. 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