The Gemini-S telescope is now back into operation following the planned maintenance shutdown.
Main events during this year’s shutdown was the re-coating of the primary mirror, and the investigation into the problems with the GMOS-S CCDs, in particular the intermittent charge spreading that has plagued CCD1. Both these main events, and many other activities were executed successfully and within the planned time.
The Gemini-S telescope will not be operational from 13 until 30 October for the annual maintenance shutdown. One of the main events during this year's shutdown is the re-coating of the primary mirror.
The Gemini-S telescope survived an 8.4 magnitude earthquake the previous week. Following an intense week of detailed inspections and testing of the infrastructure, the telescope, and the instruments were released for normal use. During the inspection some components were found broken or displaced, but all could be repaired and adjusted and no major damage was sustained.
On-sky tests over the weekend showed that all is well and science observations have resumed.
We are all much looking forward to delivering top-quality science data to our user community again.
The Gemini North observing database will be offline Thursday September 24 from 9-10am HST for hardware maintenance.
During this time the following services will be unavailable:
Please check this site for further announcements.
La Serena was hit by a 8.4 earthquake last night at 19:54 local time, with epicenter 150km from La Serena. Fortunately the staff at the summit and all staff in La Serena are all fine. A first check of the telescope and installations where done after the quake and nothing obvious was seen, but it was decided to cancel the night. A thorough inspection of the telescope on the day after the earthquake it was found that the telescope has shifted on the azimuth platform. The telescope will remain closed over the weekend and the following week, and thus the GEMS/GSAOI run is canceled.
This work has been postponed until next week.
The Gemini North observing database will be offline Thursday September 17 from 9-10am HST for hardware maintenance.
During this time the following services will be unavailable:
Please check this site for further announcements.
Further to the previous note about the bad weather, because of persistent problems with the electrical power on site it was decided on Aug 13 to shut down all system at the observatory. This implies that the observing database will not be available until all services are reestablshed. This may be on Aug 17th at the earliest, depending on what progress will be made over the next few days. Also we hope to resume normal night-time operation from the 18th onwards.