apo-wiki

Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Kevin, Misty, Russet, Joanne, Zach, Anne, Ben W, Moire, Sarah

Ben Williams (UW), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Michael Hayden (OU), Eric Bellm (UW), Ben Williams (UW), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Moire Prescott (NMSU)

• JHU - nothing to report
• UVa - nothing to report
• Georgia State - nothing to report
• Oklahoma - no report
• NMSU - nothing to report
• Colorado - nothing to report
• BYU - nothing to report (by email)
• Washington - nothing to report (by email)
• Seattle - nothing to report
• Wyoming - no report
• 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, 3/04/25 – 03/31/25

1) Overview

March was a bit unsettled weather wise with higher spring winds and elevated dust levels for a good portion of the month. Light snow flurries, with little accumulation, on two nights was the majority of the moisture we received in March. The second half of the student group from CU and one instrument team visited APO this month. A small number of high school and college spring break tours of the site and telescope were also given mid-March.

2) Operations

3.5m Telescope: Telescope is working as expected.

0.5m Telescope: Telescope is working as expected. ACP Library support errors are still occurring even with the dcam-spare camera swap. USB communications dropouts are now the most likely cause of the error. Discussions on how to proceed from here will be on going.

KOSMOS: There was some troubleshooting required following an inadvertent power down of part of the instrument. Documentation and the addition of extra labeling hopefully will correct this from happening in the future.

ARCTIC: Maintenance on the diffuser mechanism was performed however we believe there was a failure of part of the electronics that controls rotation. Troubleshooting is continuing. Diffuser rotation has been disabled while we attempt to repair. The mechanism that moves the diffuser in and out of the optical path is still functional in the meantime.

Agile: The camera was returned to the repair facility for additional troubleshooting. They transplanted our detector to a spare set of electronics boards, vacuum pumped and tested. We have it back now and are reinstalling at the writing of this report. I will give a further update during the meeting.

ARCES: System is currently up and usable. There was a recent report that flat fields are shifting. The effect is mentioned in the user manual however may be of larger magnitude than has been seen in the past. The orders appear to shift a few rows from image to image. The cause is unknown at this time especially since the instrument had been so stable for years. It is advised not to use super flats in your reductions unless you carefully compare individual raw images you are combining. No further update on this problem from last month.

DIS: System is cooled and usable.

NICFPS: System is cooled and usable.

TripleSpec: System is cooled and usable.

APOLLO: The system is operational. The team was able to successfully receive returns off of the Next Generation Lunar Retroreflector (NGLR-1) on the Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Lander. This is a major accomplishment for the team and lunar ranging operations at APO.

rotator - shift position and then stop , worse than not rotator Agile - rotator probs - too frequently for science, too intermittent for testing, hard to

fully allocated

The Q2 ARCSAT schedule 1 week left

Shutdown is 7-17 July, allocations went out last week. Requests are due 5/23. No DIS.

Early discussions regarding the development of a replacement high speed imager, SoonerCam, are ongoing. We expect to be able to share an information/specification sheet or white paper about the instrument fairly soon.

Our preliminary proposal to the NSF for a replacement echelle was not invited for a full proposal. Work on the instrument continues with the goal of completing the Preliminary Design Review this calendar year, and additional sources of funds are being investigated.

We have no updates concerning Ocotillo.

survey - when it comes around, what kind of memory it will consume (tons of data over long time?) - hope is to put in a focal reducer but right now the pixels are very small

Open action items from previous meetings:

• Nancy: get Mt. Cuba Foundation proposal for new KOSMOS grisms submitted. STATUS: OPEN. The proposal is done; Nancy needs to confirm with NMSU's Office of Grants and Contracts whether they need to be involved in the submission since it's a small proposal. She plans to submit it before the next Users Committee meeting.
• UC reps: remind your users to review the Q2 schedule and request OPEN/DD time if they can make a good case for it. STATUS: OPEN.

New action items from this meeting: None

NC - data archiving Zach - mixed reactions - yes it would be nice to see what has been observed, Worry about what would make it most useful is to have reduced data products (out of reach). Another question : with new instruments to build it in? Russet - making data available and searchable/usable are 2 different things. Could be a strength/compromise - could be student opportunity. Sarah - lot of work.Misty - sounds nice but right now seems like a good time to discuss but not act. Zach - mini version could be way to archive data in Zenodo w/papers. Joanne - we should all upload all our best data to some repository. KS - reduced data in an archive is more useful. Keven

The next meeting will be on June 3, 2025 at 10:30 MDT.