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==== APO 3.5-m Users Committee Meeting, 6/04/2024 ====

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Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Jamey Eriksen (APO), Yuta Notsu (CU), Eric Nielsen (NMSU), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Sarah Tuttle (UW), Mukremin Kilic (OU), Eric Bellm (UW), Shane Thomas (APO), Chip Kobulnicky (UWy), Misty Bentz (GSU), Ben Williams (UW), Gordon MacDonald (APO)


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

  * NMSU - nothing to report
  * UVa - nothing to report
  * JHU - nothing to report
  * Washington - nothing to report
  * Georgia State - nothing to report
  * Wyoming - nothing to report
  * Oklahoma - nothing to report
  * Colorado - nothing to report
  * BYU - nothing to report
  * NAPG - no report
  * FGCU - no report
  * Seattle - nothing to report other than Joanne would like to discuss KOSMOS grisms and slit masks (covered in more detail below)

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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, 5/07/2024 – 6/04/2024 //

1) Overview

We had improved weather at APO during the month of May. Although we have not seen much in the way of monsoonal weather patterns yet, we have had a few nights when observing was impacted by high winds and dust. The telescope has continued to work well even as nighttime temperatures have increased.  

In May we hosted a team from UVa with the DSSI visiting instrument, but there were no class visits.  

The brush/forest fire near Timberon that we reported on last month was contained and put out relatively quickly. Recently, there was also a brush/forest fire 4 miles east of Cloudcroft that was quickly contained with no impact to APO. Lastly, there is a much larger fire near Ruidoso (~45 miles as the crow flies from APO) that is currently 7500 acres in size and producing lots of smoke; it is 5% contained. If the winds shift so that they are coming from the north/northeast that could cause the smoke to impact observing at APO.

2) Operations

3.5m Telescope: The telescope is working well, with motion errors that seem to be primarily of the seasonal type. There was one recently that was attributed to an instrument mounting error.
 
0.5m Telescope: The telescope and cameras are working well.
 
KOSMOS: A new set of 1.25” slits arrived from UW and were tested on an engineering night. The preliminary reports suggest that they are acceptable; the new mounting/flattening screws are near the edge of the field of view.
 
ARCTIC: The diffuser rotator was serviced and the rotation mechanism has been used for one set of science observations so far.  There are some software bugs in the reporting status of the rotator mechanism that still need to be addressed.
 
Agile: The instrument TEC controls failed. Further investigations are currently underway by Cary and Bill.
 
ARCES: The inter-order light has continued to exhibit a slow decline in the blue though the red is holding steady. The instrument is still considered excellent for use, with scattered light not being a major issue.  
 
All other instruments are performing nominally.

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=== Additional site, telescope and instrument discussion === 

The weather improved during May (although thunderstorms are in the forecast for later this week!). Dust and wind have been the main weather issues of late. Despite the seasonal increase in temperature the telescope is performing well. The DSSI guest instrument team was on site in May, but no class groups. The fire near Timberon that was reported on last month has been put out/contained. A subsequent fire near Cloudcroft broke out but was handled quickly. The biggest fire we are currently watching is in Ruidoso; it has increased in size to about 8000 acres and is at the ~50% containment level. There is a huge smoke plume associated with this fire but currently it is moving in a direction away from APO. As for other site happenings, Jamey has continued to offer science talks given by visiting astronomers for the day staff; this helps them understand what the 3.5m telescope is being used for and allows the staff to put a face with a name. We encourage visiting scientists to give science talk when coming to site so please consider this when you plan your next trip to APO. We gave a tour to a group from the Air Force Reliability Lab. Also, the site had some spectacular views of the northern lights last month with the all-sky camera. As for operations updates, the telescope is working well. The new 1.25" slits arrived from UW and engineering tests revealed that their performance is good. The ARCTIC diffuser rotation mechanism is fixed. **UC reps: please notify your ARCTIC users that the diffuser rotation capability is available once again.** Agile is currently being investigated by Cary and Bill and we expect to have an update next month if not sooner. Everything else is behaving as expected.

Joanne has been in touch with Bill about the turnaround time for new slit masks for KOSMOS; the bare minimum is 2 weeks but ideally people should allow longer. She may ask for some more masks to be made this week in preparation of her summer observing runs (on June 28 and in Q3).

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=== 2024 Q2 3.5m scheduling ===

We have a some unassigned OPEN time remaining in Q2, specifically June 13A, June 15B, 16B, 18B and 23B. Some of the available slots are short, while others are complete half-nights. Users should follow the usual channels for requesting any of this time (i.e. email Russet, Amanda, Ben, Nancy and their institutional scheduler when submitting requests, and provide a proposal cover page if you don't already have a program scheduled for the current quarter).

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=== 2024 Q3 3.5m scheduling ===

Amanda is working on the Q3 schedule; we hope to have it finalized and published by the end of this week or early next week.

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=== 2024 Q2 0.5 scheduling ===

All of the Q2 time on ARCSAT is spoken for (the last week of June is reserved for engineering). The call for Q3 requests will go out after the 3.5m Q3 schedule is published, and proposals will likely be due in the last week of June (with the Q3 schedule starting in early July). The shutdown dates for ARCSAT will be same as for the 3.5m, i.e. August 12-26.

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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 2023 to now). The deadline is June 30.** 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 2023 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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=== Website Modernization Effort ===

A lot of work has been done behind the scenes to develop a new APO web site. Shane Thomas has created a whole separate web site with a more modern front end and database-driven apps on the back end. It has been time consuming to port all of the existing web site content over, which was the first step, and recently we have been evaluating how to improve the user experience and remove redundant or unnecessary information. We are now at the point of being ready to solicit feedback on the content of the new web site. All users are encouraged to review the new web site and confirm that the information you frequently wish to access is there and easily findable for you. We are not seeking comments on the look-and-feel or style (yet). The current version is considered to be in the "alpha state" so it is still fairly preliminary. Once we receive and address the first round of feedback then we will go to a beta version and then deploy it, likely in a tiered fashion. The new web site is going to be mobile friendly, though it may not work well on all pages yet. **UC reps: ask your users to review the new web site (https://newapo.apo.nmsu.edu/) and provide any feedback on this spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1XTGF1ekWatAW-T2xl71rIZgVlEBhtLVWJrkX8cSh8Nw/edit?usp=sharing.

The deadline for providing feedback on the alpha version of the new web site is Tuesday July 2 at 10:00 am MDT.**

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=== ACTION ITEMS === 

Open action items from previous meetings:
  * Nancy: get ROM costs for new KOSMOS grisms. Sarah Tuttle provided an update on this at today's meeting. She is working on getting quotes from 4 different vendors, two of which have been responsive. There are some glass supply chain issues, which is making it more challenging to get a solid quote. The approximate cost per grism will be ~ $20k-$30k; if we bundle an order of several grisms together we may get a slight discount but probably not a substantial one. When KPNO purchased additional grisms they bought them piecemeal and then assembled them in-house; we would prefer not to do that. Once Sarah receives some final quotes she will discuss them with Nancy and then we will check in with the Users Committee again to identify final priorities. STATUS: OPEN.
  * UC reps: remind your users to review the Q2 schedule and request OPEN/DD time if they can make a good case for it. STATUS: OPEN.
  * UC reps: remind your users to send Nancy references for all 3.5m- and 0.5m-related publications from Jan. 1 2023 to present by the deadline of June 30. STATUS: OPEN.

Open action items from this meeting:
  * UC reps: please notify your ARCTIC users that the diffuser rotation capability is available once again. 
  * UC reps: ask your users to review the alpha version of the new web site to determine whether the content they are used to finding on the web site is still there and easy to find. All feedback should be provided through the Google sheet given above. The deadline for user feedback on the web site content is July 2.

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=== All Other Business ===

None.

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=== Next meeting ===

The next meeting will be on July 2 at 10:30 MDT.

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