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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 =====
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 === 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 this work. Users from off-site should not notice a change other than possibly fewer TUI dropouts.
+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.
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 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 comparisons with him to better understand what he is seeing; Adam will send some files out to illustrate what he's referring to.
+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.
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