There are presently two major questions that occupy Calar Alto staff and the regular user of the facilities.
The second relates to the state of the 3.5m telescope. In May 2004, an upgrade of the hardware and the software of the telescope has been performed. The modifications included the installation of five VMEs and a new telescope control software (TCS). The upgrade was necessary because the ailing hardware of the telescope made preventive maintenance more and more difficult and expensive, both in terms of manpower and money. This was because the telescope was still running within its original hardware concept, which is probably more than 20 years old. Observations resumed in June 2004, but software instabilities and errors caused a significant loss of observing time. The causes of the problems were corrected during the first two weeks of July 2004. The telescope is performing well now, with a technical down time well below 10%. The installation of the new TCS in May formed the first part of a major upgrade of the telescope. A second step, which includes the replacement of the servo loops, is presently being outlined at the MPIA. A detailed description of the hardware and software modifications should be presented in the next issue of this Newsletter.

So far, so good. The CSIC-MPG agreement to jointly operate Calar Alto has still not been signed, and chances are good that it will not be signed during the summer vacation in Spain. The agreement, which is a win-win situation for both partners, has been discussed in some detail in the last two issues of this Newsletter. It implies that equal fractions of observing time are allocated to Spanish and German astronomers, and that CSIC assumes a share in the Calar Alto operational costs.

Another change in the Calar Alto observing time allocation led to the full opening of our facilities to international programmes. During the autumn semester of 2004, a total of seven international programmes which receive funding via the OPTICON transnational access programme have been scheduled at the 3.5m and 2.2m telescopes. Details about the access programme can be found via http://www.otri.iac.es/opticon/ .

Some information about the recent changes in the Calar Alto time allocation is also given in the article by Jochen Heidt. Jochen provides some detailed insights into the way the Calar Alto time allocation committee works. Hopefully, this article helps to clarify the enigma why it happens, sometimes, that apparently very good programmes do not receive observing time. Jochen describes clearly what ingredients are required to write a successful application, and his recipe is probably very good indeed for application writing in general.

It is a pleasure to introduce an article written by Jesus Aceituno about the new robotic seeing monitor which is in operation on Calar Alto since July 2004. Not only did Jesus write the article, he also built the instrument as part of his university studies which will earn him the title of an electronic engineer.
The new seeing monitor offers a number of advantages compared to the commercial seeing monitor from Lhesa which is in use on Calar Alto since June 2000. Given the continued problems with the Lhesa DIMM, we consider to discontinue its operation and use the RoboDIMM instead as our reference.

Two articles by Klaus Fuhrmann and Jordi Torra show once more the potential medium-sized telescopes (2-4m) offer to modern astronomy. Fuhrmann presents the results of his extensive studies of the two populations of stars in the Galaxy, the thin and the thick disk. Fuhrmann's work is largely based on FOCES observations at the 2.2m telescope.
Torra presents the results of his infrared imaging survey towards late-type M supergiants in the inner Galactic disk. His work has been performed in the 1998-2003 period using MAGIC at the 1.23m and 2.2m telescopes to a large extend. That camera is not state of the art any longer and needs to be replaced. It is foreseen to build a new camera, possibly baptized MAGIC2000, using a new 2k x 2k Hawaii II detectors from Rockwell, with a field of view matching that of Omega2000 at the 3.5m telescope.