<Minutes
of the 34th Subaru Telescope Advisory Committee Meeting>
Date:
11:00 – 17:00 April 5th, 2001
( Japan standard time
)
Place:
Subaru TV Conference Rooms in Mitaka and Hawaii
Committee
members: Ando, Iye, S.Ichikawa, T.Ichikawa, Okamura, Kataza, Karoji,
Sato,
Sugiyama, Tamura, Nakano, M.Hayashi,
Fukushima, Maihara,
Observers:
Usuda, Takata, B.McLaren
1.
Nomination
of the chair and the secretary
New
committee members were introduced.
After some discussion, Iye
was nominated as the chair, Maihara as the vice-chair, and Tamura as the
secretary. New chairs should
serve next term.
2. The minutes of the previous
meeting were approved. (Iye,
exhibit 34-1)
3. Reports from the Subaru Telescope
3.1 General report (Ando, exhibit
34-3a)
Open use for Semester S00b
starting from December 2000 went smoothly.
Improving the telescope control system is under way. Most of the instruments finished
functional test observations. AO had its first light in December 2000. FMOS was approved for fabrication as a
second-generation instrument.
MOIRCS and IRHS are under feasibility study. The statistics based on the AG camera
shows seeing better than 0h.8 image size for 70% of time. Telescope operators are under training.
There were more car accidents. The
first users meeting of the Subaru Telescope was held in
Hilo.
Currently, 26
staffs based in Hilo, 33 RCUH staffs,
5 staffs on long term trips to Hilo, 4 COE researchers, plus 3 graduate
students are supporting the Hilo activity. The budget for FY2001 is about 4
billion yen. Replacement of the supercomputer is scheduled. Transfer of 1 division from Mitaka and
the extension of Hilo base facility are to be requested for
FY14.
27 proposals out
of 105 were accepted for S01a open use offering 36 nights with IRCS, CISCO,
FOCAS, OHS, and HDS. For the
next semester S01b, 47 nights will be offered for open use with the above
instruments plus SuprimeCam. The
guidelines for accepting proposals from abroad, target of opportunity
observations, and formats for describing the targets of observations were discussed..
The time for
observatory staffs was not secured during the semester S01a due to many
engineering problems and compensation for this in the future will be
necessary. Only domestic PI
instruments will be considered for acceptance to mount the Subaru
Telescope. Further
engineering efforts are needed for primary mirror control, automatic
compensation for temperature variation, offset Shack-Hartmann analysis,
upgrading the force feedback loop from the loads at fixed points, improving the
performance of the IR chopping secondary. Large scale maintenance operation
to improve the mechanical fuse structure at the fixation points and recoating
the primary mirror will be carried out during August 8 to October 10, when the
open use service will not be offered.
For the time being, test observations combining the AO with IRCS and CIAO
and upgrading other open use instruments are scheduled. Seek for a scheme to share the
calibration data.
The chair
invited B.MacLaren for comments on the status of UH and Mauna Kea
management.
The master
plan of Mauna Kea was approved in June.
The Mauna Kea operating office invites all the directors for
discussion. A dedicated space for
Subaru will be assigned at HP.
Subaru goods will be sold at Onizuka center. Subaru representatives were
identified for the OHANA project.
Replacement of IRTF and CFHT for next generation telescopes and an array
of wide field small telescopes are studied as possible future plans. HDRT plan under study at IfA was also
mentioned.
3.2 FY2000
Budgetary Spending (Karoji)
The total spending amounted to 2.9
billion yen. Travel expenses amounted to130 million yen.
3.3 Telescope (Usuda, exhibit
34-3c)
Best image size in IR is 0h.2
without AO and smaller than 0h.1 with AO. RMS pointing accuracy
is 1h. Wind buffeting onto
the M1 should be suppressed less than 1.5m/sec using the windscreen. Auto
guiding error is 0h.08- 0h.18 for guide stars with m=12-18. The blind tracking accuracy is
below the specification.
Conspicuous improvement was made on auto-guider performance.
3.4 Instruments (Yamashita,
exhibit 34-3d-1)
SuprimeCam: Replace to 10 MIT CCDs is foreseen. A z-filter was
installed.
IRCS: No problem
OHS/CISCO: Will be offered from
S01a.
FOCAS: MOS
mode available on very limited scale.
Replacement of refrigerator is scheduled.
HDS: Offered from S01a.
COMICS:
Not offered due to the problem with chopping M2. 5 detectors are to be
installed.
AO: Got first light in Dec.
2000
4 Report from Time Allocation
Committee (Okamura, exhibit 34-4)
TAC met
twice for S00b and S01a.. The 5
proposal categories were rearranged to 6 to accommodate more or less even number
of proposals to be studied by
referees. TAC ranked
proposals based on the refereefs points.
The applications were 6
times more than available nights and only 1/4 of the proposals were
accepted. Up to 10% of proposals from abroad were accepted. TAC made
efforts to feed back the comments from referees. The term of service for TAC
committee members is two years and needs to be re-elected within one year from
now.
5 Partial access for UH88 and UKIRT
(Tamura, exhibit 34-3e)
The MOU regarding the
partial access to UH88 will be finalized soon and will be signed. The call for proposals was made for the
period August 2001 to January 2002.
The time allocation of Japanese proposal for UH88 telescope will be made
by a small TAC flexible enough to make decision for the time being but more
appropriate scheme should be sought for future. This situation was reported at the
GOPIRA meeting in March.
Arrangement for UKIRT is
under negotiation.
6 R&D subcommittee (Sato,
exhibit 34-5)
Sato was erected as the chair of the
R&D subcommittee. New
members of the subcommittee will be nominated later. MOIRCS (PI: Nishimura) was recommended
for approval for the second-generation instrument. The Subaru Advisory Committee endorsed
this recommendation. The team
consists of staffs and graduate students of Subaru Telescope, Tohoku
University.
7 Policy for accepting PI
instruments (Yamashita, exhibit 34-7)
Only
domestic PI instruments will be considered for mounting at the Subaru Telescope. A small committee summoned by the
observatory can do reviewing the science and the performance of the PI
instruments. PI instruments
proposals for S01b should be submitted within the framework of the open
use.
8 Data Archive (Takata, exhibit
34-10)
Data
obtained during the test observation by SuprimeCam and by CISCO are to be
archived and made available to the public.
9 UH time (Letters between Iye and
Kudritzki, 34-8,)
Iye
pointed out that the available nights for scientific observations were much less
than the optimistic estimate of MOU for the last two semesters but Subaru
assigned nights to UH according to MOU which were actually more than 15% of the
available nights, and this caused some feeling among Japanese users. On the other hand, UH users
community had an uncomfortable feeling on the guaranteed time for the instrument
groups. The directors of Subaru
Telescope and IfA will continue to establish better mutual
understanding.
10 FMOS time (Maihara,
34-9)
Maihara,
the PI of FMOS project, reported the status of discussion with UK counterpart to
establish common understanding regarding the assignment of time for observation
of FMOS. UK participation will be
through the guaranteed time and through the open use time.
11 Other issues
Discussion on the
compensation of the lost Observatory time and the guaranteed time beyond March
2002 will be made at the next meeting.
Target of Opportunity
Observations for S01b will be organized under the leadership of the director, if
necessary.