apo-wiki

Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Misty Bentz (GSU), Russet McMillan (APO), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Zach Berta-Thompson (CU), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Ben Williams (UW), Moire Prescott (NMSU), Sarah Tuttle (UW)

• 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, 4/01/25 – 05/01/25

1) Overview

The frequency of higher winds and elevated dust levels improved somewhat during the month of April. APO experienced several days of particularly bad dust events ending in accumulation of several inches of snow. The precipitation melted within a day and did little to affect our high fire danger. We had a visiting class from OU and another observing team from NMSU on site this month. A NASA team was on site for APOLLO maintenance as well working with site staff.

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 but with much lower frequency.

KOSMOS: System is cooled and stable.

ARCTIC: The diffuser rotation mechanism is still unreliable even after a full servicing. Troubleshooting is continuing. The mechanism that moves the diffuser in and out of the optical path is still functional in the meantime. The rest of the instrument is cooled and stable.

Agile: The camera is operational but only in slow readout mode. The Agile instrument rotator is still not performing nominally and we are troubleshooting it further.

ARCES: System is currently up and usable.

DIS: System is cooled but in an unknown state for science.

NICFPS: System is cooled and usable.

TripleSpec: System is cooled and usable.

APOLLO: The system is currently experiencing some technical issues with the laser at the time of this report. The servicing trip had to be extended to attempt repairs. Hopefully an update will be able to be given at the time of the meeting.

The ARCTIC diffuser rotation mechanism has been challenging to repair. The symptom is that when commanded to rotate, the diffuser shifts in position and then stops. This is worse than having no rotation, so the rotation functionality is currently not available. It will require a complete rebuild in order to get it working so this is on the longer-term to-do list.

The Agile instrument rotator is exhibiting problems. Unfortunately they are occurring too frequently for science, but too intermittently for focused testing, which makes it hard to diagnose. This is still being worked on.

The time in Q2 is fully allocated; no OPEN or DD slots remain.

The Q2 ARCSAT schedule has one week of OPEN time remaining (June 12-19).

The 3.5m summer shutdown is scheduled for 7-17 July, inclusive. Institutional allocations for Q3 were sent out last week and all requests are due on May 23. DIS will no longer be made available for proposers.

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

This group is still meeting and exploring various options for the future of ARCSAT.

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: CLOSED.

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.