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 a 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.

We have had reasonable weather, although it has been very variable lately. In October into November we will be busy with class visits (NMSU followed by UVa followed by BYU). The M3 rotation issue was fixed. Efforts are still underway to improve the telescope balance and motion errors - next month we will tune the position integral derivatives (PID) parameters, We did restore the slew velocity settings and that seems to have improved things.

We have a used 7-position filter wheel that was donated by Oliver Fraser at UW to replace the broken one on the 0.5m. It is now installed and working, and we thank UW for the donation!

The instruments are generally behaving. The KOSMOS disperser wheel recently had an issue, where the command will sometimes time out when moving from red to blue. We have a plan for fixing it when it gets stuck, and have strategies laid out for how to deal with it if the problem recurs. In short, if it happens we will suggest that long slit users should rotate the slit by 180 degrees, and MOS users should rotate to a different empty position.

Regarding our recent cybersecurity efforts, we have been forced to clamp down on the outward facing computers. This has had no affect on operations (so far). We are looking at using Bit Defender, an enterprise-level service to lock down servers and prevent viruses. If anyone has an experience with using Bit Defender, please let Jamey know. Muk asked how frequently the site servers are backed up, noting that it was thanks to the daily backups that allowed Gemini to recover from their cyberattack as quickly as they did. Jamey replied that our machines are backed up daily, and we have several levels of backups using a combination of on-site using a virtual machine as well as in the cloud.

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.