apo-wiki

Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU),

Chip Kobulnicky (UWy), Jamey Eriksen (APO), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Derek Buzasi (FGCU), Eric Nielsen (NMSU), Sarah Tuttle (UW), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Mukremin Kilic (OU), Misty Bentz (GSU), Russet McMillan (APO), Caleb Wang (UW), Ben Williams (UW), Gordon MacDonald (APO)

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

nothing to report no report

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

3.5-m Telescope and Instruments Highlights, 11/01/2022 - 12/05/2022

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 was updated following the ARC Board meeting in November.

Weather for November has continued transitioning to fall-like.

November had no classes visiting, but there was one visiting instrument (DSSI from UVa) team and a UW engineer visit.

1) Telescope

The telescope is behaving mostly as expected. As the nighttime temperatures continue to drop we expect to see the seasonal issues with motion errors pop up. A failure of the altitude drive system was fixed with a new memory/program card in the drive. The telescope has been behaving as expected since the repair.

2) Instruments

KOSMOS: An issue with bias noise variation is being investigated.

DIS: Scattered light is very bad in blue and red after the recent servicing. Evolution of the peak/wings is progressing more slowly than was hoped.

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 ratios are excellent.

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: Flarecam is in use and performing nominally.

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xxx Regarding the remainder of the OPEN/DD time in Q4, Nov 15B will be assigned to Jeff Bary (NAPG). The rest of the available time is in December, and there is a lot of it. Interested users are reminded to look for OPEN and DD01 blocks listed in the Q4 schedule and request it if desired, especially if they can make use of small blocks of time, especially with ARCES or Agile (for which no instrument change would be required).

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The ARC Board of Governors meeting is on Monday November 7. Thank you to everyone who contributed science highlights; Nancy sent requests to a few individuals and it looks like we will have a packet containing representation from all ARC institutions and lease partners.

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The January 2023 AAS meeting will be 8-12 January in Seattle. It would be good to have a mix of APO staff and users at the booth through the meeting. Nancy will order stickers to give to people for their badges to indicate that they are presenting results from APO observations. Also, we will make a digital image “sticker” available for download so users can add it to their iPoster if they made use of APO data. Nancy will also create a spreadsheet where people can indicate when their talk or poster is, as well as their availability to help out at the booth. Note added in proof: the spreadsheet is here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F_oM3sqCz51Ynb1HvPftlr9RB5zvBFUjJN5yOq5Bu1s/edit?usp=sharing .

We will discuss this further at our December UC meeting.

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.

New action items from this meeting:

• xxx

None.

The next meeting will be on xxx Jan 3 or Feb 7? xxx Tuesday December 6, 10:30 am MST.