UCO on-line Newsletter: January 2006

This is a short summary of recent UCO news of interest to the broad UC astronomy community. A goal is to get an issue of the UCO newsletter out at least twice per year. This is an experiment! Please send feedback to me about ways to improve the newsletter.

There are two presentations I'd like to point everyone to. One is a set of powerpoint slides that is intended to give a high-level "state of UCO" snapshot: UCO 2005 . There are notes in the presentation that clarify some of the statements. These slides are the basis of presentations made to several campuses in the Fall of 2005.

The second presentation is a set of slides with images and information related to the TMT telescope project. This is not intended to be a status report, but rather slides from which you could pick and choose to add to talks. I'd like to encourage everyone to look for ways to refer to the TMT in your talks and colloquia presentations. We need to increase the visibility of the project in our own community and in the wider astronomical (and funding) community. TMT slides

Mike Bolte, Interim Director, UCO

• Mt Hamilton News

  • APF: The big news at Mt Hamilton is groundbreaking and good progress for the Automatic Planet Finder telescope. APF is a 2.4m telescope with dedicated echelle spectrometer designed to make very high-precision radial velocity measurements. APF will run in robotic mode, targeting nearby stars for the detection of planets. The telescope and dome are being built under contract, the spectrometer is being designed and constructed in UCO shops in Santa Cruz. Steve Vogt is the PI of the project, Geoff Marcy and Debra Fischer are Co-Is and Matt Radovan is the Project Manager.

  • PFCam: The CCD and controller in the Prime Focus Camera were upgraded in the Fall of 2005. The new chip is a 4096 x 4096 Fairchild CCD with 15 micron pixels which gives a field of 12.5 x 12.5 arcminutes. The quantum efficiency is improved at all wavelengths, most significantly shortward of 420nm.

  • Nickel Telescope: There has been an effort underway to make various upgrades to the Nickel Telescope and dome that will allow the telescope to be operated remotely. This effort is nearing completion and the policies/procedures are being put into place to allow remote use of this telescope from any of the campuses. We plan to start with remote science observations, and, depending on the new level of use for the telescope, next explore the use of the Nickel for remote classes.

• Keck Observatory News

  • Keck Director: Current Director Fred Chaffee announced his intention to step down on July 1, 2006 and a search has been underway since August. There are some excellent candidates and two rounds of interviews have been carried out. The selection is carried out by the CARA Board and an announcement about the next Keck Director will be made early in January 2006.

  • MOSFIRE Funding: MOSFIRE is an ambitious multi-object spectrometer and imager for the 1 - 2.5 micron region. This capability has been the most glaring deficiency at Keck since near-IR arrays became available. The project is being carried out with significant contributions from UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, Caltech and Keck and has so far been funded through the NSF TSIP program. For this year and next, the TSIP funding has been cut in half. Through the efforts of the new Keck Development Office a generous contribution of $5M from a private donor was secured to carry this project to completion. This is wonderful news. The team membership and more details can be found here. MOSFIRE WWW link

  • LRIS-R CCD upgrade: The LRIS-R upgrade project is now underway. The CCD Lab in Santa Cruz has two science-grade LBNL high-resistivity devices mounted in hand and an additional four potentially science-grade devices currently being packaged. The redesign of the dewar, controller, shutter and global packaging is underway, scheduled for completion at the end of Feb 2006 (the design completion). Mike Bolte is the PI. Some of the details of the project can be found at the UCO Santa Cruz shop WWW page: UCO shops.

  • LRIS ADC: Also part of the LRIS major upgrade is the completion of an atmospheric dispersion compensator in the UCO shops. The ADC is built and the prisms are in the shop. The initial effort to anti-reflection coat the prisms (Solgel over MgF) did not produce coatings that met the specifications and we are in the process of evaluating the issues and planning a second attempt. The project and project status are described in the UCO shops WWW page that is linked above. The project PI is Joe Miller, Drew Phillips is Co-PI.

• Thirty-Meter Telescope

  In October 2005, approximately 80 scientists, engineers, and managers got together in Aspen for 4 days of intensive presentations about the status of different aspects of the TMT project. There are very significant efforts underway on essentially all aspects of the project. The project is working to a very aggressive schedule with a Conceptual Design Review and a review of priorities for first-light capabilities in May 2006, a global cost review and project scope review in September 2006 and Preliminary Design Review in September 2007. Simply attempting to keep track of the progress on all fronts is a daunting full-time job (this is a very positive statement). Here is a link to a recent review talk about the TMT by Jerry Nelson: JEN TMT powerpoint .

  The project also maintains a public WWW site: TMT Public WWW pages

  There are a number of UC astronomers participating on various TMT committees. In addition to this we have several TMT design studies underway with UC PIs.

  • MTHR is a high spectral resolution optical spectrometer (think of a scaled up version of HIRES) with PI Steve Vogt and co-I Connie Rockosi (UC Santa Cruz).
  • IRIS is an IFU-based near-IR spectrometer to be used behind AO with James Larkin (UCLA) as PI.
  • Gary Chanan (UCI) is PI of a design effort for the Alignment and Phasing System (APS) for the TMT primary and overall real-time optical alignment.
  • PFI is the Planet Formation Instrument with a design study underway. This is the a very-high contrast imager and spectrometer to be used behind AO. Bruce Macintosh is the PI, James Graham is the head of the science team and the UC Santa Cruz Laboratory for Adaptive Optics is deeply involved.
  • Don Gavel, Director of the UC Santa Cruz Moore Laboratory for Adaptive Optics, is involved in the design of the MEMS-based open-loop AO system that will be the basis of the deployable, multi-IFU instrument "IRMOS".
  • Jerry Nelson and Terry Mast (UC Santa Cruz) are involved in multiple design efforts, including the primary mirror fabrication, support, sensor design and control.
  • Joe Miller is PI and Drew Philips co-PI of a Santa Cruz-based exploration of mirror coatings for the TMT (and Keck) segments.

• UCO Director Search

  The Search Committee (Chair Sandy Faber) actively and energetically sought input from the UC community about the desired qualities of the next UCO Director and for names of individuals who should be encouraged to apply. The response has been very gratifying. As of January 7, the committee is in the process of narrowing down the list and proceeding to a small number of confidential interviews. The goal is to have an even smaller number of individuals visit the UCSC campus in February and/or March. The committee is charged with submitting an unranked list of roughly three candidates to the UCSC Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor David Kliger and to the UC Office of the President. The target date for this report is mid-March.