apo-wiki

Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Jamey Eriksen (APO), Russet McMillan (APO),

Derek Buzasi (FGCU), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Misty Bentz (GSU), Adam Kowalski (CU), Mukremin Kilic (OU), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Eric Bellm (UW), Chip Kobulnicky (UWy), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Ben Williams (UW), Caleb Wang (UW), Anne Verbiscer (UVa)

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

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

3.5-m Telescope and Instruments Highlights, 2/6/2023 – 3/6/2023

1) Overview

APO is weathering the winter storms; it seems like we’ve had more snow this year compared to the previous couple years. Cold temperatures and snow have been sticking around for significant days through February.

2023 has been quiet thus far in terms of class or teams visiting the observatory, which is about to change this month. March will see the UVa (DSSI) team and CU class (K. France), which overlap slightly. We are also looking forward to a rescheduled UW visit for KOSMOS servicing, which we hope will happen the week of March 20th.

2) Operations

The 3.5m and 0.5m telescopes have both performed as expected over the past month.

TUI 3.1.0 is available for most common OS versions (MacOS, Windows, Linux); work on a Docker mode for TUI is progressing.

KOSMOS is slated for service, with UW visiting APO the week of March 20th.

The ARCTIC diffuser is not rotating in colder temperatures; investigations are underway.

The Agile sync clock signal investigation is in progress as well. Failure rate is increasing.

DIS scattered light is improving slowly as expected, however, blue is still considered by APO to be pretty bad and red is considered borderline usable.

Nothing new to note on any of the other instruments.

3) Other

Efforts are continuing for the design of a system that will allow the 3.5m mirror to be coated in the LDT chamber.

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There is one unassigned dates remaining in the Q1 schedule (Mar 27B), for which we have already received a request. High priority requests will still be considered; a decision will likely be made next week.

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Open action items from previous meetings:

• Nancy: make sure that the APO web site gets updated to address the issues reported by Eric B. in December. Status: OPEN. There were several issue that needed to be addressed:
  • the wiki link on the 3.5m page still pointed to the old wiki - this was fixed.
  • the Search Site function on the APO home page does not work. Testing is ongoing to solve this; it appears to be a VPN issue for the site web server (i.e., it works for people at APO but does not work for people accessing the web pages from off-site locations).
  • the ToO policy is not easily found. We are working on a document that we can post on the scheduling page to make this information more easy to locate.
• Nancy or Russet: get sample KOSMOS data from JHU user who reported scattered light issue. Status: CLOSED.
• Nancy: share communications plan re: new instrumentation with UC at next meeting. Status: CLOSED.
• Nancy: get updated on pyKOSMOS and report to UC next month. Status: OPEN.
• Nancy: notify Joanne of site restrictions regarding maximum number of people in visiting group. Status: CLOSED.

New action items from this meeting:

• xxx

None.

The next meeting will be on Tuesday April 4, 10:30 am MST.