APO 3.5-m Users Committee Meeting, 4/02/2024
Attending: Jamey Eriksen (APO), Kevin Schlaufman (JHU), Aleksandr Mosenkov (BYU), Moire Prescott (NMSU), Mukremin Kilic, (OU), Ben Williams (UW), Adam Kowalski (CU), Eric Bellm (UW), Anne Verbiscer (UVa), Derek Buzasi (FGCU), Misty Bentz (GSU), Bill Ketzeback (APO), Russet McMillan (APO)
User feedback and comments from institutional representatives
- BYU - nothing to report
- Colorado - nothing to report
- Wyoming - nothing to report
- Washington - nothing to report
- FGCU - nothing to report
- Georgia State - nothing to report
- UVa - nothing to report
- Seattle - nothing report (sent by email)
- JHU - nothing to report
- NAPG - no report
- Oklahoma - having a good visit with the class so far!
- NMSU - nothing to report
Telescope and Instruments Report
The detailed site report is included below, followed by additional information discussed during today's meeting.
3.5-m Telescope and Instruments Highlights, 3/04/2024 – 4/02/2024
1) Overview
March has seen ping-pong type of weather at APO, ranging from snow to nice to high winds to dust. The month started out with a visit from a group of undergraduate and graduate students from CU, also a visiting team for APOLLO work at the end of the month.
2) Operations
3.5m Telescope: The telescope is working well; motion errors seem to be of the seasonal type.
0.5m Telescope: Improvements were done to some cables (took old ones out and replaced with new ones). BYUCam was tested and appears to be working better with the new cables.
KOSMOS: new slits are undergoing more tests and the new set of 1.25” slits is due to arrive from UW in mid-April
ARCTIC: the diffuser’s rotator mechanism servicing is being planned for Q2 when time permits between ARCTIC usage.
Agile: The instrument TEC controls failed. Attempted repairs have so far been unsuccessful.
Echelle: ARCES was partially warmed to try to improve the inter-order light (IOL). After cool down, the IOL is currently considered excellent. There is a slight slope indicating that the IOL is trending toward worse values, however, it is a small slope and we hope that it levels off soon.
DIS: functioning nominally, nothing to report.
Additional telescope and instrument discussion
No questions regarding the site report.
Current instrumentation update
The recent echelle warmup was successful and seems to have mitigated the inter-order light issue. We'd like to schedule the servicing of the ARCTIC diffuser rotation mechanism soon. DIS is operating nominally, with a slight improvement in the blue. Moire asked about the current status of using dome flats with ARCTIC. Russet replied that we now have the fence in place so dome flats should be reliable, but there may be additional considerations depending on rotation.
2024 Q2 3.5m scheduling
There is no open time available for the next several weeks. UC reps: please remind your users that the observatory needs to receive observers' responses to reminder emails at least 24 hours in advance! In addition to helping reduce no-shows, these are especially important for KOSMOS slit and filter requests, both of which take a lot of time. This will help avoid middle of the night changes, which have greater risk and could result in delays to observing time.
2024 Q2 0.5 scheduling
No comments or questions.
ACTION ITEMS
Open action items from previous meetings:
- Nancy: get ROM costs for new KOSMOS grisms. STATUS: OPEN
Open action items from this meeting:
- UC reps: remind your users that observers must respond to reminder emails at least 24 hours in advance.
All Other Business
None.
Next meeting
The next meeting will be on May 7 at 10:30 MDT.
