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Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Moire Prescott (NMSU), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Michael Hayden (OU), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Jamey Eriksen (APO), Eric Bellm (UW), Chip Kobulnicky (UWy), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Misty Bentz (GSU), Ben Williams (UW)

• Seattle - nothing to report
• FGCU - no report
• NAPG - no report
• Oklahoma - nothing to report
• NMSU - nothing to report
• BYU - nothing to report
• JHU - nothing to report
• Georgia State - nothing to report
• Colorado - no report
• Washington - nothing to report
• UVa - nothing to report
• Wyoming - 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, 10/02/2024 – 11/04/2024

1) Overview

The winter weather pattern started to appear in late October, with the first temperatures below freezing occurring in the last few days of October. The first snow of the season is forecast to start during the day on November 3 and continue through midday on November 4. During the month of October we had one astronomer group visit and no class visits.

On October 28 a large water leak on the main water line was discovered. After a few hours of digging, the leak was repaired and water was restored to the site. However, during the digging process the phone/T1 cable was damaged (all the utility lines run in the same trench, water, phone lines, air lines and in the area of the water leak sewer as well). The damaged cable is awaiting repair by Lumen. Without the T1 line, APO is solely reliant on the radio link for communications to site. Thus if the radio link goes down, TUI would not be usable for communications to site, and instead all communications would have to be done via text/cell phone. We are pushing every day on Lumen to get the repair done as soon as possible.

There was an issue with restoring computer backups on October 1 - Nancy sent an email about this on October 15.

2) Operations

3.5m Telescope: Telescope position errors in azimuth direction reversals were reduced/eliminated by expanding the error range allowed for motion. Errors are being monitored, telescope is moving well (and as expected).

0.5m Telescope: Telescope is working well.

KOSMOS: nothing to report.

ARCTIC: nothing to report

Agile: The camera failure has been fixed and it was returned to APO. Installation and testing will take place in the next few weeks.

ARCES: Instrument is performing nominally. IOL measurements have held steady and are still very good.

DIS: Instrument is currently up and usable. Vacuum servicing is not planned for Q4.

NICFPS: Instrument is performing nominally.

TripleSpec: Instrument is performing nominally.

APOLLO: instrument computer (houston) was replaced with a spare (which had to be reconfigured, as it wasn’t an exact match spare) after experiencing a cooling failure, which caused the loss of the motherboard. The failed computer has had some components replaced and is now ready to be tested to see if it is a viable spare. We have had three successful ranging runs since the system was restored to operations.

Got a few inches of snow in the last couple of days! Expecting another storm at the end of this week. Water leak last week and T1 cable was damaged through digging for water leak repair, but was repaired yesterday. Telescope working well.

Computer issue

UC - remind users that Agile is available but need to propose backup

We have some unassigned time in Q4 (Nov 23B and 28B (short), and a fair bit in December). Users should look at the schedule and follow the usual channels for requesting this time (i.e. email Russet, Amanda, Ben, Nancy and their institutional scheduler when submitting requests, and provide a proposal cover page if you don't already have a program scheduled for the current quarter).

UC reps: Please remind your users to respond to their set-up emails at least 24 hrs in advance of their scheduled observing time.

Q1 allocations going out this afternoon. Nothing too surprising. Agile will be back and people can ask for it. Requests will be due Nov 25.

DIS

The Q4 ARCSAT scheduled is posted. Time available in December - last week of December request no filter changes.

Comments coming in. Working on test server to do simulation of flipping the switch.

xxx

Open action items from previous meetings:

• Nancy: get ROM costs for new KOSMOS grisms. Sarah reported that she has a finalized quote from one vendor. The grism design turns out to be a little complicated, but also, costs have gone up, so these are more expensive than we expected (ballpark $20k apiece). Therefore, we need to explore potential funding sources. Nancy will amass all previous emails with grism requests and send to UC reps to query users about whether there is broad interest in a particular grism. This could help identify funding sources, either individually or collaboratively. STATUS: OPEN.
• Nancy: Ensure that a short description of the impact of satellites be posted on the APO website somewhere and updated every 6 months or so. Nancy received examples of this issue from Anne Verbiscer and will get something added to the current (and new) web site. STATUS: OPEN.

Open action items from this meeting:

• UC reps: remind your users to review the Q4 schedule and request OPEN/DD time if they can make a good case for it.

• UC reps: remind your users that Nancy needs to receive all science highlight slides by October 25, 2024.

xxxx DIS xxx.

The next meeting will be on December 3 at 10:30 MST.