2018 Nov 26 - Dec 14

GNIRS was removed from the telescope to work on filter wheel #2 which had been showing increasing instances of not going into position reliably. The filter wheel datum switches were replaced on both filter mechanisms, a temporary light baffle was removed from wheel #1, and dust was removed from the filters using CO2 snow.

2018 Jun 20-25

Re-seated the detector controller boards, replaced the sequencer board, and replaced a voltage regulator. The read noise levels are now back to normal.

2018 Jun 5

Sep 16, 2019

April 2, 2019

2018 Oct 17

2019 Dec 31 - Zorro runs in 2020A have been scheduled between March 10 and 18, and June 29 and July 5. Phase II deadline has been set for February 17th.

2019 Oct 05 - 'Alopeke spent the weekend in the Hilo lab where Nic installed a new pickoff arm position sensor and realigned the optics in preparation for using the new mounting spacer ring.

August 26, 2019

The northern hemisphere autumn saw multiple team members travel from Australia, Chile, and Hawai’i to converge on Victoria, British Columbia, at the NRC-H labs, to witness the completion of the spectrograph final assembly, and initiate acceptance testing. The Australian team bought along their science fiber optical cable and the slit viewer subassembly to be matched with the bench spectrograph for the testing.

Bonding and mounting of the GHOST optics is well underway at the National Research Council of Canada, and both blue 4k × 4k and red 6k × 6k science detectors are assembled into their cryostats, ready to be tested.

Arriving at Gemini South is the first part of our new instrument "GHOST".  The instrument consists of a unit mounted in the Instrument Support Structure in charge of 'capturing' the light of the telescope.  The spectrograph will be installed in the pierlab connected by over 80 feet (24 m) of cable.

The build of the GHOST Cassegrain unit is nearly complete. In November, Gemini staff participated in weighing and inspecting the fully assembled unit at Australian Astronomical Optics (AAO) at Macquarie University lab in North Ryde, New South Wales. The unit is currently on its way to Chile. In December, Gemini representatives spent a week at the AAO testing the Integral Filed Unit (IFU) positioner and verifying the assembly and operation of the electronics and software of the Cassegrain Unit.