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==== APO 3.5-m Users Committee Meeting, 8/06/2024 ====

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Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Derek Buzasi (FGCU), Adam Kowalski (CU), Misty Bentz (GSU), Russet McMillan (APO), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Sarah Tuttle (UW), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Eric Bellm (UW), Ben Williams (UW), Shane Thomas (APO)


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

  * Wyoming - no report
  * Washington - nothing to report
  * UVa - nothing to report (by email)
  * Seattle - nothing to report
  * FGCU - nothing to report other than Derek had a night of good observing recently
  * Oklahoma - nothing to report (by email); OU expects to have new Users Committee rep this fall
  * NMSU - nothing to report
  * NAPG - no report
  * JHU - nothing to report
  * Georgia State - nothing to report
  * Colorado - nothing to report
  * BYU - nothing to 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, 7/02/2024 – 8/05/2024 //

1) Overview

July has transitioned to a monsoon pattern with a few nights lost to smoke from the huge fires in the West/Pacific Northwest and Canada. The telescope has continued to work well.

July started out with a group of REU students from GSU visiting, then immediately afterwards we hosted a group from University of Wyoming.  

The 2.5m shutdown began on July 10th and we have had a couple visiting instrument folks to work with the APO staff on those shutdown activities.  Shutdown for the 2.5m ended on 7/31.
 
2) Operations

3.5m Telescope: Telescope is working well, motion errors seem to be of the seasonal type.
 
0.5m Telescope:  Telescope is working well.  FlareCam is having a cooling fan issue; it will be repaired and returned to the telescope as soon as possible.
 
3.5m Instruments:

KOSMOS: The new 1.25” slits have been released for use by observers.
 
ARCTIC: working well.

TripleSpec: working well.
 
Agile: The camera was sent out for evaluation and hopefully repair.  The manufacturer confirmed that the problem is inside the camera head; they are proceeding with opening the camera vacuum to evaluate the issue further.
 
Echelle: The inter-order light has stabilized in both the blue and red; the instrument is still considered excellent for use.  An inadvertent partial warmup happened when a sensor failed in the autofill system.  The system is cold again, and no adverse effects resulted from the partial warmup.
  
DIS: the instrument is still functioning, and contamination is slightly improved on both cameras.
 
NICFPS: had an ion pump/vacuum issue and is being warmed for service.  

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

There was a fire approximately 2 miles from the observatory yesterday (to the north, right before the Cathey Canyon parking lot). The fire was spotted by one of the APO staff members as they were driving to work, and it was put out by the Sunspot Volunteer Fire Department. It was likely caused by lightning.

The telescope is behaving nominally. There are several items of note pertaining to the instruments:
  * Agile is hopefully going to be repaired; we are still waiting for an evaluation. The problem has been isolated to the camera itself, not the control unit.
  * ARCES had an inadvertent partial warmup recently when a fill sensor for the CCD reservoir failed. The issue was caught a few hours after the sensor failed and manual fills were initiated. The replacement sensor was quickly replaced and there seems to be no adverse effects to the instrument or the resulting data.
  * NICFPS recently had a failure of its vacuum system, either a failed ion pump or the vacuum went soft. Bill had already planned to do a vacuum servicing of NICFPS during the summer shutdown so they warmed the instrument and took it offline in preparation for that.
  * DIS recently showed an increase in contamination. It is still useable but with a lower performance.

As for ARCSAT, the primary mirror was recently washed. FlareCam had a failure of most of its cooling fans; replacements have been ordered and we are waiting for the parts. Otherwise things on ARCSAT are working nominally.

Russet announced that her team has started training our newest observing specialist, Victoria ("Torrie") Sutherland (they/them), who was hired recently and started working at APO at the end of July. The target is for Torrie to start solo operations at the end of September. We are delighted to have Torrie on board and users should be on the lookout for them and welcome them when you have the chance!

Jamey recently hosted a Dark Skies group at the observatory and gave a tour to a number of business leaders from the Permian Basin (their activities contribute to some of the light pollution we experience at APO). They loved the tour.

As a final reminder, summer shutdown is scheduled for August 12-26, with a return to science on Aug 27A.

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=== 2024 Q3 3.5m scheduling ===

We have a some unassigned OPEN and DD time remaining in Q3 (Aug 27B, several in September). Users should look at the schedule and 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 Q4 3.5m scheduling ===

The Q4 allocation emails went out at the end of last week, and all Q4 proposals are due by Aug 26.

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=== 2024 Q3 0.5 scheduling ===

The Q3 ARCSAT scheduled is posted; there is no open time available. The shutdown dates for ARCSAT will be same as for the 3.5m, i.e. August 12-26.

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=== Website Modernization Effort ===

A lot of work is going on behind the scenes to develop a new APO 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. The current version of the new site 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.** Shane will use the summer shutdown for testing out various bits of work that have to be done on the back end before making the switch to the new site, and we hope to deploy the new site at the end of (or shortly after) summer shutdown.

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=== Time Domain Astronomy Opportunity ===

Nancy, Sarah, Ben and Eric Bellm recently had a discussion with Shri Kulkarni about the possibility of putting a robotic spectrograph for fast transient classification on the 3.5m. The first version of this instrument, developed for ZTF as an R ~ 100 spectrograph for supernova classification spectroscopy, has been on the 60" telescope at Palomar and it is the leading classifier of transients. In addition to being an IFU spectrograph there is an EMCCD that can used in imaging mode or photon-counting mode (but it has a small FOV and an occultation in the center of the frame due to a pickoff mirror). It has been used for stellar science, AGN, and other science, but transient classification is really its main goal. We want to understand from the 3.5m user community whether there is an appetite for devoting some telescope time to this kind of science. This topic raised some great questions and comments:
  * Bill: who would be doing the observing for this kind of project? Nancy/Eric: that's really up to us to decide, but we don't have an expectation that this would fall on the shoulders of the observing specialists.
  * Bill: from a technical standpoint, if the instrument were to be mounted on Agile's port, that would require a rotator, which could be an expensive addition.
  * Adam: would users be able to propose to use the instrument for their own programs or would it be used only for transient observations? Nancy: We would want our users to be able to use it for other science. 
  * Adam: what is its primary advantage over KOSMOS given the wavelength coverage? Nancy: it has lower spectral resolution (which some but not all users would want) and the data are reduced and posted very rapidly (~ 15 minutes from data acquisition to posting online).
  * Ben: when the Time Domain Astronomy Working Group (TDAWG) was active several years ago there was interest in the possibility of cross-institutional collaboration to use a portion of the available time for this kind of work.

**Nancy will draft a synopsis of this discussion and send it to the Users Committee reps. The reps will then send it to their users and solicit their feedback in time for the next meeting.** Meanwhile, Nancy will continue to discuss the technical aspects with the observatory staff to determine whether this is a viable option.

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=== ACTION ITEMS === 

Open action items from previous meetings:
  * Nancy: get ROM costs for new KOSMOS grisms. Sarah reported that she is still working with few different vendors due to some weird materials issues. Apparently the KOSMOS gratings were made in an unusual way and now one or two of the glasses are no longer available. She is trying to understand what about the design is making vendors uncomfortable and several of them are no longer doing this work for astronomy. STATUS: OPEN.
  * 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. STATUS: OPEN.
  * Nancy: Ensure that a short description of the impact of satellites be posted on the APO website somewhere and updated every 6 months or so. STATUS: OPEN. Waiting for new web site deployment may not be the best approach. Nancy will get examples of this issue from Anne Verbiscer and get something added to the current web site before the next meeting.

Open action items from this meeting: 
  * UC reps: remind your users to review the Q3 schedule and request OPEN/DD time if they can make a good case for it.
  * Nancy: send UC reps a summary of the time domain discussion and request to users.
  * UC reps: send Nancy's time domain discussion summary and solicit user comments and interest levels by next meeting.

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=== All Other Business ===

None.

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=== Next meeting ===

The next meeting will be on September 3 at 10:30 MDT.

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