apo-wiki

Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), UPDATE EVERYTHING BELOW THIS

Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Eric Nielsen (NMSU), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Jamey Eriksen (APO), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Russet McMillan (APO), Mukremin Kilic (OU), Eric Bellm (UW), Chip Kobulnicky (UWy), Ben Williams (UW), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU),

• BYU -
• Colorado -
• FGCU - nothing to report (email)
• Georgia State - nothing to report (email)
• JHU -
• NMSU -
• NAPG -
• Oklahoma -
• Seattle -
• UVa -
• Washington -
• Wyoming - nothing to report (email)

The detailed site report is included below, followed by additional information discussed during today's meeting.

3.5-m Telescope and Instruments Highlights, 9/2/2022 - 10/2/2022

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 September has started transitioning to fall-like.

September was 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 – Los Alamos National Lab and Virginia. October has no classes scheduled to visit, there is one visiting instrument (NAIC) from NMSU mid-month.

1) Telescope

Telescope is behaving as expected. As the nighttime temperatures drop we expect to see the seasonal issues with motion errors pop up. Those will be mitigated with adjustments to the motion control loops.

2) Instruments

KOSMOS: Activities to decrease the flat lamp flux are ongoing. The MOS mask process is being worked through as well. New slit sets are expected to start arriving from UW soon. Discussions are ongoing about what work still needs to be completed to move the instrument from shared risk status to acceptance as a facility instrument.

DIS: Servicing has begun for both cameras. We expect DIS to be returned to science operations on or before 10/21.

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 are slowly increasing with the cooler ambient temperature; the ratios are still 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: Shelyak was set up and a training time slot was planned for the observing specialists to get acquainted with the current software configuration.

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The ARC Board of Governors meeting is on Monday November 7. Nancy, Ben, and some of the observatory staff are starting to gather the relevant data and prepare their presentations.

The January 2023 AAS meeting will be 8-12 January in Seattle. There will be lots of UW users there, and hopefully many from other ARC institutions and lease partners as well, We discussed options for doing something special for APO or ARC users. UC reps: please poll your users to see if they would be interested in an APO event (e.g. a meal or reception one evening) during the AAS meeting? One suggestion was to give out stickers to people with posters to indicate that they made use of APO data. Chip suggested that we try to connect those with undergraduates in attendance who are looking for graduate programs with representatives from other ARC member institutions, as a small-scale recruitment effort. Misty suggested that we start a Google Doc where people can list their APO-related posters and talks; this would help with connecting people. The abstract deadline for the meeting is Tuesday October 11!

We will definitely have an APO booth in the exhibit area, so in a month or two Nancy will be looking for volunteers to help us staff the booth. Stay tuned!

Open action items from previous meetings:

• Nancy: start investigations re: short wavelength throughput (climate data, other facilities). Status: OPEN. No news. Old news: 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: please poll your users to see if they would be interested in an APO-related event (e.g. a meal or reception one evening) during the Jan. 2023 AAS meeting.

New action items from this meeting:

• UC reps: please encourage your users to submit science highlights xxx

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The next meeting will be on Tuesday November 1, 10:30 am MDT.