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+===== APO 3.5-m Users Committee Meeting, 5/05/2026 =====
+Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Cary Smith (APO), Amanda Townsend (APO), Mike Skrutskie (UVa), Denise Stephens (BYU), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Michael Hayden (OU), Adam Kowalski (CU), Eric Bellm (UW), Moire Prescott (NMSU), Ben Williams (UW), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Chip Kobulnicky (UWy)
+=== User feedback and comments from institutional representatives ===
+  * Colorado - Adam reported an issue he's seen in his KOSMOS data. It is documented that arc lamps bleed over into the overscan for KOSMOS but the documentation does not mention this for the flat fields. In fact, the flat field slope is seen in the overscan at a level of few hundred counts. This calls into question whether the overscan region is very useful. The recommendation for users is that they take biases close in time to their flats. The APO team took an action to add this to the instrument manual page, and Adam will add it to the users wiki (or will send Nancy the text to be added).
+  * Williams - no report
+  * Colgate - no report
+  * Oklahoma - nothing to report
+  * BYU - nothing to report
+  * Wyoming - nothing to report
+  * Georgia State - no report
+  * UVa - nothing to report
+  * JHU - Kevin relayed a user question pertaining to the feasibility of using the 3.5m to observe the predicted impact of a Falcon 9 upper stage on the Moon in early August. Nancy indicated that she is also already thinking about trying to observe this and asked Kevin to put the user in contact with her directly, given her experience with this from observing the LCROSS impact.
+  * NMSU - nothing to report
+  * Washington - nothing to report
+----
+=== 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, 04/06/26 – 05/04/26 //
+) Overview
+More than half of April was weathered out. Most of that was lost to cloud cover, elevated winds, and high humidity. We got very little precipitation during this time, but the first of May did experience some light snow showers with minimal accumulation. The latter portion of April into early May has cooled off noticeably.
+The problem reported last month regarding DNS cache and reverse DNS lookups appears to be resolved with additional workarounds.
+There were very few telescope or instrument problems reported in April.
+In April, there was one class group here for on-site training. They were fortunate to be visiting during a few consecutive days of good weather.
+) Operations
+.5m Telescope: The telescope has been performing nominally. There were reported altitude motion errors on one night but no on-sky time was lost because these occurred on a cloudy night during test slews.
+.5m Telescope: Dcam and UVAcam are both available options for users. BYUcam has been returned to Utah. We continued to experience numerous problems with the main Windows-based computer on ARCSAT this past month. We have had to rebuild or put several cloned disks in the system. The power supply issues appear to be resolved, but we have identified a conflict with a web power switch in our network. The issue seems to have started when we installed our new Cisco routers. We continue to troubleshoot the issues. The telescope is available, in a shared-risk mode for the time being.
+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. The instrument is working nominally otherwise.
+ARCES: No failures seen this month in the thorium argon lamp power supply, resulting in lamp dropouts or weak lines. We are working to source a spare power supply from the vendor. 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. This past week, a new issue with the ACS system has occurred. The team has just started investigating.
+Agile/ SoonerCam: Agile has been decommissioned. 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 of learning the Hamamatsu and Brandywine software APIs.
+DIS: DIS has been decommissioned.
+----
+=== Additional site, telescope and instruments discussion ===
+April was heavily impacted by weather. The DNS issues seem to be resolved, resulting in improved computer connectivity. All instrument performance was normal until few days, when two unrelated KOSMOS issues cropped up. First, the KOSMOS guide camera seems to have ice condensing on the CCD, which manifests as artifacts appearing in the images. The guider still guides but this is being evaluated. Second, a user reported artifacts appearing in dark frames; it seems to be suggestive of a light leak that allowed some ambient light in and caused an internal reflection. Amanda took some more test data to try and reproduce it and is Cary working on trying to understand the source. We hope to have more information soon. ARCSAT is still offered in shared risk mode given the recent computer problems.
+----
+=== 2026 Q2 3.5m scheduling ===
+The Q2 schedule is posted. There is very little unassigned time because of numerous partial night programs. Both unassigned DD half nights are dark B halves in June. Users can request this time at any point although given that it is later in the quarter we likely will not make a decision about it immediately.
+----
+=== 2026 Q3 3.5m scheduling ===
+The 3.5m summer shutdown is scheduled for July 20 - August 2. The institutional allocations for Q3 were sent out yesterday; proposals are due on May 26.
+----
+=== 2026 Q2 0.5 scheduling ===
+The ARCSAT Q2 schedule is posted. There is one open week at the end of June.
+----
+=== FAWG report ===
+Denise Stephens presented an overview of the report completed by the Future of ARCSAT Working Group (FAWG), which she chaired. The charge for this group was to identify current use cases for ARCSAT, assess its current capabilities, and explore future options for making it more useful for the ARC user community. The FAWG conducted an ARC-wide survey, for which they received 61 responses. The survey results indicated that there is still a strong demand for an 0.5m telescope for teaching, training, and scientific uses, but nearly half of the respondents said that ARCSAT in its current form would not meet their future needs. The FAWG examined telescope needs first, followed by cameras, user interface, and possible observing modes. The overarching concern is the reliability of the current ARCSAT, noting that it is one critical failure away from being unusable. The FAWG provided a suite of recommendations with different cost points, which the 3.5m leadership team will evaluate in preparation for making a recommendation to the ARC Board. Nancy expressed appreciation for the time and effort that the FAWG members put into this task. She will post the final version of the FAWG report after receiving it.
+----
+=== Reporting metrics ===
+Nancy expressed an interest in collecting more information from the users concerning the impact that the 3.5m has had on grants being awarded to researchers at ARC member institutions. She already collects related information from users at two different points in the year: publications resulting from 3.5m/ARCSAT data in June-July, and science highlights for ARC Board meeting in October. She will add the grant information request to one of these calls.
+----
+=== ACTION ITEMS ===
+Open action items from previous meetings:
+  * UC reps: ask your users to provide instrument usage/data reduction tips and tricks to Jon Holtzman for inclusion on the wiki. No further activity on this topic. Status: CLOSED.
+  * APO: check out recently reported ARCSAT issue to see if can reproduce it and/or determine its cause. Status: CLOSED.
+  * CU: Adam K. to provide some examples of ghost spectra for KOSMOS documentation, and APO could potentially take some bright object spectra during engineering time to learn more about these effects. Status: CLOSED.
+  * Nancy will ensure that the final report from the Future of ARCSAT Working Group is made available to the Users Committee so that it can be added to the agenda for our next meeting. Status: OPEN (pending receipt of final version of report).
+New action items from this meeting:
+  * APO team: update KOSMOS user manual web page regarding issue of flats bleeding into overscan region.
+----
+=== All Other Business ===
+None.
+----
+=== Next Meeting ===
+The next Users Committee meeting will be on Tuesday June 02 at 10:30 MDT.
+----
+===== APO 3.5-m Users Committee Meeting, 4/07/2026 =====
+Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Russet McMillan (APO), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Chip Kobulnicky (UWy), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Eric Bellm (UW), Moire Prescott (NMSU), Sarah Tuttle (UW), Misty Bentz (GSU),  Adam Kowalski (CU), Ben Williams (UW)
+=== User feedback and comments from institutional representatives ===
+  * Washington - nothing to report
+  * NMSU - nothing to report
+  * Colorado - nothing to report
+  * JHU - had a question about whether the process for requesting open ARCSAT time is the same as for requesting OPEN/DD time on the 3.5m (it is the same - please send all requests for open ARCSAT time to Ben Williams, Russet McMillan, Amanda Townsend, and Nancy Chanover)
+  * UVa - nothing to report
+  * Georgia State - nothing to report
+  * Oklahoma - no report
+  * Wyoming - nothing to report
+  * BYU - nothing to report
+  * Williams - no report
+  * Colgate - no report
+----
+=== 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, 03/03/26 – 04/06/26 //
+March was a busy month here at the observatory.
+Most of March was drier and warmer than normal, with plenty of on-sky time. Weather downtime was typically due to high winds and high dust levels, though we lost a small handful of partial nights to elevated humidity. We are in fire season again, and we had a wildfire about 40 miles northeast of the observatory that brought elevated smoke levels one night. The human-caused wildfire is currently 90% contained.
+We held the APO Site Infrastructure Review here at the observatory on March 11-13. It was a positive experience for both the reviewers and staff. The reports (Infrastructure Committee and Water Subcommittee) have been shared with the ARC board members. There will be a special board meeting with the external reviewers later this month to discuss the report and develop implementation plans for some of their recommendations. A special thank you to the staff for all their hard work preparing presentations, quotes, and answering the reviewers' insightful questions.
+A small number of events occurred in which the NA2 rotator lost communication with the telescope control software. We changed the memory card in the controller and are currently monitoring for additional incidents.  Overall, the telescope and instruments performed well.
+We are working on a problem with our DNS cache. We believe that recent software updates to the site firewall have caused conflicts with the configuration of the old DNS machine. Reverse DNS lookups have caused slowdowns or outages on our network for both telescopes. We have implemented some workarounds, but we will need to reengineer the on-site DNS architecture.
+In March, in addition to the on-site infrastructure review, we had two visiting instrument teams, one on-site first-time PhD observer, and three class groups here for on-site training. All got data on sky and left quite happy.
+) Operations
+.5m Telescope: The telescope has been performing nominally. A few instances of changing instrument ports resulted in communication failures between the telescope control computer and the NA2 rotator again this month. An increase of last month. A software restart corrected the problem with minimal time lost on sky. As a precaution, we cleaned all communication port connections. This did not solve the problem, so we have replaced the compact flash card in the controller. We will monitor for additional events. No additional instances of secondary mirror actuator errors were observed this past month. One reported altitude motion error as the ambient temperature has started to rise.
+.5m Telescope: Dcam and UVAcam are both available options for users. We had a significant failure of the Windows computer that runs most of the application software (ACP, FocusMax, MaxIm DL). The main hard drive was on the verge of failure, so we cloned and replaced it. A short time later, power-related problems appeared to affect only this machine. We suspect the power supply or possibly the UPS that supplies it. Parts are on order and may not arrive until later in April. The telescope is unavailable for the time being while we work on this problem.
+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 had 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. There was one instance of a quad drop, likely due to user error.
+ARCES: No failures seen this month in the ThAr lamp power supply, resulting in lamp dropouts or weak lines. We are working to source a spare power supply from the vendor. 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.
+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 of learning the Hamamatsu and Brandywine software APIs.
+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 before the summer shutdown.
+----
+=== Additional site, telescope and instruments discussion ===
+We are getting some much needed moisture today at the observatory (it's currently snowing!). March was warmer/drier than normal, which means we have been experiencing the spring wind/dust pattern early. The wildfire mentioned in the above site report is now fully contained. The Site Infrastructure Review report was recently sent to the ARC Board. There was a recent NA2 rotator issue; we changed out the memory card for the computer that calculates velocity, accelerations, etc. and now it seems better. A problem with the DNS cache on site has been causing local connectivity slow-downs. Shane is working with our provider to schedule the work to repair this issue. Users from off-site should not notice a change other than possibly fewer TUI dropouts.
+The 0.5m had a severe computer failure, first a hard drive issue and then power-related problems. That machine is now back in the dome and we are running diagnostics now. If things go well then some of the time early in Q2 that is currently listed as unavailable may be freed up to be scheduled.
+Most of the 3.5m instruments are behaving well. There was a quad drop on ARCTIC and a restart of NICFPS after freezing up over the last week. SoonerCam development continues. We had some visitors from NASA working on APOLLO for some satellite ranging tests last week.
+During some recent engineering time we tried to replicate the issue that Adam K. reported last month (ghosting in KOSMOS spectra of bright sources). We will need to do a real-time comparison with him to better understand what he is seeing; Adam will send some files out to illustrate what he's referring to.
+----
+=== 2026 Q2 3.5m scheduling ===
+The Q2 schedule is posted. There is very little unassigned time because of numerous partial night programs. Both unassigned DD half nights are dark B halves in June. Users can request this time at any point although given that is later in the quarter we likely will not make a decision about it immediately.
+----
+=== 2026 Q2 0.5 scheduling ===
+The ARCSAT Q2 schedule is posted. Russet advised Sarah (the first user after the scheduled down time for repairs) to be cautious about observing planning with her students.
+----
+=== 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 June 2026.
+  * Ocotillo: All optics are in house for first channel but one compound piece that is scheduled for deliver in June, and assembly has started on the opto-mechanical structure. Sarah added several undergraduate and graduate students to her team and they are now working on fiber manufacturing.
+----
+=== Website update ===
+We have received lots of valuable input, found a lot of broken links, and have been working on improving accessibility of information and general flow of the site. Users are reminded to do a full reload when accessing the website so that they are not using a cached version. If users find a broken link please let us know so we can fix it!
+----
+=== ACTION ITEMS ===
+Open action items from previous meetings:
+  * UC reps: ask your users to provide instrument usage/data reduction tips and tricks to Jon Holtzman for inclusion on the wiki. Status: OPEN.
+  * APO: check out recently reported ARCSAT issue to see if can reproduce it and/or determine its cause. Status: CLOSED.
+  * CU: Adam K. to provide some examples of ghost spectra for KOSMOS documentation, and APO could potentially take some bright object spectra during engineering time to learn more about these effects. Status: CLOSED.
+New action items from this meeting:
+  * Nancy will ensure that the final report from the Future of ARCSAT Working Group is made available to the Users Committee so that it can be added to the agenda for our next meeting.
+----
+=== All Other Business ===
+None.
+----
+=== Next Meeting ===
+The next Users Committee meeting will be on Tuesday May 05 at 10:30 MDT.
+----
 ===== APO 3.5-m Users Committee Meeting, 3/03/2026 =====
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 === All Other Business ===
 Grisms:  Any update on high resolution 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.
+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.
 ----