apo-wiki

Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Jamey Eriksen (APO), Russet McMillan (APO), Gordon MacDonald (APO), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Misty Bentz (GSU), Eric Bellm (UW), Chip Kobulnicky (UWy), Jon Holtzman (NMSU), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Sarah Tuttle (UW), Anne Verbiscer (UVa)

• JHU - nothing to report
• Georgia State - nothing to report
• UVa - nothing to report
• Washington - nothing to report
• BYU - nothing to report
• Oklahoma - nothing to report (by email)
• NAPG - no report
• Wyoming - nothing to report
• FGCU - nothing to report (by email)
• Colorado - no report
• NMSU - nothing to report
• Seattle - nothing to report

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.

The observatory has been hit with several snow storms that have significantly impacted observing over the past few weeks. The forecast is improving for the next week or so. March is shaping up to be a busy month: the UVa/DSSI team is here now, a CU class will be on site next week, and Sarah Tuttle will be here the week of March 20th for KOSMOS work. More visitors will be coming in Q2, so we expect to be remain quite busy through June. TUI work is continuing, with a Docker mode in the works. The ARCTIC diffuser has been acting up in cold weather; investigations into that issue are underway. The issue of the Agile time stamps in the image headers being incorrect is actively being worked on. The issue is with the trigger signal that comes from the high speed/high accuracy clock that's in the ICC machine. For users, this might be manifested as an error message, or it could affect header information even if there is no error message. The image time stamps are intended to be accurate to 0.01 s but currently there is no way to test that because the other machines are less accurate. Users should assume that the exact time stamps in their Agile image headers are unreliable, although the length of exposures and the photometry are both still fine. It is really just the precise timing that is affected; this issue started in mid-January. DIS scattered light is behaving as expected. There is a current issue with the TripleSpec instrument cart, which does not affect observing but does affect instrument fills during the day. As a result it could be taking longer to mount/unmount the instrument until the cart gets repaired; parts are on order. Work is proceeding for getting the 3.5m mirror ready for realuminization at Lowell this summer. We heard from KPNO that they will not be able to accommodate any external mirrors at their coating chamber this summer, so it's good that we decided to proceed with having the work done at Lowell.

Davenport - still need update Holtz - interest in data reduction software - worked on in python driven by having pedagogical software - not black box. Several NMSU students using it - general, but developed with APO instruments in mind. Looks same for different instruments. Mention to this group in case anyone is interested. Pyvista - pedagogical and simple, not state of the art, optimal tool For spectrographs - PypeIt - X Prochaska - significant cast of support characters Nick PyReduce - Kevin - échelle software- we use CERES - Rafael Brom developed Chip: is this a suitable teaching tool? Yes - used w/upper level undergrads/ grads spectroscopy stuff builds off calibration spectra - automated line identification propagates uncertainty, display S/N images - echelle, KOSMOS, DIS - photos not fully documented, TSpec not done Joanne expressed interest - Eric B - tried to get PypeIt working with DIS but sort of succeeded - complex piece of software, ground to a halt - if someone wants to build on it it's possible https://github.com/rabrahm/ceres https://pyvista.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ holtz@nmsu.edu

Sarah: Ocotillo - preparing for PDR, in lab testing to finalize hardware prefs, Caleb putting together fiber feed connections for NA2 port, for MOS robot portion and IFU traditionally build bundles, looking instead at cleaved fibers working with collaborators at LBNL and then bundle them - hoping to keep throughput high across the bandpass. UC - we will let you know when preparing to do PDR w/mountain - summary to UC after that.

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.

3 visiting instrument runs (2 instruments), 4 onsite class groups, not too many programs requesting regular monitoring partial nights but do have a lot of programs requiring specific events on specific dates crossing midnight boundary - lots of partial nights - almost ready to go - waiting for 1-2 questions, some open time but not sure when only have 1 person signed up for remote training despite our requests to get them in before schedule is made, considering not offering remote training in Q2 poll users, let us know ASAP

Notify us if not using entire week

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. its not slit viewer it is the spectra - concerned - will talk to him (he went back to DIS for Q2 but DIS likely to bad) - Russet
• 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.