2024-02-15 Meeting notes

1:02

Words from Randy

Randy

• Update on semi-retirement starting sometime in March

  • Will stay on night support until we can get someone hired and trained

  • FY25 budget will be tight

  • Hire will be at SA I level? Open to more senior person

• AO Ops situation

  • Jim will be taking over for Randy

  • Probably will change how AO ops will work

  • New structure in AO dev team with Peter’s retirement

  • Antonin interested in working more closely with us in ops

  • Probably still want to ID an SA lead for AO ops

  • JO: Antonin will report to John, that’s a change. More linking between ops and dev at that level

  • JO: more transition linkage between proposals and ops at John O’Meara level

1:18

Words from John

John

• In Multi year planning

  • Doing 5 year outlook, last one was under previous leadership

  • Anticipates annual planning and project planning will “look different”

• Randy: pier repair planning 6.5 week shutdown in March/April of 2025

  • Full repair will take 2 of these 6.5 week shutdowns

  • Next gating is availability call in late-July/early-Aug

1:24

UNO phase I

Carolyn

UNO phase one starting next week (Feb 21)

• Reviewed criteria to enter phase 1 yesterday

• OAs will work as if they are not at the summit

• OAs will need time at beginning of night to do checks with cameras in dome

  • Needs lights

  • Conflicts with afternoon cals

  • Strategy: Ask observers to be on Zoom. They will get their cals interrupted if they are not on Zoom

  • Sherry has GUI to toggle domecals keyword

1:47

Feedbacks on KOA services

Chien-Hsiu

Gathering user experience and feedback of KOA page and ODAP. Feedback will be presented during KOA F2F meeting (3/11-12)

• Talk to CHL if you have questions. Have done tutorial in past meeting.

• RC: statistics on use?

  • Something like 200 people have visited the page

• CA: user friction is still figuring out how to add access, often happens during observations when KOA is not available

• Long term solution is to link KOA accounts and Keck observer accounts

• Alternatively could run RTUI from here

• Also working to get KOA links in observer login page

• JL: Are we planning to change user access to data disks or other access changes?

  • JO: not aware of impending changes

• RM, CA: RTUI only provides current data, don’t provide data already taken

  • CHL: submit KOA ticket

• Possibly send KOA reminder to Co-Is in remote observing reminders to observers

2:01

DSI / NIRES

Michael

update on DSI work with NIRES

• Engineering night about a month and a half ago

• Went well as far as configuring telescope and commanding telescope nods

• Some issues with parallelization

  • e.g. slit viewing camera not running concurrently with spectrograph exposures

• Working on ability to skip around in a sequence

  • e.g. resume after a problem partway through a sequence

  • Max working on way to jump to a particular point in sequence

• RC: what does it look like? How do you know where you are?

  • ML: not enough feedback, have existing NIRES GUIs

  • Logs have too much info

• Possible use on a Percy science night later this month

2:15

Dome Update

Jim

• K2 dome update

  • 2 dome drives coming

  • scheduled for afternoon delivery tomorrow

  • JL: this is kind of an UNO dry run, will they install immediately? Influenced by forecast?

  • Previous spare works for 1.5 nights, but did not have cooling fams

• Next week K1 instrument glycol valve replacement

  • Will be down during the day

  • Is RTC engineering night

  • CCRs will be up, compressors are on facility glycol

• Breaker work on Feb 28 will not be going forward on that day

2:22

NIRSPEC Service

Greg

• Pump out water yearly

• Decided to also put new filter in this year and some inspections

• EQ hit 45 minutes before craning, so that day was cancelled for EQ inspections

• Next day K2 dome drive failed, so unable to crane

• Replaced cold heads

  • Previously had been done by Dwight

  • Some pain in procedure

  • Both John and Dennis got experience

2:30

KVSP

Randy and Josh

Keck Visiting Scholar Program

• Applications due March 1

2:31

Interns

Randy

• Also U Chicago has Metcalfe intern program

  • Had one here last year

• Available

• If you have project for summer intern this is open

• Undergrad at Jr/Sr level

• Have new astrophysics major, but also have software engineers and others who can apply

• We give them job descriptions and they do applications and selection

2:35

Pau!

Next meeting lead: @Greg Doppmann