The Gemini North telescope completed a successful maintenance shutdown that began on January 22. As of Saturday night (2/2/13), the telescope is back on the sky and executing semester 2013A science programs. During the shutdown many key systems underwent maintenance and/or upgrades with the most significant work focusing on the acquisition and guiding (A&G) system and the installation of sensors to help measure vibrations and further improve high-resolution adaptive optics imaging.
The Gemini South observing database will be offline for several hours (approximately 9am - 1pm Chilean time) on Tuesday January 8 while we perform hardware upgrades. During this time the Observing Tool fetch/store and file transfers will be unavailable and web report forms will be offline. Please check this site for further announcements.
The Gemini 2013A observing programs have now been announced. Successful PIs will receive email notification on December 17 2012. Please check the schedules page for more information. Note that the new Observing Tool must be used to access and update 13A programs.
A beta version of the Gemini IRAF package (v1.12beta) has been released. This version is required for processing GSAOI data and includes configuration files and examples. Please see the pre-releases page for more information.
The new version of the Gemini Observing Tool (2013A.1.1.1) is now available for download or via updating an existing installation of the OT. Note that there are two Linux versions, one for 32-bit and one for 64-bit CPUs. Please choose the one appropriate for your computer.
This update is required to communicate with the observing databases.
Report from the October 2012 STAC meeting (PDF) is available here.