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--- uc:uc2026 [2026/02/05 17:46] – nchanove
+++ uc:uc2026 [2026/03/03 18:16] (current) – benw1
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+===== APO 3.5-m Users Committee Meeting, 3/03/2026 =====
+Attending: UPDATE THIS LIST: Bill Ketzeback (APO), Misty Bentz (GSU), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Moire Prescott (NMSU), Michael Hayden (OU), Adam Kawalski (CO), Ben Williams (UW), Sarah Tuttle (UW)
+=== User feedback and comments from institutional representatives (UPDATE) ===
+  * Wyoming - Not on
+  * Williams - Not on
+  * Washington - Not on, but sent email Nothing to report
+  * UVa - Hard time with ARCSAT the other night (Chrome requiring permission... older version of Chrome and Mac OS... two users using same port, which again, worked with older version)
+  * Oklahoma - Nothing
+  * NMSU - Nothing
+  * JHU - Nothing
+  * Georgia State - Nothing
+  * Colorado - Links broken found on website.  Williams
+  * Colgate - No one on
+  * BYU - Nothing
+----
+=== Telescope and Instruments Report ===
+The detailed site report is included below, followed by additional information discussed during today's meeting.
+// 3.5-m Telescope and Instruments Highlights, 02/03/26 – 03/02/26 //
+) Overview
+February was a good month, with plenty of on-sky time. There was an average number of nights affected by cloud cover or elevated humidity. One night was lost to rain, snow showers, and fog.
+There was another actuator problem on the secondary mirror this month, which was resolved by homing. Another night, there was a problem with the NA2 rotator that was quickly resolved by rebooting the axis controller. Otherwise, the telescope and instruments performed well.
+Two groups were on site for training. One visiting instrument team is currently on site.
+) Operations
+.5m Telescope: The telescope has been performing nominally. We experienced another instance this month of an actuator for the secondary mirror failing to reach or move to the commanded position. The problem was corrected at the end of the night by homing the secondary. No on-sky time was lost. The trouble is intermittent, making troubleshooting difficult because it cannot easily be reproduced. A communication failure between the telescope control computer and the NA2 rotator occurred this past week. A software restart corrected the problem with minimal time lost on the sky.
+.5m Telescope: Working as expected. Dcam and UVAcam are both available options for users.
+KOSMOS: System is cold and stable. Instrument is performing nominally.
+ARCTIC: The diffuser rotation mechanism is still unreliable. We have manufactured some new parts, but have not gotten the opportunity to install and test them. The mechanism that moves the diffuser in and out of the optical path is still functional in the meantime.
+SoonerCam: The agile instrument rotator is still not performing nominally, and we will continue troubleshooting to prepare for SoonerCam. SoonerCam parts are on hand, assembled, and software development has begun. Software development is in the early stages to learn the Hamamatsu and Brandy Wine software APIs.
+ARCES: There was another intermittent failure of the thorium argon lamp power supply, resulting in lamp dropouts or weak lines. Another instance of trouble with the ThAr calibrations was not the lamp power supply, but the calibration flip mirror not moving into place. If identified by an echelle user during their cals, the observing specialists have procedures to identify which is occurring and adjust the power supply or move the mirror by hand. Users are advised to carefully examine their calibration frames.
+NICFPS: System is cooled and usable.
+TripleSpec: System is cooled and usable.
+APOLLO: The instrument is usable for laser ranging. Maintaining the instrument's temperature during extreme environmental conditions remains challenging.
+DIS: System is powered down and warm. Decommissioning plans have begun. The instrument has been decabled, and we will be lowering it off the observing floor soon.
+----
+=== Additional site, telescope and instruments discussion ===
+Hard time with ARCSAT the other night (Chrome requiring permission... older version of Chrome and Mac OS... two users using same port, which again, worked with older version).  Sarah notes that they have had 10 users on the same port without problems in the past.  Shane is aware this problem occurred, but may want to loop in Gordon.
+APOLLO got returns during the eclipse, so is functioning well.
+----
+=== 2026 Q1 3.5m scheduling ===
+The Q1 schedule is posted and there are no empty slots remaining.
+----
+=== 2026 Q2 3.5 scheduling ===
+The Q2 schedule is in development now.
+----
+=== 2026 Q1 0.5 scheduling ===
+The ARCSAT Q1 schedule is posted; there is one open week remaining at the end of the quarter. The call for Q2 requests will go out after the 3.5m schedule for Q2 is completed.
+----
+=== Status of new instrument initiatives ===
+  * SoonerCam: See above site report and subsequent discussion.
+  * KOSMOS grisms: We have requested an updated quote for the low-res grism and will be ordering it as soon as it is received.
+  * ASPEN: No major updates this month. We still plan to hold the Preliminary Design Review in Q2 2026.
+  * Ocotillo: All optics are in house for first channel but one compound piece, and assembly has started on opti-mechanical structure.
+----
+=== Website update ===
+Met with Jon and Anne to discuss improvements to landing pages, and simplification of menus to improve public facing pages and make most popular information easier to find.
+UCO found some broken links.  Will send to Shane or Ben to get fixed.
+----
+=== ACTION ITEMS ===
+Open action items from previous meetings:
+  * Joanne Hughes: put the KOSMOS MOS data reduction software on the wiki. Joanne is waiting for an update from her colleagues at the College of Idaho. Update: Jon Holtzman put a link to the College of Idaho software on the wiki, and notes that this is a wrapper for lower level reduction stuff in pyVista. Additional descriptive text/examples would still be welcome and good. Status: CLOSED
+  * UC reps: ask your users to provide instrument usage/data reduction tips and tricks to Jon Holtzman for inclusion on the wiki.
+No feedback yet... STILL OPEN
+  * UC reps: ask your users if they have experience using PypeIt with non-APO instruments; if so please contact Jon.
+No one knows anyone... may want to close?
+  * Nancy: ensure that observatory lat/long/elevation gets put back on new APO home page. Status: CLOSED
+  * Nancy: explore web page hackathon idea with APO webdev team. Status: CLOSED
+New action items from this meeting:
+ARCSAT issue should get checked out to attempt to determine cause or see if it can be reproduced.
+Adam noted some ghosting effects he's seeing in bright object KOSMOS spectra.  He may send in some examples of ghost spectra for KOSMOS documentation, and potentially could take some bright object spectra during engineering to learn more about these effects.
+----
+=== All Other Business ===
+Grisms:  Any update on high res prisms?  Low res was easy to decide, but high-res is harder because one needs to choose the part of the spectrum, and there is not consensus.
+KOSMOS: Zeroth order effect could use more information (how it manifests in various setups).  Adam is seeing ghost spectra in some spectral setups.  Is there anything about this in the documentation?  Suggestions for order-blocking filters?  Not available if you want to observe in the blue, and may actually cause reflections.  More information about those would be appreciated.  Added an action item.
+----
+=== Next Meeting ===
+The next Users Committee meeting will be on Tuesday April 07 at 10:30 MDT.
+----
 ===== APO 3.5-m Users Committee Meeting, 2/03/2026 =====
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 === Additional site, telescope and instruments discussion ===
-The recent winter storm that affected a large swath of the US dumped heavy rain for 6-8 hours, which then froze, followed by about 2 feet of snow. Trees were weighted down by frozen ice/snow, which led to a number of downed limbs, trees, and power poled. The site lost power and was on generator power for about a week. Fortunately, the generator worked as expected the entire week. We are now open and can observe again as of last night (Monday February 2).
+The recent winter storm that affected a large swath of the US dumped heavy rain for 6-8 hours, which then froze, followed by about 2 feet of snow. Trees were weighted down by frozen ice and snow, which led to a number of downed limbs, trees, and power poles. The site lost power and was on generator power for about a week. Fortunately, the generator worked as expected throughout the entire week. We are now open and can observe again as of last night (Monday February 2).
 There was a documentary filmmaker on site for an SDSS planetarium presentation.
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 === 2026 Q2 3.5 scheduling ===
-The allocations to institutional schedulers were sent out last night. Proposals are due on February 24. We are aware of one class group that plans to visit APO during Q2 but if there are others who have not yet notified us please do so ASAP.
+The allocations were sent out to institutional schedulers last night. Proposals are due on February 24. We are aware of one class group that plans to visit APO during Q2 but if there are others who have not yet notified us please do so ASAP.
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 === Wiki discussion ===
-Jon Holtzman led a discussion of the APO wiki (http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/apo-wiki/doku.php?id=start), which he has been cleaning up recently. While the instrument manuals on the APO website are fine for learning basic properties and operational procedures of the instruments, information about "features" or "issues" for each instrument (e.g those related to data processing or tricks/tips for observing in a very specific mode) are not held in a common repository despite the vast experience spread around the ARC user community. This would be particularly useful for new users, students, etc. The user wiki was designed for this, but it has been fairly stagnant lately. Jon is leading an effort to revitalize the wiki and populate it with things that users should be aware of and provide some descriptions of reduction issues and software options. Therefore Jon is trying to collect 1) a list of features/issues for each instrument, provided by users, and 2) a list of the software options for data reduction for each instrument (no judgment here - truly, what are people using?). He needs help populating these two sections for each instrument! If you have and information regarding either of these items, please email it to Jon Holtzman (holtz@nmsu.edu). This will ultimately help all users achieve the pest possible performance from the 3.5m facility instruments for their science.
+Jon Holtzman led a discussion of the APO wiki (http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/apo-wiki/doku.php?id=start), which he has been cleaning up recently. While the instrument manuals on the APO website are fine for learning basic properties and operational procedures of the instruments, information about "features" or "issues" for each instrument (e.g those related to data processing or tricks/tips for observing in a very specific mode) are not held in a common repository despite the vast experience spread around the ARC user community. This would be particularly useful for new users, students, etc. The user wiki was designed for this, but it has been fairly stagnant lately. Jon is leading an effort to revitalize the wiki and populate it with things that users should be aware of and provide some descriptions of reduction issues and software options. Therefore Jon is trying to collect 1) a list of features/issues for each instrument, provided by users, and 2) a list of the software options for data reduction for each instrument (no judgment here - truly, what are people using?). He needs help populating these two sections for each instrument! If you have and information regarding either of these items, please email it to Jon Holtzman (holtz@nmsu.edu) so he can add it to the wiki. This will ultimately help all users achieve the pest possible performance from the 3.5m facility instruments for their science.
 ----
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 === Website update ===
-Nancy stated that we'd like to understand what users are not able to find/do on the new website in an effort to encourage users to move to that one. One user suggested getting rid of the drop-down menus on the front page and restoring all the links to the front page. Or at minimum, reducing the number of clicks that it takes to reach specific information. Another user mentioned that there are no Exposure Time Calculators for any of the instruments. Bill stated that we have tried for the last 15 years to get ETCs for all instruments but these have not been completed. Another user mentioned that there is no front page that gives an overview of all the instrument. We concluded that an efficient way to address some of these issues is to schedule a hackathon where users could meet in real time with the web development team to discuss and implement suggestions. Nancy and Ben will discuss this further with the IT staff.
+Nancy stated that we'd like to understand what users are not able to find/do on the new website in an effort to encourage users to move to that one. One user suggested getting rid of the drop-down menus on the front page and restoring all the links to the front page. Or at minimum, reducing the number of clicks that it takes to reach specific information. Another user mentioned that there are no Exposure Time Calculators for any of the instruments. Bill stated that we have tried for the last 15 years to get ETCs for all instruments but these have not been completed. Another user mentioned that there is no front page that gives an overview of all the instrument. We concluded that an efficient way to address //some// of these issues would be to schedule a hackathon where users could meet in real time with the web development team to discuss and implement suggestions. Nancy and Ben will discuss this further with the IT staff.
 ----
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 Open action items from previous meetings:
-  * Joanne Hughes: put the KOSMOS MOS data reduction software on the wiki. Joanne is waiting for an update from her colleagues at the College of Idaho. Update: Nancy connected with the folks working on this while at the AAS meeting so we are getting closer to have this software in hand and made available to the
+  * Joanne Hughes: put the KOSMOS MOS data reduction software on the wiki. Joanne is waiting for an update from her colleagues at the College of Idaho. Update: Jon Holtzman put a link to the College of Idaho software on the wiki, and notes that this is a wrapper for lower level reduction stuff in pyVista. Additional descriptive text/examples would still be welcome and good. Status: CLOSED
-user community through the wiki. Status: Holtzman put link to CofI software on the wiki, and notes that this is a wrapper for lower level reduction stuff in pyVista. Additional descriptive text/examples would stil be welcome and good. CLOSED
   * UC reps: remind your users to review the Q1 schedule and request OPEN/DD01 time if they can make a good case for it. Status: OPEN.
-  * UC reps: remind your KOSMOS users to complete this survey no later than Friday January 30 to register their final preferences for which new grism option(s) are most important for their science: https://forms.gle/Fr6LVu9o8Up782hW7 . Status: CLOSED.
 New action items from this meeting:
   * UC reps: ask your users to provide instrument usage/data reduction tips and tricks to Jon Holtzman for inclusion on the wiki.
   * UC reps: ask your users if they have experience using PypeIt with non-APO instruments; if so please contact Jon.
-  * Nancy: ensure that observatory lat/long/elevation gets put back on new APO home page
+  * Nancy: ensure that observatory lat/long/elevation gets put back on new APO home page.
   * Nancy: explore web page hackathon idea with APO webdev team.