MSO Users Committee

Introduction: The MSO UC consists of users of our four 4m telescopes at KPNO and CTIO: Mayall, Blanco, SOAR, and WIYN.The committee is charged with providing feedback to the NOIRLab Mid-Scale Observatories on all areas of its operations that affect current users of the facilities at Kitt Peak National Observatory and Cerro-Tololo Inter-American Observatory, based on the experience of the committee members as well as input collected from the larger community of MSO users. This committee reports every six months to the users committee for NOIRLab.

Meetings and reports: Meetings of the Users Committee are (at least in part) open to any user of the NOIRLab 4m telescopes. The date of future meetings can be found below (TBA). Meeting announcements, connection info, and the twice-yearly reports will also be posted.

Contact: The Users Committee is open to suggestions and feedback from the MSO community. Users Committee members can be contacted individually via email, or all together by sending a direct message to: (email alias coming soon!)

Chair: The chair of the Users Committee and primary contact member is Claire Poppett.

Current Members

Claire Poppett (She/Her): Research Scientist at UC Berkeley's Space Sciences Lab. Operations Manager and Lead Observer for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, clpoppett@lbl.gov

Marcelle Soares-Santos (bio coming soon!)

Kevin Hardegree-Ullman (He/Him): Staff Scientist at the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute within IPAC at Caltech. Research in exoplanets, stellar characterization, and brown dwarfs. kevinkhu@caltech.edu

Giacomo Terreran (bio coming soon!)

Rene Mendez (He/Him): Full Professor, Universidad de Chile, in Santiago. Research in high-precision differential astrometry (trigonometric parallaxes, proper motions, visual binary stars), and applications of Information Theory to astrometry and photometry. rmendez@uchile.cl

Melissa Brucker : Research scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona. Small bodies in the Solar System, primarily astrometry (and characterization) of Near Earth asteroids for planetary defense. mbrucker@arizona.edu

Meeting Minutes

Future Meetings

The next meeting is scheduled in February. An email with the subject “Request for feedback” should have been sent and we will spend 45 minutes during the meeting addressing this feedback. You may also provide feedback / comments through this form. 

Announcements

NOIRLab town hall at APS *details*

Apr 4: DESI will present the first year results at the APS meeting This session will be available via live stream.

If you have a meeting or event that you would like us to announce. Please email the chair at: CLPoppett@lbl.gov