apo-wiki

Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Derek Buzasi (FGCU), Chip Kobulnicky (UWy), Misty Bentz (GSU), Mukremin Kilic (OU), Russet McMillan (APO), Ben Williams (UW), Jamey Eriksen (APO), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Eric Nielsen (NMSU), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), John Wilson (UVa), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Adam Kowalski (CU), Eric Bellm (UW)

• NAPG - no report
• UVa - nothing to report; we circulated requests for users to provide science highlights
• NMSU - nothing to report
• BYU - nothing to report
• Seattle - thanks for help with recent site visit; we are still working out bugs related to aligning slit masks
• Washington - nothing to report
• Georgia State - - nothing to report
• Colorado - nothing to report
• Oklahoma - nothing to report
• Wyoming - nothing to report
• JHU - nothing to report
• FGCU - nothing to report other than having had bad weather for recent observing run

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

3.5-m Telescope and Instruments Highlights, 9/05/2023 – 10/02/2023

1) Overview

September was a welcome quieter month at APO. The telescope has continued to work well after the shutdown. Weather has been very nice as well. Humidity/storms are starting to pickup and temps are starting to drop.

Late September a visiting group of SDSS5 programmers descended upon APO for a software coding workshop hosted at APO/Sunspot. October will have two visiting classes, one from NMSU and one from UVa. Both are large classes and will fill up APO housing.

2) Operations

3.5m Telescope:

- M3 rotation was repaired with a replacement high resolution encoder. A plan is also being developed for an upgrade path for the M3 rotation system.

- Telescope balance continues to be refined after the removal of the LANL instrument. There is an occasional motion error during slews. So far no reports have been received about motion errors while tracking.

0.5m Telescope: Filter wheel was replaced with a 7 position version that was donated by Oliver Fraser at UW. Many thanks for that! The telescope is working with the reduced filter set.

Instruments:

KOSMOS is experiencing random failures during diffuser wheel motion. Investigation is ongoing.

ARCTIC diffuser’s rotator service had to be postponed, and will be rescheduled for a later date.

Agile's TEC controls failed. Attempted repairs have so far been unsuccessful.

The ARCES interorder light ratios (measure of scattered light in the instrument) are still excellent.

DIS scattered light on the red camera is considered to be very good. The blue camera has been improving with the warmer weather; as temperatures cool, we expect the improvement to level off for the winter.

reasonable weather, been very variable lately telescope quieter in Sep, Oct ramping up busy w/classes (NMSU → UVa → BYU) M3 rotation was fixed efforts to improve balance and motion - soon tune PID (position integral derivatives) parameters, s - will tune that NEXT month, did restore slew velocitys eems to have improved things

0.5m filter wheel donated from UW - 7 posiiton is working, thank you UW for donation!

Instruments are behaving - KOSMOS disperser wheel - when move from red to blue the command will sometmes time out - when it gets stuck we have a plan for fixing, and have strategies for how to deal if keeps happening long slit users should rotate 180 deg MOS users should use a different empty position

cybersecurity - clamp down on outward facing computers, no affect to operations (so far) - looking at Bit Defender - enterprise level server to lock down servers and prevent viruses Muk: how is stuff backed up (daily? that's what allowed Gemini to recover) on site - use VM to back up locally, and also implemented in cloud 3 local, 2 in local cold storage, 1 air gapped (not on local system)

Muk - used Agile regularly have to use ARCTIC now to see how it works - larger FOV will help, more sensitive so shorter exposure - is ARCTIC GPS sync'ed - no

Muk - used Agile regularly have to use ARCTIC now to see how it works - larger FOV will help, more sensitive so shorter exposure - is ARCTIC GPS sync'ed - no

in progress - have moderate amt of unassigned time (OPEN or DD02) - none until Nov 1, lot of it is bright - open likely bright/short, monitoring programs using different instruments, lots of instrument changes, observers may not know that they were awarded 6 HN as 8 shared lots - users should check the schedule!

schedule almost ready to be published - 4 different programs, 7 position wheel available

- AAS - Jan AAS - 30th anniversary - Joanne - Dean came with her and it was all very successful, Misty - at both of last 2 celebrations - fun to do more of a party (like 2014) - if can fenagle admins to come that's a good opportunity - Derek agrees - JHU wouldn't attend (not administrator) - Chip - WIRO bash at 30th anniversary - good event from feel good celebration, helped administrators to see facility . Russet - videos are out of date -

Open action items from previous meetings:

• Nancy: track down missing ARCTIC data reduction scripts for wiki. → CLOSED.

New action items from this meeting:

• UC reps: please notify your department members that if they wish to join our mailing lists they should submit their requests from their institutional email accounts, or if they wish to use personal email addresses, they should notify us so that their requests are not rejected.

Muk - possible to get GPS for ARCTIC - RM - have to reprogram ICC, Bill - not easy

The next meeting will be on November 7 at 10:30 MST.