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| SAC Sep 30-Oct 1, 2004, Cambridge |
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CONTENTS
Sep 30 (Thu) - MIT Building 37, Room 252, Marlar Lounge
Oct 1 (Fri) - MIT Building 26, Room 110, Compton Room
SEPTEMBER 30, 2004 Building 37, Room 252, Marlar Lounge, start at 9:30 AM
9:30-9:45 Opening remarks, minutes from last meeting, action items from last meeting (Dressler 15 min)
9:45-10:15 Technical manager's report (Uomoto 30 min)
10:15-11:15 Reports from Las Campanas (Phillips, Roth 60 min)
11:15-11:45 Update on staffing discussion (Uomoto 30 min)
11:45-1:00 LUNCH
1:00-1:30 Future instrumentation & F/5 installation plans (staffing oriented) (Uomoto 30 min)
1:30-2:30 Instrument priorities (results of poll & cost/$) (Uomoto 60 min)
2:30-2:45 BREAK
2:45-3:45 Interrupt and TOO observing and related issues, part 1 (Dressler 60 min)
3:45-5:00 Instrument news
OCTOBER 1, 2004 Building 26, Room 110, Compton Room, start at 9:00 AM
9:00-9:30 Mirror coatings and cleaning (Perez 30 min)
9:30-10:30 Instrument news
10:30-11:00 Other business
11:00-11:15 BREAK
11:15-12:15 Improving cost-effectiveness (Uomoto 60 min)
12:15-1:30 LUNCH
1:30-1:45 SWIFT and GRB observations (Chen 15 min)
1:45-2:30 Continue discussion of interrupt and TOO observing (Dressler 45 min)
2:30-3:00 Facility Instrument Policy (compliance report) (Uomoto 30 min)
3:00-3:15 BREAK
3:15-3:45 User instrument policy (new) (Uomoto 30 min)
3:45-4:15 Review action items; other business (Dressler 30 min)
4:15 Adjourn
The Magellan Council has requested that the SAC ... prioritize the instruments on the basis of absolute science and science return per dollar. The SAC shall consult a wide community of users before making their ranking.
To do this, we ask each institution's Magellan community to confer and place instruments into categories of HIGH, MEDIUM, and LOW based on absolute science value. We leave it up to the gathered groups to define "absolute science." Please use the full range HIGH-LOW. Rankings on science per dollar will require discussion at the next meeting.
Only candidate facility instruments are considered here, not user instruments. Some proposed instruments have presentation material from the last SAC meeting ![[WWW]](/wiki/img/moin-www.gif "[WWW]"){kind=small}
on-line. IMACS is split between F/2 and F/4 modes because this swap is similar to an instrument change. For LDSS, consider the upgraded version as described in the on-line documentation.
Except for LDSS, please base your rankings on the state of things today and avoid conditionals (don't say "if FourStar then PANIC=low else PANIC=high").
One SAC member from each institution: please submit your results by email to <au AT ociw DOT edu> on or before September 24, 2004.
Absolute science (H|M|L)
| Instrument | Carnegie | Harvard | Arizona | Michigan | MIT |
| MagIC | L | M | M | M | H |
| PANIC | H | M | H/M | M | H |
| IMACS spectrograph F/2 | H | H | H | H | HH |
| IMACS spectrograph F/4 | H | M | H | H | H |
| MIKE | H | M | H | H | H |
| MIKE FIBERS | L | M | H | H/M | L |
| B&C | L | M | L | M | LL |
| LDSS upgraded multiobject optical spectrograph | H | M | M | H | M |
| Infrared echellette | M | M | H | L | H |
| FourStar wide field IR imager | H | H | H | L | H |
| MagE optical echellette | L | M | L | L | H |
| IMACS gismo (image slicing multislit front-end) | M | L | M/L | L | M/L |
| MMIRS multiobject IR spectrograph | M | M | M/L | M | M |
| Megacam Optical wide field imager | M | M | L | L | M |
| IMACS MMTF tunable filter imager | M | M | M/L | L | L |
| IMACS multiobject echellette | L | M | M | L | L |
| F/11 adaptive optics secondary | M | M | H | L | M |
| MIRAC4 with F/11 AO secondary | L | M | H | L | ? |
| MIRAC4 without F/11 AO secondary | L | L | M/L | L | ? |
Comments from Carnegie (Mulchaey) ... I sent a questionnaire out to all Carnegie scientists at OCIW, DTM and LCO. I received 22 responses in total. I also held a meeting this morning to discuss the results. This is a summary of the survey & meeting: First off, every instrument on the list was listed as "High" science priority by at least one person at Carnegie. This demonstrates that we have a very diverse pool of scientists. However, some instruments are clearly in demand by a large fraction of our population, while others will be used by just a few people. We were able to put the instruments into three categories based on the overall averages from the survey (High=2, Medium=1, Low=0): Highest Priority ---------------- IMACS f/2 (1.43) LDSS-2 (1.29) Fourstar (1.19) Panic (1.19) Mike (1.14) IMACS f/4) (1.10) Medium Priority --------------- IR echellette (0.95) IMACS Gismo (0.90) Megacam (0.81) F/11 adaptive Sec. (0.81) IMACS MMTF (0.76) MMIRS (0.71) Lowest Priority ---------------- MagE (0.62) MIRACS4 with A0 (0.57) IMACS multi. echellette (0.52) Magic (0.48) B&C (0.48) Mike Fibers (0.33) MIRAC4 without AO (0.14) After much discussion, it was agreed that the highest priority instruments are the ones that we all believe should be facility instruments. They are used by many people for many different kinds of science and should be fully supported by the LCO staff. The second tier are instruments that are all in development. It was felt that some of them will likely make good facility instruments, while others might be more appropriate as visitor (=PI) instruments. In particular, the f5 instruments and f/11 A) secondary will likely be available for limited runs and it might make more sense to consider than visitor instruments, shifting more responsibility to the instrument teams to support them. The third tier is composed of mostly niche instruments. These will likely not be used by many folks at Carnegie, but are still very important for a few people. These would also be good candidate visitor instruments. It is generally agreed that the level of use of these instruments is not sufficient to warrant facility instrument status. The two exceptions are the B&C and Magic, which ranked low because at least among most Carnegie observers, this science can be done with LDSS-2. In our minds, these would be good choices for early retirement, although Magic has some capabilities that might be useful to other consortium partners. Still, if Magic's overall use is low, perhaps it can move to visitor instrument status. As you can probably tell from the above discussion, it was generally felt that too many instruments are in the running for facility status. Perhaps this is an issue for us to revisit at the SAC. However, it was also agreed that visitor instruments also tax the mountain resources and this must be taken in to account. The differences between visitor and facility instruments is still not clear to the community (or to me for that matter!) ...
Comments from Michigan (Richstone):
...
high: MIKE, IMACS, LDSS upgrade
medium-high MIKE FIBERS
medium: B&C, MMIRS, MAGIC, PANIC
all others low.
discussion points:
overall, we are institutionally worked up about spectrographs.
we see MIKE, IMACS and LDSS as the future workhorse optical
instruments. IMACS would come out on top but it is seen as
difficult to use.
we see MIKE fibers as a real great enhancement of MIKE.
the medium votes are a mixed bag:
B&C because it is conventional, easy to use and there. esp until the
others come along.
MMIRS because its the infrared and the future.
and MAGIC and PANIC because they are basic imagers.
the rest were low.
...
Comments from Harvard (Kenyon) ... Here is a summary of the survey of Magellan instruments. We had 16 responses. All respondents did not vote for every instrument. Most instruments end up with an average of 'M'. To make a finer rank, I computed averages as shown in the last column of the first table. In the second table, I list the number of 'H' ranks for each instrument. best wishes Scott Instrument Rank N Avg Score MagIC M 16 2.2 PANIC M 14 2.4 IMACS spectrograph F/2 H 15 2.7 IMACS spectrograph F/4 M 14 2.0 MIKE M 14 2.3 MIKE FIBERS M 14 1.6 B&C M 14 1.6 LDSS upgraded multiobject optical spectrograph M 14 1.5 Infrared echellette M 14 1.7 FourStar wide field IR imager H 14 2.5 MagE optical echellette M 13 1.7 IMACS gismo (image slicing multislit front-end) L 13 1.4 MMIRS multiobject IR spectrograph M 14 2.4 Megacam Optical wide field imager M 13 2.2 IMACS MMTF tunable filter imager M 13 1.9 IMACS multiobject echellette M 13 1.7 F/11 adaptive optics secondary M 14 2.4 MIRAC4 with F/11 AO secondary M 13 2.1 MIRAC4 without F/11 AO secondary L 13 1.4 average grade uses H = 3, M = 2 , L = 1 Ranking by number of 'H' only: Instrument N MagIC 7 PANIC 7 IMACS spectrograph F/2 12 IMACS spectrograph F/4 5 MIKE 7 MIKE FIBERS 3 B&C 3 LDSS upgraded multiobject optical spectrograph 2 Infrared echellette 2 FourStar wide field IR imager 8 MagE optical echellette 3 IMACS gismo (image slicing multislit front-end) 6 MMIRS multiobject IR spectrograph 8 Megacam Optical wide field imager 7 IMACS MMTF tunable filter imager 3 IMACS multiobject echellette 2 F/11 adaptive optics secondary 8 MIRAC4 with F/11 AO secondary 3 MIRAC4 without F/11 AO secondary 0 ...
Comments from Arizona (Close) ... Here is the consensus list from Arizona (with some notes of my own to help explain some of our choices): Instrument Absolute science (H|M|L) MagIC M PANIC H/M IMACS spectrograph F/2 H IMACS spectrograph F/4 H MIKE H MIKE FIBERS H B&C L - old spectrograph LDSS upgraded M Infrared echellette H FourStar wide field IR imager H MagE optical echellette L - (too many echellettes?) IMACS gismo M/L MMIRS multiobject IR spec M/L Megacam wide field imager L (IMACS can do this?) IMACS MMTF tunable filter imager M/L IMACS multiobject echellette M F/11 adaptive optics secondary H MIRAC4 with F/11 AO secondary H (Mid-IR AO unique in south) MIRAC4 without F/11 AO secondary M/L ...
Results from MIT: MagIC H Panic H IMACS f/2 H**2 IMACS f/4 H MIKE H MIKE/fibers L LDSS3 M B&C L**2 FIRE H fourstar H MagE H Gismo M/L MMIRS M Megacam M MMTF L MOE L f/11 AO M
The averaged scores (3=High, 2=Medium, 1=Low), giving each Magellan partner equal weight*, are shown in this table:
| Instrument | Score |
| IMACS F/2 | 3.0 |
| IMACS F/4 | 2.8 |
| MIKE | 2.8 |
| FourStar | 2.6 |
| PANIC | 2.5 |
| LDSS | 2.4 |
| FIRE | 2.2 |
| MagIC | 2.0 |
| F/11 AO | 2.0 |
| MMIRS | 1.9 |
| MIKE Fibers | 1.9 |
| MIRAC4 with AO | 1.8 |
| Megacam | 1.6 |
| MagE | 1.6 |
| MMTF | 1.5 |
| GISMO | 1.4 |
| MOE | 1.4 |
| B&C | 1.4 |
| MIRAC4 without AO | 1.1 |
* MIT did not answer on MIRAC4; results averaged on remaining four.
Meeting minutes recorded by D. Fabricant Technical manager's report presentation (A. Uomoto) (ppt) Full technical manager's report (A. Uomoto) (sxw) Report from Las Campanas (M. Phillips, Las Campanas) (ppt) Report from Las Campanas (M. Roth) (ppt) Staffing update report (A. Uomoto) (ppt) Future instrumentation (A. Uomoto) (ppt) Instrument priorities poll (A. Uomoto) (ppt) The ranked list is shown above. CorMASS (K. Luhman) (ppt) FIRE, or the IR echellette (R. Simcoe) (ppt) GLAO update (A. Athey) (ppt) GLAO movie (mpg file, A. Athey) F/5 wide field corrector (A. Szentgyorgi) (ppt) Megacam status report (B. McLeod) (ppt) MMIRS status report (B. McLeod) (ppt) Mirror coatings and cleaning (F. Perez) (pps) MagE (S. Burles) (ppt) MagE specs and throughput estimate (S. Burles) PISCO (C. Stubbs) (ppt) LDSS (J. Mulchaey) (ppt) IMACS & GISMO (A. Dressler) (ppt) Improving cost effectiveness (A. Uomoto) (ppt) Swift and GRB observations (H.-W. Chen) (ppt) technical manager's report (A. Uomoto) User instrument policy (A. Uomoto) (ppt) 