The Ohio State University College of Mathematical & Physical Sciences Department of Astronomy

Attendees: Darren DePoy, Ray Gonzalez, Tom O'Brien, Paul Byard, Jerry Mason, Mark Derwent, Dan Pappalardo, Jen Marshall, Bruce Atwood, Paul Martini, Jason Eastman, & Rick Pogge.

MODS CCD Detectors

Most of this meeting was devoted to a presentation by Bruce Atwood on the two competing proposals for fabrication of the CCDs for MODS. The "Western" proposal is from the Mike Lesser (UA Imaging Technology Laboratory), Dick Bredthauer (Semiconductor Technology Associates, Inc), and DALSA. The "Eastern" proposal is from E2V Technologies. Because these are competing contract bids, we cannot discuss particulars of the two proposals in this public website. Bruce's excellent presentation engendered a lively discussion, and led to a series of action items to be reported on at a subsequent meeting. We intend to make a decision soon.

MODS Software

Ray Gonzalez reported on his visit to LBTPO last week to meet with the LBT programming group and Tim Schmelmer and Torsten Leibold from Heidelberg. The disucssion was on IIF (Instrument InterFace) and GCS (Guider Control System) issues vis-a-vis the MODS AGW stage. This discussion grew out of issues raised during our visit with Richard Green and Mark Wagner at the beginning of November.

The meeting was very productive: we have broad agreement on specifications of the interface between the LBT GCS and the MODS AGW, by which the GCS can issue commands to the MODS AGW to move the stage, and perform focus and filter select, subject to conditions that those actions may be vetoed by the MODS Instrument Control System (ICS), if the ICS determines that AGW stage motion would cause problems (e.g., collision with the calibration tower, violate "no move during readout" rules, etc.).

Discussion of the IIF included proposals of new tasks needed by MODS for information queries, especially "block queries" for Telescope Pointing and Subsystem information, e.g., for inclusion in MODS data FITS headers. We can expect to receive a version of the IIF and associated TCS simulator in Feb/Mar 2006 for testing at OSU.

IMCS Testing

BIG NEWS: MODS1 IMCS Closes the Loop!

In tests last week with the MODS1 blue optical chain and IMCS system, Tom reported that he could easily close the loop on the full 2-D system to better than 0.5 pixels (7.5-microns) under decidedly non-optimal conditions (room lights on, instrument wide open to room air currents, etc.). The system was able to close and lock the IR laser spot on the quad cell even when one of the lab assistants was climbing around on the MODS1 structure while working on the Red Camera. Ray's control software and real-time readout of spot position relative to the detector pixels (a nice "radar scope" display) worked perfectly.

This is a big milestone, congratulations to everyone on a job well done.