Zorro will be removed on Sept 1st for its optics realignment between Sept 8 to 10th. It will be installed back on the telescope between Sept 13 and 15th, and be ready before the Zorro run starting on the 16th.
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.
After a minor fix to its controlling computer, Zorro is back online starting May 31.
A failure in the Zorro PC will make the instrument unavailable until May ~5th.
The blue filter wheel of Zorro has been behaving erratically for past few monhts. This has had only minimal impact on operations, since the great majority of Zorro programs use the same filter. A new filter wheel has arrived recently to Pachon and the replacement will happen in the next few weeks.
Gemini North is accepting proposals for the Fast Turnaround (FT) program. We are not yet accepting proposals for Gemini South. Here, we give information specific to this proposal cycle. Please see the other FT pages - particularly the rules - for general information about the program. FT-specific proposal templates must now be used for all FT proposals; see the "PIT information" section below.
Zorro has now an H-alpha filter! Addittionally, the same new control software has also been implemented. The first Zorro run of the semester is ongoing.
We are using a new version of the 'Alopeke control software. Be aware that the FITS headers have changed slightly.
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.