SSC Meeting Minutes

15 October 2001

Bolte, Miller, Nelson UCSC )
Taylor, Mclean, Quirrenbach, Chaffee, Beckers UCLA
Steidel Keck Headquarters
Mumma via phone

Not in attendence, Ellis, Djorgovski, Luppino

(note three-way video connection)

also present, David Cowley, Steve Vogt, David Koo, Matt Radavan (UCSC)
Greg Wirth (Keck)
James Larkin, Jim Beletic, Hilton Lewis, Dave Sprayberry (UCLA)

-Announcements

 .Keck Science meeting help October 13 at CIT, attendence ~80

 .DEIMOS preship set for 13/14 November
         ship 11 Jan
         1st light 28 April

-HIRES upgrade (Steve Vogt)

 .updated budget presented

 .will be Leach II controller

 .dewar window/field flattener is designed, fused silica blank is
  in hand to be figured by Dave Hilyard in the Lick Optical shop

 .very likely to use CCDs from the three MIT-LL MBE wafers CARA
  owns. The decision about AR coating is important. Single coat
  hafnium-dioxide is superb in the blue/UV fringes in the red. 
  Possibly use chips with two different AR coatings, one for the blue
  side, one for the red. There are 6 CCDs per wafer.

   (1) investigate AR coating the wafers one at a time, evaluating
     the first, deciding on the second, evaluating the second, deciding
     on the third. May want to keep in mind that we will be wanting
     new CCDs in LRIS-R soon.

   (2) Excellent blue/UV response is a high priority.

  .there was some discussion of going to a closed-cycle cooler, general
   consensus was that this is not a good idea to pursue.

  .Joe Miller offered a fixed-price contract at the budget+contingency
   with a payback if it is delivered below the maxium total. We accept.

- ADC (Koo, Radovan) 

 .Team request funding for a Phase A design of a LRIS-only ADC. 

 .Will start with a pan-chromatic, fused silica, 2-prism design.

*.We need to dig out the scientific requirements.

- OSIRIS mini-review

 . James Larkin gave a two-hour presentation addressing the questions
   brought up after the PDR in July:

   >detectors
   >end-to-end simulations for sensitivity analysis
   >project management
   >data pipeline reduction

 .Detectors, 2kx2k HgCdTe Hawaii 2 with 2.5micron cutoff is the device
  of choice. Dominating factor for noise is the dark-current. Rockwell
  will allow hand picking of detectors for a charge (~50k). Shooting 
  for <0.05e-/sec/pixel. There may also soon be an option for MBE
  devices with AR coating. Better QE, again higher cost.

 .Sensitivity. An end-to-end simulator is completed. The question marks
  about cross-talk (OH in one spectrum ending up in an adjacent spectrum) 
  were addressed (it is a small problem). The bottom line is that OSIRIS
  is more sensitive than NIRSPEC or NIRC2 by alot - in part because of
  detectors, in part because of lack of slit losses, in part because
  of high total throughput (13% including AO).

 .Project management and detailed WBS. Larkin argued that the distribution
  of management in the project and the success of NIRSPEC with the
  same PI/projector manager (Ian in that case) approach says they will be
  OK. The SSC has doubts but the project will go forward with its current
  structure.

*.DRP. The SSC asked for a more complete data reduction pipeline.
  Krabbe has come on the team and will head up this part of the
  effort. There is an added cost, we need to have a full spec for
  the final product. 

 .Note that SHARC has become an integral part of OSIRIS. Steidel requests
  that the SHARC expenses be report with the OSIRIS budget in the future.

-CARA report