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==== APO 3.5-m Users Committee Meeting, 04/04/2023 ====

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Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Jamey Eriksen (APO), Gordon MacDonald (APO), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Eric Bellm (UW), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Adam Kowalski (CU), Mukremin Kilic (OU), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Derek Buzasi (FGCU), Misty Bentz (GSU), Sarah Tuttle (UW), Ben Williams (UW)

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

  * Seattle - nothing to report
  * NMSU - nothing to report
  * Wyoming - no report
  * Washington - nothing to report
  * BYU - nothing to report
  * Colorado - a user reported that the IRAF data reduction guides and scripts for ARCTIC (from Karen Kinemuchi) are not available through the wiki any more (referring to this page: [[http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/apo-wiki/doku.php?id=arctic]]). **Nancy will track this down and get the wiki updated.**
  * JHU - nothing to report
  * Oklahoma - Muk previously had some questions about the timing information in Agile image headers and Russet and Bill looked into it; Muk thanked them for their efforts. He is looking forward to his OU class visit next week (which will include Muk, a TA and 5 students)
  * Georgia State - nothing to report
  * FGCU - nothing to report
  * UVa - 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, 3/7/2023 – 4/4/2023 //

1) Overview

APO weather is shifting from wintery mix to more spring like.  Temperatures are increasing and snow is melting.

March was a busy month at APO with the UVa (DSSI) team, a class from CU that overlapped slightly, and the week-long KOSMOS work by UW. The month ended with a small team from LANL visiting to prepare for their upcoming run in early April.  April will be a busy month as well, with two visiting instrument teams - one at the start and one towards the end of the month - and an OU class visit in the middle of the month.

2) Operations

3.5m Telescope: operating nominally over the past month.
 
0.5m Telescope:  The loaner camera from BYU (BYUCam), a replacement for SurveyCam, is now available to the user community.  Its performance is being confirmed.
 
KOSMOS service is continuing with on-site and remote work by UW.
 
The ARTIC diffuser is currently rotating as expected. Tests conducted after the cold temperature issue was reported have not shown the same issue.  
 
The Agile timestamps in the image headers were checked and are reliable as far as we can test them.  Sync failures are still being investigated and tracked.
 
DIS scattered light is improving slowly, as expected. However, the blue side is still considered bad and red is considered borderline usable by APO.  

The TripleSpec cart rotation underwent a full overhaul after a failure of its gear box.
 
Nothing new to note for any of the other instruments.
 
3) Other

Efforts are continuing on designing a system that would allow the 3.5m mirror to be coated in the LDT chamber. 

Support for Python 2 ended on 1/1/2020.  With the conversion of TUI to Python 3, we are ending our support for TUI 2.6.1alpha2 and earlier software.  Those versions will remain available for download, however, the observatory staff will not be able to troubleshoot if problems arise.  All observers are encouraged to upgrade to the newest version of TUI, TUI 3.1.1, which was just released. All current and past versions can be found in the usual download location : [[http://www.apo.nmsu.edu/arc35m/TUIdownloads_ARC35m.html]] .

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=== Additional telescope and instrument discussion === 

March and April are busy months with numerous visitors coming to the site. BYUCam on ARCSAT is ready for community use. The Agile image timestamps are accurate but the sync issue is still being investigated. The ARCTIC diffuser rotation issue that was seen during cold temperatures has been fixed. The control software is not giving a valid rotation flag (i.e. when it is rotating at speed the flag is not registering). We recommend that users continue to use the instrument (with the diffuser rotation) as is. It looks like the rotation is still happening at proper speed; it may be slightly below the nominal 2 Hz threshold but until Bill can take it apart and clean it we won't know for sure. For this week, as long as the star's diffraction spikes are being smeared out it should be considered acceptable for science (if not, we recommend defocussing the instrument a bit). There is an issue with a ghost image in the TripleSpec data that Russet is investigating. We are meeting with Lowell Observatory engineers next week to discuss M1 realuminization. Users are urged to upgrade to python3 if they have not already done so, and to use the latest python3 version of TUI. Because python2 is no longer being supported we will not be able to support or troubleshoot the python2-based version of TUI any longer.

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=== KOSMOS update === 

When Sarah was at APO a couple of weeks ago she spent some time looking at the smear users were seeing in the overscan with bright lines. She played around with some voltages to check if it is due to a serial readout problem. Of note to all KOSMOS users, the way the detecter controller is currently working, it shows as being saturated at the ADC maximum, not the chip full well depth, meaning it will go up to 2^18 counts before it overflows. Somewhere between 150k-200k is the physical full well. She is still doing tests to quantify this, but **KOSMOS users should be aware that very high count levels (> 150k) are not physical.** Sarah got some help from a CTIO colleague who worked on COSMOS and got the information she needed so now she can test the voltages. The chip is currently optimized for a single amplifier but the goal is to be able to run it using one OR two amplifiers. The instrument is currently in a stable state and we will always leave it in its default state after testing. That said, users should notify their observing specialist and Sarah Tuttle if they have questions or encounter something out of the ordinary.

Joanne is coming to APO in May and hopes to have the files ready for slit mask production by end of this week. She offered to test other slit masks if users have any additional masks that they would like to get tested.

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=== Q2 3.5m scheduling ===

There is some unassigned time at end of April: 3 A halves, 2 partials and 1 unencumbered. Users are encouraged to request this time if they can make use of it (particularly those who have been weathered out recently). As a reminder, users should include Ben, Russet, Amanda, Nancy and their institutional scheduler on all schedule related emails.

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=== Q2 ARCSAT scheduling ===

We are working out some final details on the Q2 ARCSAT schedule and will have it finalized and posted by the end of this week.

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=== ACTION ITEMS === 

Open action items from previous meetings:

  * Nancy: make sure that the APO web site gets updated to address the issues reported by Eric B. in December. Status: OPEN. There is one remaining issue that needs to be addressed:
     * the wiki link on the 3.5m page still pointed to the old wiki - //this was fixed.//
     * the Search Site function on the APO home page does not work. //A notice was added to reflect the fact that this search tool will not work from computers outside of the APO VPN.//
     * the ToO policy is not easily found. //We are working on a document// that we can post on the scheduling page to make this information more easy to locate.
  * Nancy: get updated on pyKOSMOS and report to UC next month. Status: OPEN.
  * UC reps: notify your users about the option of using pyvista (and/or some of the other packages listed above) for data reduction. -> CLOSED
  * UC reps: notify your users that Nancy is seeking 1-2 more echelle users to participate in the tiger team charged with firming up the science requirements for a new echelle spectrograph. -> CLOSED
  * UC reps: poll your department users and if there is a need for a remote training in option for Q2, notify Russet ASAP (within the next day or so). -> CLOSED
  * UC reps: remind your users that they should notify us if their plans change and they wish to forfeit their week of scheduled ARCSAT time. -> CLOSED

New action items from this meeting:
  * Nancy: track down missing ARCTIC data reduction scripts for wiki.
  * UC reps: notify your KOSMOS users that counts > 150k are not physical.
  * UC reps: remind your users to review the Q2 schedule and request OPEN/DD time if they can make a good case for it.

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=== All Other Business ===

The June 2023 AAS meeting will be held in Albuquerque on June 4-8. Although we are not normally in the habit of having an exhibitor booth at the summer meetings, particularly after just having been at the preceding winter meeting, we (APO) will have a booth at this meeting given its proximity to APO. It represents an excellent opportunity to highlight exciting science results enabled by a New Mexico-based astronomical facility like APO. If anyone from our ARC member institutions or lease partners is planning to attend the June AAS meeting please let Nancy know so we can promote their work!

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=== Next meeting ===

The next meeting will be on **Tuesday May 2, 10:30 am MDT.**

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