Simkin has extracted data from the August partner meeting at MSU. She has identified topics and circulated the outline. She will incorporate the Brazilian programs that Marcos sent several months ago (which was used in the SWG report.) McMahan will work with Simkin on this. Simkin noted that time-resolved observations are not being considered, and will probably be important. She is working to get explicit examples. She felt that this capability was easy to put into an instrument, but we needed to mention it explicitly because this was the sort of cost-free addition that would give SOAR an edge. In the interest of completeness, she asked Baldwin to think about capabilities that aren't on the Blanco that people might really want to have on SOAR.
Baldwin commented that he had sorted through the spectroscopic proposals from CTIO that were submitted to the SWG, and tried to classify them by what they demanded of the instruments. (These were regarded as a fair sample of what CTIO users would propose.) He found that there was roughly a 50:50 split between observations of fairly bright objects across wide fields, and programs that push to the limit in depth and so require good images.
Discussion turned to the logistics of the ground-breaking and the SAC meeting. It was decided to hold the next face-to-face meeting in La Serena, on April 16 & 18, days that straddle the ground-breaking ceremony. It was felt that a better time to visit Brazil was in August, when the Brazilian Astronomical Society meets. This would ensure greater participation by Brazilian astronomers, hence more effective outreach by the SAC. Marcos wil report on the location and explore the logistics of participation by the SAC. Cecil will give more details on logistics at the next telecon. [Baldwin did this.]
Elston said that the bad part of HgCdTe chips is their charge retention. This is better in the 1kx1k chips, but it remains to be seen if the 2kx2k development can match what is possible with InSb. This is caused by defects when the HgCdTe is grown on a sapphire substrate. The lattices don't match up well. NGST will likely fund an effort to fix this also because the big index of refraction mismatch between the two materials leads to lower QE than about 65%. Rockwell would propose a better lattice match. NGST would also fund Rockwell to extend the wavelength range. We won't benefit from this in 1st-generation SOAR instruments but presumably would do so in upgrades. Elston noted that there seemed to be no developments in InSb beyond 1kx1k. Cecil noted that Gemini was trying to drum up interest in a 1kx2k design effort. He would check w/ Mike Merril about the status of that effort. [SCW told him after the SAC meeting that so far Subaru has a fully functional 1kx1k device. Everyone else has 3 or fewer quads working so far.]
For now we would just be buying into a chip consortium. But Cecil noted that the issues ultimately before the SAC would be whether we could live with the restricted wavelength coverage and lower QE of the HgCdTe chips. The imaging mode of the GIRS-clone would provide that coverage, with a very constrained field of view (few square arcmins at SOAR) and filter set. We will need to identify the science programs that require the long-wave imaging. Some of the programs from CTIO wanted the longer wavelengths. Elston agreed to come up with some significant straw-man projects for the thermal IR. Baldwin felt that we should make clear to the SOAR Board that the SAC supports being involved in an HgCdTe consortium, but that we need to keep open for now what detector we will put in the imager. Cecil confirmed that the Board agreed to exactly this approach, and expected this response from the SAC. He felt that our analysis would likely come down to do we accept the 20% loss in QE in exchange for 4x the field coverage. Unless he was mistaken, the answer was a no-brainer.
McMahan reported that he had talked to Roger Davies about MOS activity at Durham. They are doing interesting things with micro-mirrors (not exclusively from TI) and IFU's. The main problem with both technologies is scattered light. The micro-mirrors also suffer from low contrast, but McMahan thought that they had greatly improved this. Both Davies and McMahan (and Cecil and Elston) will be at the Kona SPIE meeting, so a briefing will be possible. McMahan is also travelling to Durham in early summer. Cecil will be on a run at the CFHT with French collaborators during the first part of the conference, using the AO-bonette and the OASIS IFU spectrometer. He invited SACers to join Tom Sebring for a visit.