*************************************************************** Minutes of SSC Meeting, 24 January 2001 Keck Headquarters, Waimea *************************************************************** SSC members present: M. Bolte, C. Steidel, K. Taylor, R. Ellis, F. Chaffee, J. Miller, J. Nelson, A. Quirrenbach, I. McLean, B. Millis, G. Djorgovski other participants: Jim Beletic, Grant Hill, David Sprayberry, David Cowley Hilton Lewis, Bob Goodrich, Greg Wirth by phone: Keith Matthews, James Larkin, Sandy Faber, De Pennington, M. Mumma >Announcements: . Bob Millis (Lowell) attended meeting as NASA representative. . The NASA instrument proposal for the next three years is due in May >DEIMOS Report (Cowley, Faber on phone) .Software slip of a month puts software on the critical path. .Flexure is still an issue. Goal is 10 pixels peak-to-peak (flexture compensation can handle 20 pixels p-to-p). Current flexure is 40pixels peak-to-peak. 6 pixels of the motion was determined to be due to motion of the detector inside the dewar. Dewar is currently open to correct this. Most of the rest is the box that holds the grating. The box will be removed, welded and put back in place in early Feb. .Preship currently scheduled for July 6, ship date, Sept 11. .Concerns: o flexure unresolved o four slider systems under redesign o current image quality is bad, but fix is understood >NIRC2 Report (Mathews via phone) .all items in hand for delivery .dewar completed including array installed .first light for science array in one week .R=2000 grating not tested .R=400 grating not delivered .schedule: Preship - 20 April 2001 Ship - 5 May 2001 >OSIRIS Report (Larkin via phone) .full effort underway since September .optics at SSG adds about $500k to the budgets -all reflective collimator and camera .Preliminary design review: may be ready for Spring 2001 .need to think about PDR requirements, possible committee members >SHARC .On schedule for a March 01 delivery. No plans for commissioning at KECK as yet. >LRIS `New Blue Camera' (NBC). Still no CCDs in hand, but the plans are now to use two Marconi devices hand chosen for UV throughout. [Update: two devices now identified, nearly meeting specs in UV/blue] .Force 5CE CPU (rather than PowerPC) -- `old' style rather than DEIMOS style. May adopt PowerPC system once it is robust on DEIMOS >KIRMOS (Taylor) .science case being refined .possible locations under consideration are K1 cassegrain and K2 Nasmyth. The K1 choice better balances the distribution of light/dark time instruments on the two telescopes. .interesting parameter spaces are under exploration for mechanical design, optical design and detector package. >LBNL chips (Gilmore) .Kirk Gilmore and Jim Beletic carried out some experiments in the K1 dome with the LBL very high-rho devices. Cosmic rays were seen at the expected 2.3x higher rate than measured at Mt Hamilton, but (somewhat unexpectedly) the `worms' were also up by about 10%. .The first instrument that might use one of these devices is probably ESI. The effort needs a PI and evaluation of the trade-offs with using one of these devices and evaluation of possible means of ameliorating problems. >New Instruments for the future (Bolte) .The combination of budget constraints and the completion of the Phase II instruments means the past procedure of issuing a periodic call for new instruments probably won't work in the future. Possible options were discussed for alternatives. Letting it be know we will entertain ideas for new instruments once per year, approaching individuals in the UC/CIT community about instruments to fill specific needs. This topic will be further explored in the future. >Gemini/Keck time swap (Bolte) .Gemini North has working instruments, in particular a wide-field near-IR imager (NIRI) and A0 system that works with natural guide stars as faint as R=18 (limited correction at this level). The competition is fierce at this point. Some discussion has been carried out with GEMINI people about trading Keck time for GEMINI time. Given that the Keck community already has public access the only advantage would be to have a block of GEMINI time available at the UC/CIT oversubscription level rather than the general community level. .The GEMINI/NOAO rules are that proposers with Keck access are at no disadvantage in applying to national facility time. A fear was expressed that if we had swap time on GEMINI, it would no longer be possible to get public time. >Laser update - many improvements and fixes have lead to a reliable system that passed its second 40-hour burnin. One more 40-hour test and it is anticipated the summit installation will commence. >Keck optical detectors (Beletic) - Jim Beletic has spearheaded an effort to summarize the possible gains to be had (QE, readnoise, readout times) in the optical instruments. A nice document has been generated. The largest gains are to be had with an upgrade to HIRES (2k x 4k Marconi + 2k x 4k MIT-LL high-rho device) and LRIS-R. >Observatory Status (Chaffee) (see Observatory report, only a few highlights here) .ESI pipeline quicklook reduction package `makee' is now available .Keck I AO has first light .Interferometer is on schedule for KI-KII fringes in March .Keck bibliography is impressive - in 2000, 160 papers using Keck data were published .turnover has continued, nine recruitments are underway .projected shortfall in manpower for 2001 assuming laser installation NIRC2 and DEIMOS commissioning is significant (10 manyears) .Fred's view of the next few years: 2001 - year of the completion of Phase II instruments/laser beacon/Keck-Keck fringes 2002,3 - years of the facility. Get caught up on many deferred projects. Executive session. .