apo-wiki

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

nothing to report no report

• FGCU - no report
• NAPG - no report
• Seattle - nothing to report
• BYU - nothing to report
• Wyoming - no report
• Oklahoma - email report from Muk: “We had a fantastic class trip (5 undergrads + 1 TA + myself) in mid-April. The weather cooperated most of the time as well. This trip is always the highlight of our Observing Methods course. Thanks to Candace (especially), Russet, and Amanda for all their help.”
• Georgia State - nothing to report
• UVa - nothing to report
• Colorado - nothing to report
• JHU - nothing to report
• NMSU - nothing to report
• Washington - 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, 4/5/2023 – 5/1/2023

1) Overview

APO weather for April was very spring like. Temperatures are increasing and the snow is mostly all melted.

April was another busy month with one class (CU) on site in the middle of the month and two visiting instrument teams, one at the beginning of the month (LANL) and one at the end of the month (APOLLO). May will be little quieter with one class (late in the month) and one visiting instrument team (mid-month).

2) Operations

3.5m Telescope: operating nominally over the past month.

0.5m Telescope: The loaner camera from BYU (BYUCam) was successfully used this past month.

KOSMOS saw a failure of its umbilical hose that vents heat and carries power and fiber lines to the instrument. LN2 from the dewar exhaust fell onto the plastic and caused it to shatter. Exhaust was redirected away from the umbilical and the umbilical hose was repaired.

The ARCTIC diffuser rotator is planned to be serviced in May. The primary mirror cover baffle for the NA2 port has been installed. This now allows users to take dome flats with ARCTIC without a noticeable gradient across the field. Observing specialists will need to rotate the instrument relative to the telescope elevation for good flats. Users should coordinate with their observing specialist if they want to take dome flats.

Agile sync failures are still being investigated and tracked. A control board swap is being planned.

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

Nothing new to note for any of the other instruments.

3) Other

Mirror coating system for LDT chamber design was completed. Material is being procured to build system.

pyKOSMOS

xxx

There is some unassigned time at end of May: 1 dark B half (19 May) and 2 dark A halves (24, 25 May), all unencumbered. Users are encouraged to request this time if they can make use of it (particularly those who have been weathered out recently). As a reminder, users should include Ben, Russet, Amanda, Nancy and their institutional scheduler on all schedule related emails.

xxx

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: get updated on pyKOSMOS and report to UC next month. → CLOSED.
• Nancy: track down missing ARCTIC data reduction scripts for wiki.
• UC reps: notify your KOSMOS users that counts > 150k are not physical. → CLOSED
• UC reps: remind your users to review the Q2 schedule and request OPEN/DD time if they can make a good case for it.

New action items from this meeting:

• xxx

The June 2023 AAS meeting will be held in Albuquerque on June 4-8. Although we are not normally in the habit of having an exhibitor booth at the summer meetings, particularly after just having been at the preceding winter meeting, we (APO) will have a booth at this meeting given its proximity to APO. It represents an excellent opportunity to highlight exciting science results enabled by a New Mexico-based astronomical facility like APO. If anyone from our ARC member institutions or lease partners is planning to attend the June AAS meeting please let Nancy know so we can promote their work!

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