NIFS has been available since semester 2006B for classical and queue scheduled observing at Gemini-North.
January 2013: On Instrument Wave Front Sensor (OIWFS) is unavailable due to a faulty sensor.
October 2012: New 'LGS+P1' guide mode is now operational, allowing 'seeing improver' AO correction with essentially 100% sky coverage.
2018 Nov 26 - Dec 14
GNIRS was removed from the telescope to work on filter wheel #2 which had been showing increasing instances of not going into position reliably. The filter wheel datum switches were replaced on both filter mechanisms, a temporary light baffle was removed from wheel #1, and dust was removed from the filters using CO2 snow.
2018 Jun 20-25
Re-seated the detector controller boards, replaced the sequencer board, and replaced a voltage regulator. The read noise levels are now back to normal.
2018 Jun 5
2019 Dec 31 - Zorro runs in 2020A have been scheduled between March 10 and 18, and June 29 and July 5. Phase II deadline has been set for February 17th.
2019 Oct 05 - 'Alopeke spent the weekend in the Hilo lab where Nic installed a new pickoff arm position sensor and realigned the optics in preparation for using the new mounting spacer ring.
As a friendly reminder proposers should be aware that:
F2 is back on sky, fully operational for imaging and long-slit spectroscopy with the OIWFS.
Recovery of the cooling was unsuccessful and the cold-heads in F2 must be replaced. This means that the instrument will be unavailable for approximately 4 weeks.
The F2 detector has been warming up and has reached the limit for operation. We are working to recover the cooling, but until this is fixed F2 is not available for observations.
The northern hemisphere autumn saw multiple team members travel from Australia, Chile, and Hawai’i to converge on Victoria, British Columbia, at the NRC-H labs, to witness the completion of the spectrograph final assembly, and initiate acceptance testing. The Australian team bought along their science fiber optical cable and the slit viewer subassembly to be matched with the bench spectrograph for the testing.
Bonding and mounting of the GHOST optics is well underway at the National Research Council of Canada, and both blue 4k × 4k and red 6k × 6k science detectors are assembled into their cryostats, ready to be tested.