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UPDATE EVERYTHING AFTER THIS:

Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), xxx Chip Kobulnicky (UWy), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Eric Bellm (UW), Eric Nielsen (NMSU), Jamey Eriksen (APO), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Misty Bentz (GSU)

• UVa -
• NMSU -
• Washington -
• Wyoming -
• Georgia State -
• Oklahoma -
• BYU -
• Colorado -
• FGCU -
• Seattle -
• JHU -
• NAPG -

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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Open action items from previous meetings:

• Nancy: start investigations re: short wavelength throughput (climate data, other facilities). Status: OPEN. 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.

New action items from this meeting:

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