apo-wiki

UPDATE ALL ATTENDEES

Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Misty Bentz (GSU), Jamey Eriksen (APO), Eric Nielsen (NMSU), Mukremin Kilic, (OU), Eric Bellm (UW), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Sarah Tuttle (UW), Ben Williams (UW)

• FGCU - nothing to report (submitted by email)
• NAPG - no report
• Seattle - Joanne is talking with Bill about using SDSS images to make masks for KOSMOS; she had been using DSS images and found that the alignment stars had too much proper motion
• JHU - nothing to report
• Georgia State - nothing to report
• UVa - nothing to report
• Oklahoma - nothing to report
• NMSU - nothing to report
• BYU - nothing to report
• Washington - nothing to report
• Colorado - no report
• Wyoming - 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, 10/03/2023 – 11/06/2023

1) Overview

October was a welcome busy month at APO. The telescope has continued to work well since the shutdown. The weather has been very nice as well. Humidity and storms are starting to pick up and temperatures are starting to drop.

Mid-October saw back-to-back class visits from NMSU and UVa. Both were large classes and filled up APO housing. We also had the visiting instrument DSSI on the telescope before the classes started.

2) Operations

3.5m Telescope:

- There is an occasional motion error during slews. So far no reports have been received about motion errors while tracking.

- A new pointing model was implemented after an engineering night because of a pointing shift that occurred. The source of the pointing shift is being investigated.

0.5m Telescope: The telescope is working with the reduced filter set in the loaner filter wheel.

3.5m Instruments:

The KOSMOS disperser wheel motion issues were tracked down and repaired, along with lead screw nuts on the cal stage. Some locking nuts on the instrument cart were also repaired. There have been no reports of issues since the repairs were completed.

The servicing of ARCTIC's diffuser rotation mechanism was postponed and has not yet been rescheduled.

Agile remains unavailable due to a failure of the TEC controls. Attempted repairs have so far been unsuccessful.

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

DIS scattered light on the red camera is currently very good; on the blue camera it had been improving but now it seems to be leveling off.

October was busy with 2 classes and a visiting instrument team on site. A BYU class is coming in November. The weather has been pretty good lately. We are still working on how to recover from the Agile failure. Some repairs were done to KOSMOS, as detailed in the accompanying site report. The observatory staff is recovering from hosting the ARC Board and SDSS AC meetings at Sunspot/APO last weekend. We had great eyepiece viewing for the SDSS AC and Board members on Friday evening; Candace did a great job playing tour guide with Amanda's help. Muk asked about what work is being done specifically regarding an Agile recovery. Bill reported that the Princeton Instruments camera is obsolete and spare parts are not available. Without an electronics person on staff we are currently at a roadblock in terms of reviving current camera. We have started to evaluate new commercially available cameras that could serve the same role; we might be able to get a loaner from Andor.

Nancy recapped the Board meeting (attendees, purpose, presentations that are verbally given and provided to the Board members as reference material, etc.). She shared some of the slides presented to the Board: 2023_3.5m_report_-_for_users_commitee.pdf

We have a moderate amount of unassigned time (OPEN or DD02) starting in early November. A lot of it is bright and or shorter than a full half-night. Users are reminded to check the schedule for their assigned time; if a program is allocated half-nights that are truncated due to sharing with a short monitoring program, they may have been scheduled for more half nights than they were expecting.

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APO will once again have a booth at the January AAS meeting; in 2024 the meeting will be in New Orleans. We hope that many 3.5m users will present results enabled by observations made at APO, and that we can get some help staffing the booth. More details to come next month.

Nancy reminded everyone that 2024 will mark the 30th anniversary of operations at APO and the 3.5m. In 2014 there was a big bash at the Visitors Center, which included science talks and many of the founding members coming back to visit. In 2019 we held a strategic planning meeting, in conjunction with a 25th anniversary celebration dinner. Do we want to do anything for the 30th anniversary? The ARC Board Chair requested that Nancy poll the Users Committee. Joanne reported that her Dean came with her for the 20th anniversary event and it was very successful, enabling her to become a leasing partner. Misty attended both of last two celebrations and thought it would be fun to do more of a party (like in 2014). It would be a great opportunity to show off the facilities, particularly if we could get administrators from the ARC institutions to attend. Derek agreed. Kevin didn't think that JHU would attend such an event. Chip shared UWY's experience of the WIRO 30th anniversary celebration; he thought it was a good celebration event and it helped administrators to see facility. He made a video that he continues to show as needed; Russet thought this would be a good opportunity to update our out-of-date videos.

Open action items from previous meetings:

• UC reps: solicit input from users re: high time resolution imaging needs; feedback due to Nancy on 10/18. → CLOSED
• UC reps: collect science highlight slides from users; send to Nancy by 10/23 → CLOSED

We received a request for observations of T Coronae Borealis (T CrB), a recurrent nova; the next eruption is expected to be in Q1-Q2 2024! See this page for more details: https://www.aavso.org/news/t-crb-pre-eruption-dip . The head of AAVSO contacted us to ask if anyone could take NIR spectra, which would be particularly useful.

The next meeting will be on December 5 at 10:30 MST.