Message from the Director

Aloha, and welcome to our Fall 2017 Observers’ Newsletter.

In this edition, we have several instrument updates including the status of the Keck I deployable tertiary mirror system, the successful commissioning of KCWI, and the newly installed Near-Infrared Echelette Spectrometer (NIRES). Keck Observatory’s instrumentation suite has never been more powerful. We are excited to share news of our new capabilities with you, our science community, and are eagerly awaiting the revolutionary discoveries that will come of them.

Our pilot Keck Visiting Scholars Program is off to a strong start. We’ve had three scholars work with us over the summer so far, with one of them making national headlines, including in National Geographic, after discovering a surprising new storm on Neptune. Four more graduate students and post-docs will spend time with us for the remainder of this year. We are looking forward to working with them as they gain hands-on experience in diverse areas such as twilight observing, adaptive optics and instrumentation upgrades.

You asked, we listened. We’ve received an increasing number of requests for more comprehensive support for data reduction pipelines. In an effort to support our Keck Observatory community’s needs, we have set in motion plans to enhance or create data reduction pipelines for all of our instruments. Read on for details about the project proposals the WMKO Data Reduction Working Group presented to the June Science Steering Committee in Pasadena.

Lastly, I'd like to thank everyone who helped make our annual Keck Science Meeting, held September 14-15 in Santa Cruz, a success. With more than 100 attendees, we had productive dialogue on how we may collaborate, improve, and advance Keck Observatory to ensure continued success for all.

A hui hou kakou,
Hilton Lewis, Director
W. M. Keck Observatory

INSTRUMENT UPDATES

K1DM3

Josh Walawender,
Support Astronomer.

The K1DM3 module is a new tertiary mirror system for the Keck I telescope. It is funded through an NSF-MRI grant to UCSC with a sub-award to WMKO. Its primary scientific advance is to enhance time domain astronomy at WMKO by enabling the observatory (and observers) to rapidly swap instruments.

The K1DM3 project is deep within its Full Scale Development phase and has assembled nearly all of its major sub-systems. Testing of the system is underway to assess actual performance relative to the key requirements. Software development is nearly complete and the module has been run through all of its primary modes of operation. Life-time and repeatability testing will dominate the activities for the next several weeks.

A portion of the team visited WMKO in early August to perform pre-alignment tests with the current M3 module. The first commissioning nights are scheduled for November.

KCWI

Luca Rizzi,
Support Astronomer.

After successful completion of nine commissioning nights, KCWI is released for shared-risk science operations.

The instrument was put through extensive testing to verify the reliability of the mechanisms, the performance of the instrument, and the observing operations. I am happy to report that KCWI has exceeded our expectations in every possible way.

The moving parts, including the innovative grating and filter exchanger, are close to 100% reliability. Minor issue with some of the calibration unit mechanisms have been tracked down and are being addressed.

Keck Observatory Support Astronomer Luca Rizzi gives perspective on the size of KCWI. This five-ton instrument, which achieved first light last April, captures three-dimensional data, as opposed to the traditional two-dimensional image or spectrum of conventional instruments.

The on-sky performance of KCWI is excellent: using spectrophotometric standards in all the instrument configuration, we were able to verify that the overall throughput is close to 30% (including 1 airmass and the telescope). Maybe not the most important parameter, but we verified that we can guide down to a magnitude of I=21.

A large fraction of the commissioning time was dedicated to verifying and tuning the observational procedures. KCWI is spearheading a number of changes in our observing infrastructure, changes that, once properly tested, might be extended to other instruments.

The instrument is not configured using GUIs, but using a state-based tool that runs on a locally accessible webpage. Using these “states”, the instrument is also able to take afternoon calibration autonomously, using prescriptions that match the requirements of the pipeline.

When used in Nod and Shuffle mode, the instrument is capable of unattended observing: it is capable of grabbing guide stars, offsetting outside of the field of view of the guider, and correct for small pointing errors.

This is made possible by having adopted the new telescope control system (TCSU) from the very beginning: this system speeds up every operation related to object acquisition and provides unparalleled absolute pointing and offsetting accuracy.

Finally, the availability of a state-of-the-art, science quality pipeline guarantees that observers can easily produce wavelength and flux calibrated data cubes almost in real time.

With the addition of KCWI, WMKO consolidates its position at the forefront of astronomical technology. Stay tuned for more and more amazing discoveries!

NIRES

Percy Gomez,
Support Astronomer.

The Near-Infrared Echelette Spectrometer (NIRES) is now a new facility instrument on Keck II. Built at the California Institute of Technology by PIs Keith Matthews and Tom Soifer, NIRES has a wide spectral bandwidth (0.9 – 2.4um), a mid-spectral resolution (R~2500), and is expected to have high sensitivity.

Just this week, NIRES was successfully installed on Keck II. On-sky engineering is planned to start in October and extend through the rest of the 2017B semester. We anticipate that the instrument will be fully commissioned by the end of 2017B and that it will be available to the Keck Observatory community on a share-risk basis during 2018A. Please check the NIRES webpage for more information, and we will be updating the web documentation with commissioning results as time permits.

NIRES passed its pre-ship review on Wednesday, March 22. It was shipped from Caltech to Hawaii on Friday, March 31, and arrived safely to the summit on April 17. NIRES is located at the right bent cass (RBC) on the Keck II telescope. Before installing NIRES, we tested the rotator using dummy weights comparable to that of NIRES during normal operation. Recent rotator testing with the weights installed revealed that the current rotator configuration does not rotate smoothly with the expected weight distribution of the instrument. Therefore, we are in the process of refurbishing and retuning the rotator so that it can safely and easily handle NIRES. We fully expect that this issue will be resolved and that NIRES will be ready for use in 2018A.

In parallel to the rotator preparation, there are a number of other activities underway to prepare NIRES for operational use. Like other Keck Observatory instruments, NIRES is kept at operational temperature by using LN2 and its dewar must be refilled with LN2 on a daily basis to maintain telescope balance. However, its location at the RBC next to the primary mirror presents challenges to a safe and efficient operation that is unique to this instrument at the observatory, and we are developing the operational procedures needed to keep NIRES cold while at the telescope.

NIRES arrived at Keck Observatory on April 17. This long-awaited instrument is expected to be one of the most efficient single-object, near-infrared spectrograph on an 8-10 meter telescope and will have the unique capability of simultaneously detecting light covering the NIR window at the zJHK bands. NIRES is perfectly suited for time domain astronomy follow-up observations of targets identified by new surveys that are designed to find transients and exotic objects.

Keck Visiting Scholars Program

Anne Kinney,
Chief Scientist.

Due to a generous donation from a supporter of Keck Observatory, we were this year able to fund visits lasting two to six weeks for graduate students and Post Docs to work at Keck Observatory and perform science.

The Keck Visiting Scholars Program is aimed to inspire and develop the next generation of scientists and instrumentalists by providing hands-on experience in observational astronomy, hardware and software, and involving active instrument operations. At the same time, the program is meant to be beneficial to the scholar's advisor or mentor, and to be a benefit to Keck Observatory.

Seven early career scientists will be coming this year, with one of them from our NASA community and the remainder from UC campuses, UH and Caltech. To date we have had three Visiting Scholars, who have observed storms on Neptune, improved our ability to perform twilight observing, observed the gas dynamics of the galactic center, and will be working with our adaptive optics groups. The Scholars have offices with the Support Astronomers, sometimes collaborating with them, and mentored by them.

We plan to offer this opportunity next year to the wider Keck Observatory community, again with the aim to provide a very positive learning environment for the early career scientist, the ability for their advisor or mentor to further their joint scientific goals, and to provide a benefit to Keck Observatory.

There is an expression in astronomy; “Only a theoretician believes the data, and only an observer believes the theory.” With our Keck Visiting Scholars Program we hope to improve the early career scientist’s intuition about both astronomical data and the process of obtaining the highest possible quality of data.

Please note, Keck Visiting Scholars are expected to provide their own laptop, surf board, scuba gear, and hiking equipment.

Types of Keck Visiting Scholar Programs that provide mutual benefit to Scholar, Advisor, and Keck Observatory

Early career scientists specializing in Adaptive Optics would benefit from an extended stay at Keck Obsrvatory where they could experience hands on work with Adaptive Optics, at the same time Keck Observatory would benefit from their work to improve performance of the Keck Observatory AO system.

Early career scientists working in any of the research fields of our Support Astronomers would benefit from the opportunity to work with the SAs and the research activity at Keck Observatory would benefit from having an outside expert collaborating with our scientists.

Early career scientists in planetary science, who are working on bright, transitory events, could help us to implement the new flexible observing mode while at the same time obtaining as much possible data on the phenomenon they are studying.

Early career scientist working with instrumentation, for example related to any of our upcoming upgrades, such as the NIRSPEC upgrade, or the DEIMOS mask design software would gain invaluable hands on experience with instrument upgrades, and we would benefit from their contributions to the instrument project.

Early career scientists working with us on Data Reduction Pipeline (DRP) or on the Point Spread Function (PSF) reconstruction facility would benefit greatly from the experience of working with active, incoming data. Keck would greatly benefit from the work on DRP and PSF.

WMKO Chief Scientist Anne Kinney, who spearheaded the Keck Visiting Scholars Program (KVSP) welcomes Ned Molter, a graduate student from University of California, Berkeley - the first of eight scholars accepted into KVSP this year.

Data Reduction Working Group

Luca Rizzi,
Support Astronomer.

The addition of a data archive and science grade pipelines can dramatically increase the scientific productivity of an astronomical instrument. The request for science pipelines in the Keck Observatory community has been steadily increasing. In the past, WMKO was not directly involved in data reduction. OSIRIS was the first instrument to be delivered with a pipeline, followed by MOSFIRE and then KCWI. At the same time, the Keck Observatory community invested a lot of effort in creating pipelines for the other instruments: an example for all, the DEIMOS2 pipeline for DEIMOS.

The model followed by these pipelines was rather simple: one instrument, one pipeline, with no constraints on the software infrastructure, the language used, or clearly defined requirements. Not immediately evident in this model is the assumption that pipelines could be delivered as a “finished product”: there was no agreement on who would provide continuing support.

Extrapolating this model to our suite of instruments lead to an unsustainable situation: we could potentially end up with eight to 10 completely independent and complex tools, written in different languages, and with ad hoc dependencies. If WMKO was not required to provide support, this would not necessarily be a major problem.

On the other hand, it is clear that pipelines are infrastructure and that they are key elements of the success of an instrument.

For this reason, and continuing our tradition of providing the best possible support, WMKO is developing a plan to provide support and development of pipelines for all our instruments. This is a monumental effort, and there are numerous different options.

To evaluate the effort and provide options, at the end of 2016, the Science Steering Committee asked WMKO to form a Data Reduction Working Group, with a plan of reporting back by June of 2017.

This suggestion couldn’t have come at a better time: our partners in Australia had already generously contributed their time and resources to start this conversation and the two ideas merged into a larger team.

After a couple of months of preparation, the team met officially in Pasadena in March with representatives from WMKO and KOA (Jeff Mader, Andrew Colson, Luca Rizzi, Josh Walawender, Jim Lyke, Bruce Berriman, Chris Gelino, Anastasia Laity, Melanie Swain), UC (Xavier Prochaska, Joe Hennawi, Tuan Do), Caltech (Don Neill), Australia (Amr Hassan, Jarrod Hurley, Caroline Foster). The group was selected based mainly on the criteria of having an active pipeline development project and being able to commit a significant amount of time.

The results of the discussion were presented at the June SSC and were warmly received, even if it was clear that it remains a challenging undertaking.

In summary, the main components of the proposals are:

Postpone the work on individual pipeline and instead focus on developing a common software infrastructure upon which all the pipelines can be built
Adopt a single language (Python)
Take advantage of Keck Observatory’s greatest resource, its community, to create an open development model, with governance provided by WMKO, and support individual researchers’ contribution
Define and adopt guidelines for the development of future pipelines
Modify the observing infrastructure to produce complete metadata and to align the observing and calibration procedures with the pipelines

We realize that a number of these ideas are open to debate and that members of our community might have different opinions on how this project should proceed, but during our March meeting there was a broad consensus that this is the best way forward and as such it was approved by the SSC. This does not mean that these ideas are set in stone or that they might not need to be modified, so the members of the Data Reduction Working Group welcome any input that you might want to share with them.

With the beginning of the new fiscal year, we will finalize our plans and start assigning tasks. We are still finalizing our estimates of the actual effort, and we are exploring avenues to increase our staffing levels.

This is the beginning of a long road, but hopefully a road that will lead to easy-to-use, easy-to-maintain, and state-of-the-art pipelines that will be officially supported by WMKO and will increase our scientific productivity.

Lunch Talk Invitation

Sherry Yeh,
Support Astronomer.

Working at Keck Observatory, we are constantly exposed to brilliant astrophysicists who visit our headquarters during their observations, but we don’t always have a chance to learn about their science and their discoveries.

For this reason, Keck Observatory invites all of our visiting astronomers to share their research with us and with our colleagues on the island.

We are able to organize lunch talks in our beautiful theater, recently renamed the Jerry Nelson Conference Room. We can also accommodate talks later in the afternoon, as well as coordinate Polycom connections so that our neighbor observatories and colleagues can patch in to your talk.

Lunch talks are usually one hour long. We recommend keeping the presentation to 30 to 45 minutes to allow time for questions.

If you have news or research you would like to share with us, please contact Sherry Yeh (syeh@keck.hawaii.edu), and we will find a suitable time for a lunch talk during your visit.

Mainland Observing

Greg Doppmann,
Support Astronomer.

Mainland observing continues to be a very common operations mode at Keck Observatory. As mentioned in the last newsletter, several sites have recently upgraded to mainland-only capabilities including USRA, UCD, UCSB, and ANU.

We’d like to remind observers to please make their mainland observing requests at least four weeks in advance of their observing run whenever possible. This is extremely helpful to the mainland sites which must schedule support personnel and arrange for building access for visiting observers.

The mainland observing sites are not directly funded by Keck Observatory and we are grateful to them for providing this service to our observers. By making their requests early, observers can help minimize the burden on these sites.

Users should also be aware that late booking may incur fees from the mainland observing site. Yale has recently instituted such a policy - please see http://astronomy.yale.edu/remote-observing-yale for details.

We also strongly encourage remote observers to test their VNC connections before the day of observing to allow time for troubleshooting any problems that would require help from the remote site manger.

Time Domain Astronomy Meeting

Anne Kinney, Chief Scientist &
Randy Campbell, Observing
Support Manager.

On Wednesday, September 13th, 2017 at Hotel Paradox in Santa Cruz, we held a workshop on Keck Observatory and Time Domain Astronomy (TDA). This meeting occurred the day before the Keck Science meeting in the same venue.

Participants were interested in Keck Observatory's role in TDA, not only in the present day, but well into the future as new time domain telescopes like LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope), Pan-STARRS, ZTF (Zwicky Transient Factory), and the proposed NASA mission, NEOCAM, come online.

In addition to talks on this new era of surveys, the meeting included presentations on TDA science cases. Lars Bildsten kicked off the meeting with a talk on the general context for TDA, plus talks by Jessica Lu on microlensing and Ryan Foley on Supernovae.

Later in the day, participants broke out in focus sessions to discuss topics that included questions such as:

How does the W. M. Keck Observatory best fit transient fast response observations of targets of opportunity, ToOs, into a classic operating model?
How does Keck Observatory operations best fit frequent and short observations, cadence, into a classic model?
How can Keck Observatory best follow up major discoveries that were not anticipated and proposed for in the normal proposal cycle?
What are the TDA science cases Keck Observatory should focus on, which cases are better left to others?
How does Keck Observatory satisfy the demand for these exciting new science cases without disrupting the highly valued classical observations?
What new technologies, instruments, operational tools, should Keck be developing to meet the TDA science goals?

To learn more, visit www.ucolick.org/keckscience2017.

Keck Observatory's Time Domain Astronomy Meeting was held at Hotel Paradox in Santa Cruz on Wednesday, September 13, the day before the annual Keck Science Meeting. Image Credit: Hotel Paradox

New Communications Officer

Rich Matsuda,
Chief of Operations.

Joining our ohana is Mari-Ela Chock, W. M. Keck Observatory's new communications officer. The Waimea resident brings 17 years of communications experience, with the first decade in broadcast journalism in California, Wisconsin, and here in Hawaii - KHNL/Hawaii News Now. In her last seven years on Hawaii Island, Mari-Ela moved into public relations, serving as the Public Information Officer at the Pacific International Space Center for Exploration Systems (PISCES), a Hawaii state government aerospace agency, and most recently, as the Statewide Engagement Lead for Blue Zones Project Hawaii, a community health and well-being initiative. Mari-Ela will be working on the strategic mapping, implementation, and execution of WMKO's Communications Program. Welcome to the team, Mari-Ela.