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==== APO 3.5-m Users Committee Meeting, 06/06/2023 ====

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

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

  * JHU - nothing to report
  * UVa - nothing to report
  * Georgia State - nothing to report
  * NMSU - Eric is glad to be able to attend UC meetings once again, otherwise nothing to report
  * Seattle - Joanne reports that her team had a wonderful visit to APO in May. They brought 3 students from Seattle University and 4 from Saint Martin's University, along with SMU astronomer Andrea Kunder who needed to be trained. Thanks to Russet, Candace, and Amanda for all their help with the training and the implementation of new KOSMOS slit masks. The weather and telescope both cooperated and 4 of the 5 masks worked well. While there was a learning curve for getting the masks made, they learned that one can reliably make masks using positions from Gaia. Joanne is typing up her notes (along with Amanda's notes on how to align the masks) with the goal of providing a cookbook for how to make KOSMOS masks that we can post on the wiki. We will make sure that Bill, Russet and Joe Burchett also have an opportunity to review/contribute to the cookbook. 
  * FGCU - nothing to report other than some recent bad weather (sent by email)
  * Colorado - no report
  * Oklahoma - nothing to report
  * Washington - nothing to report
  * BYU - nothing to report
  * Wyoming - 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, 5/1/2023 – 6/5/2023 //

1) Overview

APO weather for May was variable; we had some thunderstorms, and some very nice clear skies.

May was the quiet month before the June rush arrives. In May we had one class visit and one visiting instrument team on site. June will be a very busy month at APO with three different class visits and two visits from instrument teams.

2) Operations

3.5m telescope: operated nominally over the past month.
 
0.5m telescope: issues with camera control and instrument drivers are being worked on.
 
KOSMOS: upgrades were implemented for the umbilical hose to further limit any issues from the LN2 vent.
 
ARCTIC: the diffuser rotator service had to be postponed; it will be rescheduled for a later date.
 
Agile: the timing board was swapped, but the sync issue is still being investigated as the board swap did not eliminate the issue.
 
Echelle: the inter-order light ratios (measure of scattered light in the instrument) are still quite good but are declining again with the warmer weather.
 
DIS: scattered light is improving slowly as expected, however, the blue channel is still considered by the APO staff to be poor and the red is considered borderline usable.  
   
3) Other

The mirror support system to hold our 3.5m mirror in the LDT coating chamber is being manufactured at APO. Plans are continuing for the scheduled August recoating at Lowell.    

Repairs and maintenance are ongoing for various site metrology units (dewpoint and dust sensors).

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=== Additional telescope and instrument discussion === 

June is going to be a busy month with multiple groups visiting, as indicated in the above report. Russet reports that recent engineering data with DIS show that the red side is looking a bit better and 
is "kinda usable," although the throughput is about half as good as it was last month (which was already much lower than where it should be). The blue channel is still poor. To make these determinations she used DIS to observe a standard star, a planetary nebula to assess the broadening of emission lines, and the recent supernova in M101 (to get observations of it with as many APO instruments as possible).

To reiterate from last month, ** summer shutdown will start on July 26 and the anticipated return to science is August 22 ** (although that could slip by several days if the weather during engineering recovery is poor or if the coating process takes more time than anticipated).

Last Friday APO hosted a visit from the new NMSU Provost. A site visit is helpful for our institutional administrators to see the nature of the facility and learn more about their research investment. Some institutional representatives will have an opportunity to visit APO this November in conjunction with the ARC Board of Governors meeting, but we would welcome other visits from institutional administrators if there is ever a need or desire to schedule one.

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=== KOSMOS update === 

We have received several reports of scattered light being a problematic issue for certain types of observations with KOSMOS. We have been in contact with the affected users and have a meeting scheduled to discuss it and learn more about it next week; a mitigation plan will be forthcoming after that. This concern has been prioritized and we look forward to gaining a better understanding of the problem next week.

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=== Q2 3.5m scheduling ===

There is some unassigned time at end of June: 1 unencumbered dark B half (21 June) and 1 grey partial A half (23 June) adjacent to sunset APOLLO observations. 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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=== Q3 3.5m scheduling ===

The Q3 schedule is in progress and we expect to publish it in a few days. Challenges in building the Q3 schedule include a class visit in July, a visiting instrument run, and the fact that several users will be attempting to observe Venus in the pre-dawn hours. Due to the fact that Q3 is a short quarter because of the summer shutdown there will be very little DD or OPEN time available (and there could be even less if there are difficulties with summer shutdown or recovery). **UC reps: please urge your users to review the Q3 schedule and let us know immediately if there are errors**; it will be much more challenging to fix them later in the quarter since we will have very little flexibility in the schedule.

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=== Q2-Q3 0.5m scheduling ===

There is an open week from June 25 to July 1 but this is not scheduleable due to the fact that we will have a visiting instrument on 3.5m that will require all of the attention of the observing specialist. Once the Q3 3.5m schedule comes out we will issue a call for Q3 ARCSAT proposals. ARCSAT will be following the same shutdown schedule as the 3.5m, thus it will not be operating during summer shutdown. There have been some recent issues with BYUCam that we think we have traced to a hardware problem. We are currently encouraging people to use FlareCam and will include more information about the status of BYUCam in the Q3 call for proposals.

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=== Annual Request to Update Publication Record ===

**Please send Nancy any references for 3.5m-related publications (anything published from Jan 1 2022 to now). The deadline is July 31.** Understanding the scientific usage and impact of the telescope is critical for evaluating future projects, initiatives, instrument concepts, etc., thus we need your help in updating our publication record! We are now participating in a cross-observatory analysis of scientific impact of ground-based telescopes, so it is especially important that we capture all publications resulting from APO observations. Any publications resulting from ARCSAT data are also requested. The listing should include refereed publications and student theses and dissertations (not conference abstracts unless they are peer reviewed) that made use of data acquired with the 3.5m and/or ARCSAT, published from 2022 to the present. If a paper has been submitted to a journal but has not yet completely gone through the review process, please include that as well, with the name of the journal and "submitted."

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=== ACTION ITEMS === 

Open action items from previous meetings:

  * Nancy: track down missing ARCTIC data reduction scripts for wiki. -> OPEN. Making progress on it this week.
  * UC reps: remind your users to review the Q2 schedule and request OPEN/DD time if they can make a good case for it. -> OPEN
  * UC reps: Notify your users that we have funds to purchase slit masks for MOS runs with KOSMOS -> CLOSED
  * UC reps: Notify your users of the summer shutdown dates, and remind them when submitting their Q3 proposals that the return to science date is dependent on good weather during the recovery engineering time. -> CLOSED
  * UC reps: Have any department members who are planning to attend the summer AAS meeting and present APO-related science contact Nancy. -> CLOSED


New action items from this meeting:

  * UC reps: please urge your users to review the Q3 schedule and let us know immediately if there are errors.
  * UC reps: please notify your department members of the July 31 deadline for sending Nancy listings of papers from January 1, 2022 to present that made use of 3.5m and/or ARCSAT data.

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=== All Other Business ===

None.

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=== Next meeting(s) ===

The next meeting will be on **Tuesday June 27, 10:30 am MDT.** This is one week earlier than our regular schedule of the first Tuesday of July to avoid Independence Day. By having the meeting in late June this will give people an opportunity to provide feedback on the summer schedule, open time, instruments, etc. before July. The August meeting, which would be scheduled for August 1, will be canceled as it will be in the middle of summer shutdown. The September meeting, on September 5, will be used to discuss our return to operations after summer shutdown.

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