Science Operations Announcements

Gemini South Telescope hit by severe earthquake, closed until further notice

September 17th, 2015

La Serena was hit by a 8.4 earthquake last night at 19:54 local time, with epicenter 150km from La Serena. Fortunately the staff at the summit and all staff in La Serena are all fine. A first check of the telescope and installations where done after the quake and nothing obvious was seen, but it was decided to cancel the night. A thorough inspection of the telescope on the day after the earthquake it was found that the telescope has shifted on the azimuth platform. The telescope will remain closed over the weekend and the following week, and thus the GEMS/GSAOI run is canceled.  

GN ODB offline Sep 17

September 16th, 2015

This work has been postponed until next week.

The Gemini North observing database will be offline Thursday September 17 from 9-10am HST for hardware maintenance.

During this time the following services will be unavailable:

  • Phase I Tool guide star probability queries
  • Observing Tool synchronizations and file transfers (Gemini North programs only)
  • Observing Tool non-sidereal target queries (Gemini North programs only)

    • Please check this site for further announcements.

    Gemini-S still recovering from last week's storm

    August 17th, 2015

    Further to the previous note about the bad weather, because of persistent problems with the electrical power on site it was decided on Aug 13 to shut down all system at the observatory. This implies that the observing database will not be available until all services are reestablshed. This may be on Aug 17th at the earliest, depending on what progress will be made over the next few days. Also we hope to resume normal night-time operation from the 18th onwards.

     

    Gemini South observing database offline starting August 13

    August 13th, 2015
    An extended weather-related shutdown and an associated power cut is forcing most of the computer infrastructure, including the observing database (ODB), at Cerro Pachon to be shut down.  The system will be restored as soon as possible but the timescale for this is unknown. Therefore, until further notice all Gemini South ODB services including program sync, guide star and image catalog queries, ITC calculations, key requests, and file attachment access will be unavailable.

    Gemini-S closed due to bad weather from August 6th

    August 10th, 2015
    Large parts of Chile, including the town of La Serena and the surrounding mountains suffered from bad weather the last few days. Over the weekend Aug 8-9 about a meter of snow fell on Cerro Pachon. Once the road is cleared and the day crew can reach the summit again the appropriate measures will be taken to get the telescope back into operation as soon as possible. This will probably take a few days.

    Gemini North ODB offline July 28

    July 27th, 2015

    The Gemini North observing database will be offline Tuesday July 28 from 10-11am HST while we perform infrastructure maintenance.

    During this time the following services will be unavailable:

  • Phase I Tool guide star probability queries
  • Observing Tool synchronizations and file transfers (Gemini North programs only)
  • Observing Tool non-sidereal target queries (Gemini North programs only)

    • Please check this site for further announcements.

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