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Attending: Nancy Chanover (NMSU), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Eric Bellm (UW), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Joanne Hughes (Seattle U), Moire Prescott (NMSU), Adam Kowalski (CU), Chip Kobulnicky (UWy), Ben Williams (UW), Sarah Tuttle (UW)

• NAPG - no report
• Seattle - nothing to report
• BYU - nothing to report
• Wyoming - no report
• Oklahoma - no report
• Georgia State - nothing to report (by email)
• UVa - nothing to report
• Colorado - nothing to report
• JHU - nothing to report
• NMSU - There was a report from a user regarding the dark correction on KOSMOS data taken pretty recently. The dark level seems to be higher than it was historically, resulting in pixels that don't get corrected properly. The user contacted Russet about this. Nancy said that this will be discussed on our weekly operations call this Thursday and we will report back to Moire and the NMSU user if this issue and/or a mitigation strategy is understood. That said, if any other users have seen this issue – particularly for long exposures – please let Nancy know! Joanne mentioned that she took 3 x 900 sec darks with KOSMOS last Sunday night and also saw a high level of cosmic rays; she is willing to share the data if anyone wants to use them for comparison.
• Washington - 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, 5/02/25 – 06/02/25

1) Overview

May was another month filled with unsettled weather but there were a few excellent nights near the end of the month with good seeing. The nights lost due to weather were mostly a result of cloud cover, high winds, elevated dust and humidity; we had very little precipitation this month. The New Mexico Governor has declared a state of emergency for the entire state due to severe drought conditions and extreme fire risk. A wildfire about 80 miles NNE of the observatory, which grew to larger than 750 acres, had the potential to threaten the observatory with smoke or ash had the winds had been from that direction, but nothing was reported. At the time of this report this fire as well as two smaller fires in the same area are declared 100% contained. There were no visiting classes or instrument teams to the observatory during the month of May.

As a reminder, summer shutdown is scheduled to start on July 7.

2) Operations

3.5m Telescope: Telescope is working as expected. Seasonal motion errors have been infrequent.

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. The CCD was experiencing a strange bias issue that appears to have gone away when we partially warmed the instrument for an ion pump change. We are continuing to monitor.

Agile: The camera is non-operational; the thermoelectric cooler failed again. The camera is warm and we do not plan further repair work with this camera. The Agile instrument rotator is still not performing nominally and we are troubleshooting it further to prepare for SoonerCam.

ARCES: System is currently up and usable. Work continues on a replacement and modern ICC.

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 and thermal control at the time of this report. A portion of the system has been powered down while we wait for replacement parts. It may still be possible to energize just prior to a schedule run and still range.

Report is pretty comprehensive (above) - got rain last weekend much needed (not yet monsoon, but still much needed). Will be looking for seasonal motion errors aes temp warms, may need to tweak PID settings if they increase.

ARCSAST issues las night with camera communicating with software but Jack ironed out. Will investigate KOSMOS issue. ARCTIC - lost a quad, issues with ion pump control, narrowed down to a bad cable, once repaired hoping these issues will be reduced and won't have to warm instrument as much as recently. Agile - failure of newly replaced TEC; no current plans to repair further; moving ahead with SoonerCam. Have camera in office! Auxillary equip not ordered yet but that project is ramping up. Working on remaplcemet for modern computer/interface cards for echelle to get us through the next few years. No status update on DIS. NICFPS and Spec performing fine. Undergoing some tech issues re: laser on APOLLO that we're working through.

If do any instrument servicing, probably outside window by summer shutdown, likely KOSMOS. ARCES and NICFPS and Tspec don't need vacuum servicing. KOSMOS is generally 2-3 day turnaround.

The time in Q2 is fully allocated; no OPEN or DD slots remain. Couple of ToO paybacks not been called yet.

The Q2 ARCSAT schedule has one week of OPEN time remaining (June 12-19). Policy for filters now published and made more visible - requesting users to ask for filter changes at least 72 hrs prior to filter needs and not able to support changes on weekends/holidays.

The 3.5m summer shutdown is scheduled for 7-17 July, inclusive. Received all requests for Q3. So far, no major conflicts; schedule is being built. Probably schedule released next week; call for ARCSAT Q3 requests. Same shutdown schedule as 3.5.

A replacement high speed imager, SoonerCam, is under development. We expect to be able to share an information/specification sheet or white paper about the instrument fairly soon. In the meantime, a survey of all past/present/future users of such an instrument (i.e. current and former Agile users, or those who want to use a modern high speed imager) was distributed. We really need to hear from users concerning anticipated needs for frame rate, binning, etc. as this information will drive some design decisions. We plan to add a focal reducer but the pixels are currently very small. Here is the email sent to 35m-general requesting survey responses:

Dear APO 3.5m users, We are purchasing a new qCMOS high-speed camera, SoonerCam, to replace the old camera on Agile. This camera provides a read-noise of 0.3 e- in the ultra-quiet scan mode. It's a 4096×2304 pixel camera with 4.5 micron pixels. It can provide up to 25 frames/s in this mode. Using Agile's current setup, the camera provides 0.05 arcsec per pixel (or a field of view of 115“ x 205”).

Before finalizing the design and installation at the telescope, we would love to hear your thoughts or feedback on what would make this new camera suitable for your science needs.

If you are interested in using this new capability, can you please provide feedback on: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeJG6zQg7YtGxGhAtaKULHyzZVZe29uHCiegcHdM0edglN1gw/viewform?usp=sharing

Thank you, On behalf of the SoonerCam team (including the Astro group at OU, Sarah Tuttle, Bill Ketzeback and the APO engineering/software team, and Nancy Chanover), -Muk

If any users have specific ideas about capabilities that want instrument to do.

Work on the new optical echelle spectrograph continues with the goal of completing the Preliminary Design Review this calendar year. Another grant proposal is in the works.

Trying to get final quotes to buy materials/optics to assemble channel. Some vendors are slower in responsiveness. Things are underway.

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.
• UC reps: ask your users to complete the survey regarding needs/desires for a high speed imaging capability. The link to this survey was sent out to 35m-general on May 6, 2025 by Mukremin Kilic, and is also included above. STATUS: OPEN.

New action items from this meeting:

• xxx

Annual Request to Update Publication Record

Please send Nancy any references for 3.5m-related publications (anything published from Jan 1 2024 to now). The deadline is June 30. Understanding the scientific usage and impact of the telescope is critical for evaluating future projects, initiatives, instrument concepts, etc., thus we need your help in updating our publication record! We are now participating in a cross-observatory analysis of scientific impact of ground-based telescopes, so it is especially important that we capture all publications resulting from APO observations. Any publications resulting from ARCSAT data are also requested. The listing should include refereed publications and student theses and dissertations (not conference abstracts unless they are peer reviewed) that made use of data acquired with the 3.5m and/or ARCSAT, published from 2024 to the present. If a paper has been submitted to a journal but has not yet completely gone through the review process, please include that as well, with the name of the journal and “submitted.”

The next meeting will be on July 1, 2025 at 10:30 MDT.