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==== APO 3.5-m Users Committee Meeting, 9/06/2022 ====

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Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Eric Nielsen (NMSU), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Jamey Eriksen (APO), Misty Bentz (GSU), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Russet McMillan (APO), Mukremin Kilic (OU), Eric Bellm (UW), Chip Kobulnicky (UWy), Ben Williams (UW), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Derek Buzasi (FGCU)

=== User feedback and comments from institutional representatives ===

  * UVa - nothing to report 
  * NMSU - nothing to report
  * Washington - nothing to report
  * Wyoming - Chip just returned from APO, where he brought 6 graduate students and 1 undergraduate for an observing/training trip. Candace did a great job with the training and they all had a wonderful experience.
  * Georgia State - nothing to report
  * Oklahoma - nothing to report
  * BYU - nothing to report
  * Colorado - nothing to report
  * FGCU - nothing to report
  * Seattle - nothing to report
  * JHU - nothing to report
  * NAPG - no report

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=== 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, 8/2/2022 - 9/5/2022 //

0) Overview

APO is no longer under any staffing or indoor masking restrictions from the State of New Mexico due to COVID. The COVID vaccination policy for ARC/APO has not changed.
 
Weather for August has been very monsoonal.  
 
September is shaping up to be a very busy month at APO on the 3.5m side: Wyoming class 9/2-5, Washington class 9/17-21 and two visiting instrument teams from Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of Virginia. 

1) Telescope

The 3.5m telescope summer shutdown is over and the telescope was returned to service without major issues.  Mirrors were washed, drive systems were cleaned and worn rollers were replaced along with other miscellaneous annual maintenance tasks.

The telescope secondary issue has not recurred since power board replacement; the system will continue to be monitored.  
 
2) Instruments

KOSMOS: Commissioning activities are continuing; the instrument is still being offered on a shared risk basis. A replacement shutter for the slitviewer arrived was replaced over shutdown. Flux was decreased for the internal lamps again and the flux levels are being evaluated. Work continues on prototype multi-object masks at both NMSU and UW shops; several programs made use of these prototypes and lessons learned are being applied to the next round of test masks.
 
DIS: Servicing of the instrument is tentatively being planned for early October to attempt to resolve the ice droplets on the red camera.

TripleSpec: Cold, operational and performing nominally. 
 
Agile: Cold, operational and performing nominally. There is a known issue with missing observatory and WCS cards from the headers that we are trying to track down. This problem seemed to originate about the time we converted and moved the hub35m to a new server. 

Echelle: Echelle inter-order light was slowly decreasing with the warmer ambient temperatures, but increased with cooler monsoon temperatures; the ratios are still quite good.
 
NICFPS: The instrument is performing nominally with the occasional need to reset the controller due to corrupted images, and previous cautions about rotator angle.
 
ARCTIC: Cold, operational and performing nominally.  
 
3) ARCSAT: Observing started up again after summer shutdown. We had some pointing and software issues at startup but it has been working well since then.

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=== Additional telescope and instrument discussion === 

The weather at APO has been very monsoonal over the past month. September is going to be a busy month with two visiting classes, one from UWy (they were there in early September) and the other from UW, and two visiting instrument teams, The summer shutdown was completed and we are now back to normal operations. All routine shutdown maintenance activities were completed and the issue with the secondary mirror has not come back so hopefully it is resolved. Once again the 3.5m technical and operational staff did a fantastic job of conducting a successful shutdown and returning the telescope to science operations without a hitch. DIS servicing is currently scheduled for October. Ed Leon, the 3.5m electronics technician, retired on September 1. Nancy expressed her appreciation for his efforts and dedication to APO and the 3.5m over the past decade. The job ad for his position is now posted ([[https://jobs.nmsu.edu/postings/47642]]) - please share this widely and encourage people to apply!

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=== KOSMOS update === 

Over summer shutdown several KOSMOS-related tasks were accomplished. We reduced the brightness of the internal calibration lamps by putting an ND filter in place. This will affect both flat fields and arc lamps, but since observers need to acquire arcs more frequently because of the known instrument flexure we don't want to dim those any further. We are recommending that observers use truss lamps for flat fields if the frames are still saturated. We are currently trying to see if we can address the brightness of the internal quartz lamps but not the arcs, which requires a tradeoff between the needs of narrow vs wide slit observations; no decisions have been made yet. We are optimizing the system for good arc lamp exposures for the moment. A new shutter was installed in the slit viewer camera. We hope to have the new slits from the UW shop by the end of the month. Nancy posted some info to the wiki concerning how some have been handling the flat fielding of KOSMOS data (see [[:kosmos|]]). We have gone through just about one entire cycle of seasonal changes with KOSMOS, so we are now developing a more complete understanding of its behavior with environmental changes. The multi-object capability is still coming; we hope to do some more testing during engineering time soon. 

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=== Summer shutdown recap === 

The problems that we had been having with the secondary mirror have not been recurring since shutdown; we hope it was resolved by the change in hardware that was made during shutdown. We are still vulnerable to a possible recurrence of the tertiary problem we had a few months ago but this is not a frequent issue so we hope it will not recur, The telescope came back together nicely after shutdown and we had good luck during the initial part of the shutdown recovery period. We expect to have good pointing with all instruments,

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=== Q3 3.5m scheduling ===

There is only one remaining unassigned half night of time, on Sep 30A. [Note added in proof: this has now been assigned; there is no remaining open time in Q3.]

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=== Q4 3.5m scheduling ===

When the Q4 schedule comes out users should check it to verify the scheduling of their programs. We expect to publish the Q4 schedule by end of this week (i.e. on 9/9). There will be no on site classes in Q4. Several monitoring programs are requesting quarter nights in Q4. Users should copy Amanda Townsend (ajt@apo.nmsu.edu) in addition to Nancy, Ben, Russet, and their institutional scheduler on all schedule related emails.

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=== Q3 ARCSAT scheduling ===


There is some free time coming up after the week of 9/18 - the last week of the month is unassigned. Once Q4 schedule comes out we will post a call for Q4 ARCSAT proposals.

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=== Upcoming Meetings ===

The ARC Board of Governors meeting is on Monday November 7. Nancy, Ben, and some of the observatory staff are starting to gather the relevant data and prepare their presentations.

The January 2023 AAS meeting will be 8-12 January in Seattle. There will be lots of UW users there, and hopefully many from other ARC institutions and lease partners as well, We discussed options for doing something special for APO or ARC users. UC reps: please poll your users to see if they would be interested in an APO event (e.g. a meal or reception one evening) during the AAS meeting? One suggestion was to give out stickers to people with posters to indicate that they made use of APO data. Chip suggested that we try to connect those with undergraduates in attendance who are looking for graduate programs with representatives from other ARC member institutions, as a small-scale recruitment effort. Misty suggested that we start a Google Doc where people can list their APO-related posters and talks; this would help with connecting people. The abstract deadline for the meeting is Tuesday October 11!

We will definitely have an APO booth in the exhibit area, so in a month or two Nancy will be looking for volunteers to help us staff the booth. Stay tuned!


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=== ACTION ITEMS === 

Open action items from previous meetings:

  * Nancy: start investigations re: short wavelength throughput (climate data, other facilities). Status: OPEN. No news. Old news: Nancy reached out to some colleagues at other observatories to ask about short wavelength performance degradation of their optical coatings. She got some names from Bill and will contact those individuals next. The ongoing discussions about new coatings for the primary also relate to this issue so we will determine our coatings first before continuing to pursue this line of investigation.

  * UC reps: notify your users of remaining open/DD time in Q3. -> CLOSED

  * UC reps: remind your users to send Nancy all publications through 2021 by August 31, 2022. -> CLOSED

  * Nancy: track down resources for KOSMOS flat fielding and post them. -> CLOSED.


New action items from this meeting:

  * UC reps: please poll your users to see if they would be interested in an APO-related event (e.g. a meal or reception one evening) during the Jan. 2023 AAS meeting.

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=== All Other Business ===

None.

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=== Next meeting ===

The next meeting will be on **Tuesday October 4, 10:30 am MDT.**

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