We are pleased to announce that a video tutorial for setting up GHOST Phase II is now available online. Check it out here: https://noirlab.edu/science/videos/ghost
We hope you find it helpful!
MAROON-X experienced two shifts in the echelle image in 24A: the first due to an earthquake on Feb 9, 2024, and the second due to a loss of observatory power on June 13, 2024. This has impacted two key steps in the reduction process. As a result, the radial velocities from 24A based on the existing reduction are currently uncertain to ~20 m/s. All data from 24B so far seem to be within specifications. The instrument team in Chicago has been adjusting the reduction procedure with the aim of resolving this issue and restoring the nominal data quality.
The issue affecting every 8th column on the top right quadrant of the detector reported in this announcement has been further investigated.
The two ADC boards that were not performing correctly have been replaced and the issue has now been fixed. The figure below shows a horizontal cut along the top right quadrant of a LR-IFU flat and demonstrates that the faulty columns are now recovered.
Flexure effects within GMOS can result in wavelength zeropoint shifts if the on-sky science data are wavelength-calibrated using daytime CuAr arc exposures.
In early April 2024, the GNIRS camera turret experienced a mechanical issue, likely due to the dragging of a bearing that helps drive the movement of the turret. It has been assessed that GNIRS could no longer reliably shift between its long and short cameras. A soft lock on the camera turret has been put in place, which fixes the location of the turret to the short blue camera.
As part of the Gemini Instrument Upgrade Program GNIRS has gained two new optical sub-systems, namely the LR-IFU and the HR-IFU. The commissioning of both IFUs has now been completed.
GNIRS recently began showing an issue that affects every 8th column on the top right quadrant of the detector, an issue that impacts all GNIRS modes. This issue first appeared on the 25th of October, 2022. Investigations to mitigate or fix the issue are currently ongoing. For the time being, PIs are advised to consider all pixels associated with these columns as bad pixels and not to use them for science and/or calibrations.
After the successful upgrade of two of the three GMOS-S CCDs, the instrument is back on the telescope and undergoing recommissioning. The long-slit mode has been released for taking science data. However, updates for the data reduction packages in IRAF and DRAGONS are pending testing after the full commissioning data set has been collected and will likely not be available until the May/June timeframe.
GMOS-S will be removed from the telescope on Friday, July 21st for the CCDs intervention, with the purpose of replacing the faulty CCD2.
The instrument is scheduled to come back during late August for the commissioning of the upgraded detector array, and expected to be available for Science by September.
The GMOS-N B600 grating sensitivity has recently degraded significantly. This overall degradation is in addition to the blue sensitivity loss reported previously. Since the new B480 grating is now available for GMOS-N, we recommend changing B600 programs to the B480 grating. The B480 grating offers a wider wavelength coverage than B600 at a a slightly reduced spectral resolution.