The Altair electronics remain in an unstable state and are not suitable for operations at this time. Investigations are continuing. We will not install NIFS until Altair is reliably functional. It is likely that NIFS will not be available until the later blocks scheduled in 2023B: in November and January.
The 2023B Gemini Observing Tool is now available for download.
This version is required to access the Gemini Observing Databases.
The Installation Instructions are linked on the Observing Tool web page, and we recommend that everyone download their programs from the databases rather than import from saved XMLs.
The Gemini observing databases will be offline for several hours on Tuesday, June 6 while we perform software updates.
During this time the following services will be unavailable:
The new 2023B Observing Tool will be available after the update and will be required to access the observing databases.
The latest version of DRAGONS was released on 6 April and includes full support for GMOS long-slit data. With this release, DRAGONS offers support for the science quality reduction of data from the GMOS, NIRI, GSAOI, and F2 imagers, as well as the GMOS long-slit spectrograph (including nod-and-shuffle observations). The 3.1 release also includes new data-reduction recipes, tutorials, interactive tools, an improved calibration manager, GSAOI alignment/stacking (replacing disco_stu), improved procedures for bad-pixel masks, and Python 3.10 compatibility.
DRAGONS v3.1.0 is finally here!
This is a big update. At long last, GMOS longslit for science is available, including longslit nod-and-shuffle.
But there's a lot more still in that release.
The 2023B Gemini Observatory Call for Proposals has been released. Proposals are being accepted for observations from 1 August 2023 to 31 January 2024. Gemini North and Gemini South are expected to have 162 and 141 nights available for science, respectively. A new version of the Phase I Tool (PIT) has been released to support proposal submissions.
Due to a planned commercial power outage for infrastructure improvements and failures of both the main and backup generators, the Gemini South Telescope will remain closed tonight. The main generator has been repaired and tomorrow (Feb 2) we aim to recover all the systems from the unplanned shutdown that occurred last night (Jan 30/31). If necessary, further information will be posted here.
Both Gemini Observing Databases will be offline for ~30 minutes in the Chilean morning (roughly 10am Chile and 3am Hawaii) while we perform software updates.
During this time the following services will be unavailable:
We are pleased to announce that we will be moving the Gemini Helpdesk to a new cloud-based platform on January 30, 2023. The general system of tiered support from the National Offices and Gemini support staff will remain unchanged. The primary changes for our users are the requirement for creating an account on the system for ticket submissions, and moving to a fully web-based system for ticket interactions. Users will still receive email notifications when their tickets have been updated.
STScI has recently announced that it will end support for the main Astroconda channel, used for installing Gemini data reduction packages, on 1 February 2023.