apo-wiki

Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Jamey Eriksen (APO), Gordon MacDonald (APO), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Eric Bellm (UW), Anne Verbiscer (UVa) =, Adam K (CU), Muk (OU) Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Derek Misty Bentz (GSU), Sarah Tuttle (UW), Bill, Ben Williams

Russet McMillan (APO),   Chip Kobulnicky (UWy),

• Seattle - nothing to report
• NMSU - nothing to report
• Wyoming - no
• Washington - nothing to report
• BYU - nothing to report
• Colorado - wiki - data reduction guides for ARCTIC/IRAF scripts are not there any more

http://astronomy.nmsu.edu/apo-wiki/doku.php?id=arctic

• JHU - nothing to report
• Oklahoma - questions about Agile timing - Russet and Bill looked into it, coming next week 5 students + TA
• Georgia State - nothing to report
• FGCU - nothing to report
• UVa - nothing to report
• NAPG - 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, 3/7/2023 – 4/4/2023

1) Overview

APO weather is shifting from wintery mix to more spring like. Temperatures are increasing and snow is melting.

March was a busy month at APO with the UVa (DSSI) team, a class from CU that overlapped slightly, and the week-long KOSMOS work by UW. The month ended with a small team from LANL visiting to prepare for their upcoming run in early April. April will be a busy month as well, with two visiting instrument teams - one at the start and one towards the end of the month - and an OU class visit in the middle of the month.

2) Operations

3.5m Telescope: operating nominally over the past month.

0.5m Telescope: The loaner camera from BYU (BYUCam), a replacement for SurveyCam, is now available to the user community. Its performance is being confirmed.

KOSMOS service is continuing with on-site and remote work by UW.

The ARTIC diffuser is currently rotating as expected. Tests conducted after the cold temperature issue was reported have not shown the same issue.

The Agile timestamps in the image headers were checked and are reliable as far as we can test them. Sync failures are still being investigated and tracked.

DIS scattered light is improving slowly, as expected. However, the blue side is still considered bad and red is considered borderline usable by APO.

The TripleSpec cart rotation underwent a full overhaul after a failure of its gear box.

Nothing new to note for any of the other instruments.

3) Other

Efforts are continuing on designing a system that would allow the 3.5m mirror to be coated in the LDT chamber.

Support for Python 2 ended on 1/1/2020. With the conversion of TUI to Python 3, we are ending our support for TUI 2.6.1alpha2 and earlier software. Those versions will remain available for download, however, the observatory staff will not be able to troubleshoot if problems arise. All observers are encouraged to upgrade to the newest version of TUI, TUI 3.1.1, which was just released. All current and past versions can be found in the usual download location : http://www.apo.nmsu.edu/arc35m/TUIdownloads_ARC35m.html .

March/Apr busy with visitors. BYUCam is ready for community use. Agile timestamps are accurate but sync issue still being investigated ARCTIC diffuser rotation issues w/cold temps fixed - not giving valid rotation flag - at speed flag is not registering - recommend that users use instrument as is - looks like rotation is at proper speed, maybe slightly below 2Hz threshold but until can take it apart and clean it won't know what problem is - for this week, as long as diffraction spikes are being smeared out it is acceptable to science, otherwise recommend defocus issue w/ghost image on Tspec that Russet is investigating meeting w/Lowell next week

python3 tui - need to upgrade we can't troubleshoot python 2 version any longer

ST - looked at smear users were seeing in overscan w/bright lines serial readout problem? play around with voltages the way detecter controller is working, saturated at ADC max not chip full well, will go up to 2^18 counts before overflows. Somewhere between 150k-200k is physical full well - still doing tests to quantify but users should be aware that very high count levels are not physical (> 150k) contacted CTIO colleague (COSMOS) - got questions answered and now can test voltages the way it is is stable goal is to have running file - chip optimized for single amplifier, goal is to be able to run one OR two amps, will always leave it in default state let ST know if have questions or encounter something exciting

Joanne - coming down in May, getting sources to have slit masks made by end of week - can test

OPEN time at end of Apr - 3 A halves - ppl can request, esp if recent weather issues 2 are partials and 1 is unencumbered

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

Working out ARCSAT schedule - will have it figured out by end of this 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 is one remaining issue that needs 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. A notice was added to reflect the fact that this search tool will not work from computers outside of the APO VPN.
  • 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. This issue has been worked directly with the user.
• Nancy: get updated on pyKOSMOS and report to UC next month. Status: OPEN.

New action items from this meeting: * UC reps: notify your users about the option of using pyvista (and/or some of the other packages listed above) for data reduction. Status: CLOSED.

• UC reps: notify your users that Nancy is seeking 1-2 more echelle users to participate in the tiger team charged with firming up the science requirements for a new echelle spectrograph.
• UC reps: poll your department users and if there is a need for a remote training in option for Q2, notify Russet ASAP (within the next day or so).
• UC reps: remind your users that they should notify us if their plans change and they wish to forfeit their week of scheduled ARCSAT time.

AAS meeting in Albuquerque June 4-8

The next meeting will be on Tuesday May 2, 10:30 am MDT.