APT STUC MINUTES
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George Miley introduced APT by reading an email
from Bruce Balick. It was extremely positive about
the VTT. He said that he would not have been able
to carry out his Phase 2 the way he wanted to do 
without the VTT. George Miley is the committee
chair of the STUC and Bruce Balick was the 
previous committee chair.


1) Consider merging Phase 1 and Phase 2 submissions
into a single submission again if APT makes this
easy enough. Maybe for cycle 13. Maybe just allow
the industrious PI to fill out a Phase 2 in Phase 1
if they want with the benefit to get their program
in the planning/scheduling queue earlier. No guarantees
that it will actually get schedule earlier.

2) Add 2MASS, when its ready, into VTT for Infared capabilities.

3) Should consider supporting Linux and possibly Macs. They
think Linux use is growing very fast.

4) Would like an Acq/peakup simulater. Steve will look into 
this. We think it's to come up with a strategy for 
doing target acquisions with small apertures. It is 
necessary to use a finding algorithm to get the target centered.

5) Extend APT to an exploratory brainstorming tool
- supply limiting magnitude
- supply rough spectral info
- supply some other items
- what instrument/mode should be used?

6) Wanted to be able to add other mission apertures to the
VTT. We told the STUC this is available today to some degree.

7) Wanted to be able to display their own fits images. We told
that the VTT has a limited ability to support this today.

8) The issue is feedback we have been getting when the ACS ETC is compared
with WFPC2's ETC. The ACS ETCs use the STIS model of calculating S/N in an
aperture of 80% encircled energy. WFPC2 uses an optimum PSF weighting 
scheme to calculate S/N. The IDT (who have used the ETC most) have 
pointed out that quick comparisons between ACS and WFPC2 are confusing as ACS
does not show much apparent improvement. Currently, we allow users to
change the aperture size in both ACS ETCs, but I would like to add an 
option which replicates the WFPC2 algorithm. In the past the IDT have 
been a good indicator of what to expect from the GOs. Many GOs are likely 
to start planning proposals from WFPC2 experience so this discrepancy 
can be confusing.

9) A question came up about Moving Target support. We told them we
would support what we do today in RPS2 for APT. We formed a MT
working group to look at enhancements for APT. The STUC mentioned
that SIRTF supports MT in their observing tool.

10) They asked if the RPS2 file was going away. We said not in the short
term. APT would submit an RPS2 file to STScI.

11) They asked about Pos Targs and Patterns for the VTT. We told them
we were currently developing the requirements.

12) The STUC suggested taking the SV2/APT link further. If a user finds
an archived observation they want, just ask the tool to include the
observation in their observing program filled out. 

13) A discussion came up about supporting Web-based ETCs. The STUC 
thought this was needed, but that maybe in the future could be
removed if installing the ETC application supported the necessary
users.