In ~4 months the Advanced Photon Source will shut down to upgrade their electron storage ring. Everything will be closed to users for ~1 year plus time to bring beamlines back online. Will this affect your #crystallography?
I'm looking forward to the upgrades but there are some beamlines I'm going to miss.
@scattering_anomalously I was designing materials imaging experiments for the future synchrotron while I was at ANL. The upgrade plan envisions lots of exciting possibilities, particularly in crystal structure imaging, but realistically there will be a long way to go in terms of actual implementation, even after the APS-U sees first light.
@scattering_anomalously honestly, it will probably get more difficult for you, since there'll be more competition for beam time at other facilities over the next year.
I'm actually far less familiar with the structural biology beam lines at the APS, since I only used to work with hard x-rays. Which sector do you send your samples to, if I may ask?
@siddarthious I can't be too specific on beamlines, unfortunately. But as one example, I have several projects that have required a microfocus beam recently. It'll be a much further trip competing with even more subscribers for equivalent tech at another facility. I anticipate it will be more crowded even at non-specialized beamlines too. If I start seeing project delays, I'm thinking there are some local, non-synchrotron sources I can explore as well.
@scattering_anomalously ah well, good luck in your quest for beam time!
@siddarthious Yeah, like you say, I expect quite a delay before the beamlines where I send samples are back up and running for users. Exciting possibilities around the upgrades, but I'm not sure how much this will impact my group's ability to find beamtime at other sources once APS shuts down the facility in April.