NIRI Hot News

NIRI Update

12 July 2002

Semester 2002A has now ended for NIRI. Our terrible luck with the weather continued through the last night of NIRI observations, and only a handful of the 41 assigned nights were useful for science observations. We did complete some observations for 15 queue programs. The data we have taken look quite good, although some were taken during poorer weather conditions than we would have liked. The data are now being distributed on CD ROM to the PIs. Click here for more information on a given program.

NIRI has been warmed and moved to the summit instrumentation lab. We will be doing preventative maintenance on the bushings in a number of mechanisms to make them more durable. A number of other tasks are scheduled for this shutdown, including the installation of the OIWFS Shack-Hartmann prism. NIRI will be reassembled and tested in the lab, and we anticipate being back on the sky in September.

The NIRI web pages and software continue to be updated as needed. In the coming week the instructions for preparing Phase II proposals using the new version of the OT will be updated. Knowledge gained during the current semester will be added to the Observing Strategies and Guidelines page. The first Phase II proposals will be due September 2, 2002. Please look over the web pages (particularly the OT tutorials) before preparing or submitting a Phase II program.

The NIRI IRAF package is being expanded to include the first release of the spectroscopic tasks. The next release of the Gemini IRAF package is scheduled for the end of this month. PIs who got spectroscopic data during 2002A will probably want to install the new version of the Gemini IRAF package before reducing their data.

Last update July 15, 2002; Joe Jensen