2025-07-31 Meeting notes

1:06

Words from Jim

Jim

• Picnic Saturday

• Carlos Party Sunday

  • Sign gift in Jim’s office

• Kittrin starts on Monday

  • Will be in office next to Grant (Meagan’s old office)

• Any all-staff questions?

  • Concerns expressed about day to day nature of cancellations. Will cancel through Aug 10, 2025

  • K2 Shutter + Pier Repair will pull resources during pier repair. Grant, Danny, AJ will be on pier repair.

  • Possibly Greg on pier repair as well.

  • LRIS guider work delayed as a result

  • Will impact KPF

  • John V and Dennis are “untouchables” for pier repair (maybe not for K2 shutter).

  • SAs may need to go up and work on instruments

  • Other partnerships

    • Various people (board, WMKO leadership) are looking at new partners.

      • Increase NU (from Caltech) and ND (from Keck) maybe?

      • Yale is 24 nights through Caltech

    • 3 pockets of time

      • 28 nights of time available now, have been used in past for grants, etc.

      • In 2033, UH time will be cut back, so there will be ~30 nights available then.

      • NASA time if they pull out is ~96 nights

      • Likely would not cut NASA out completely. Important to demonstrate that we are a US national facility.

1:26

FY26 instrument project phasing

Marc

Open

• HAKA and SCALES are on collision course

• HAKA currently has priority

• AO team has requested K2AO shutdown from Feb to May (16 weeks)

  • 6 weeks of HAKA install

  • 3 weeks of computer/software

  • 2-3 weeks SCALES

  • then HAKA testing

• DEIMOS has decided to be conservative and deliver at end of 26A semester.

• DEMIOS off schedule mid-May

• NIRSPEC service will need to be pushed back to after May

• Jim: Priority between HAKA and KAPA?

  • Use different personnel

  • Liger got top priority out of SSC and Board, does that mean AOdev priorities should adjust?

  • KAPA is done with hardware, remaining tasks are mostly software/algorithms

• HISPEC?

  • FY26 HISPEC is high priority for Keck as we are limiting factor

  • Delivery in Jan 2027

1:53

Support hours

Jim

Do we need to adjust the hours per support night?

• Treat all KPF nights like on-call?

• More hours needed for some modes?

• Impacts? Do we want a max number of support nights per semester?

• Josh: treat KPF-CC and KPF differently, reduce hours for KPF-CC

2:03

Professional Development

Jim

• Menlo LFC training x3 (cost estimate?)

  • 2 days at Princeton Oct 16-17, $500 registration

• CfAO Fall Retreat (or other AO) x2

• KSM (3x SA, 2x OA)

• SPIE Copenhagen x2

• Others?

2:10

Atmospheric Refraction

Kyle

• Question: Data about atmospheric refraction

• Came in to SSG

2:13

party food

Rosalie

Carlos party this Sunday Aug 3 from 2pm to 6pm. What to eat?

2:20

Pau!

Next lead: @Percy Gomez