The Zorro blue filter wheel, that had been faulty since last March, was successfully replaced last week. An unfortunate side-effect of the procedure is that the red and blue cameras are now misaligned by about 6 arcsecods, a shift bigger than the speckle field-of-view, which makes simultaneous observations with both cameras in speckle mode impossible. Both cameras are working fine, only independently. New PIs should therefore indicate which camera they want to use. Both cameras can still be used, but this will imply doubling the requested time.

The GHOST project continues to be on hold due to the pandemic and we do not expect to start the re-assembly and test of the instrument at Cerro Pachon this year.  We are hopeful that the travel restrictions will ease in the first half of 2022 so this work can begin. In the meantime, we continue to make incremental improvements to our software and documentation, and order spare parts.

After a minor fix to its controlling computer, Zorro is back online starting May 31.

April 24th, 2022: GNIRS will be removed from the telescope on April 28th, 2022 and is planned to be unavailable for use until July 6th, 2022 due to the GNIRS IFU installation and refurbishment projects.

May 17th, 2021: The GNIRS IFU installation, originally planned for 2021B, has been postponed until 2022. Therefore, GNIRS will be available for the entire 2021B semester.

After overcoming an issue with the compressors and another with the temperature in the MOS dewar, F2 has been back to queue operations since April 23rd.

A failure in the Zorro PC will make the instrument unavailable until May ~5th.

On Sunday 4th a problem was found with the compressors, affecting the F2 vacuum. The instrument needs to be warmed-up to inspect the issue and therefore will not be available for a week or so.