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

• Wyoming - nothing to report
• BYU - nothing to report
• Washington - nothing to report
• Colorado - no report
• UVa - nothing to report
• FGCU - no report
• Seattle - nothing to report
• Georgia State - nothing to report
• Oklahoma - nothing to report
• JHU - nothing to report
• NMSU - note from Joe B - funds from KOSMOS masks- reminder we need to spend (Deadline of 12/16 to submit order)
• NAPG - 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, 11/05/2024 – 12/02/2024

1) Overview

November has seen wintery weather with two snow storms, each with enough snow to impact operations. During the month of November we had one astronomer group visit, one visiting instrument team on site, and no class visits.

The October water leak was repaired successfully and hasn’t shown any issues since the repair. The phone line that was damaged was eventually repaired and now all the services affected by the leak are back to normal operational state.

2) Operations

3.5m Telescope: Telescope is moving as expected.

0.5m Telescope: Telescope is working well.

KOSMOS: nothing to report.

ARCTIC: had an emergency vacuum service performed due to the vacuum softening. Instrument was returned to service without any missed observing time. Instrument seems to be experiencing an increased rate of the one quadrant dropping. Investigations to determine the cause of this trend are ongoing.

Agile: Once we received the repaired camera back on site, in-lab testing revealed an issue that necessitated that we return the camera to the repair vendor to investigate the hardware that was changed. The camera control software was not able to configure the camera as expected and was reporting issues with the gain parameter setting.

ARCES: Instrument is performing nominally. IOL measurements have held steady and are still very good. Recently, the quartz flat lamp bulb housing and/or wiring was worked on to due to the lamp not turning on. A temporary repair is in place while parts are on order. Instrument flats are working with the temporary fix.

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: system suffered a chiller failure due to leaks. The leaks were repaired and the system has successfully ranged to the moon after the repair. The chiller that had the issue is a “spare” chiller being used because the in-service chiller had failed. A replacement chiller is on order and will be integrated into the system when it arrives at APO.

November 11-12 for ARCTIC emergency vacuum service. Echelle lamp bulb holder fixed this morning. December looking wintery - storm predicted for this weekend.

We have some unassigned time in Q4 (5 B-half dates in late December, 1 request outstanding but 4 remain). 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). Also uncalled ToO's - may be opportunities for schedule shuffling. Two of open slots are listed as DD in schedule

Schedule being worked on as we speak. Anticipate having it out by Dec 10.

The Q4 ARCSAT scheduled is posted. There is time available in the last week of December (but with no requests for filter changes).

Parallel efforts -

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. We have reached an impasse in terms of prioritizing the desired grism; 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.
• 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 they can propose to use Agile in Q1 2025 (but must include a backup instrument).
• UC reps: alert your users to the fact that plans are being formulated for decommissioning DIS.

Open action items from this meeting:

xxxxxx

None.

The next meeting will be on January 7, 2025 at 10:30 MST. (??)