F-2 was successfully checked on January 26th after an intevention that lasted for most of January. New JH and HK gratings were installed and its performance will be assessed in the following days. Additionally, the J_low filter is now permanently installed.
An intervention of Flamingos-2 is planned between January 3rd and 21st where the instrument will be offline. The following tasks are planned:
MOS wheel check and preventive work.
Replace the JH/HK spectroscopic filters with higher throughput ones.
Modify the Lyot wheel to allow the installation of the J-low and Y filters instead of the Hartmann masks.
Increase the number of layers in the dewars insulation, to allow more thermal stability.
Gemini is now accepting proposals for observing time in Semester 2022A. The submission deadline varies with participant. A new version of the Phase I Tool (PIT) has been released to support proposal submissions.
After overcoming an issue with the compressors and another with the temperature in the MOS dewar, F2 has been back to queue operations since April 23rd.
On Sunday 4th a problem was found with the compressors, affecting the F2 vacuum. The instrument needs to be warmed-up to inspect the issue and therefore will not be available for a week or so.
After the COVID-19 telescope shutdown, F2 will continue off the telescope until further notice, due to pending work on the instrument cold heads.
F2 will be off the telescope until March 27th, due to work on the instrument cold heads.
F2 is back on sky, fully operational for imaging and long-slit spectroscopy with the OIWFS.
Recovery of the cooling was unsuccessful and the cold-heads in F2 must be replaced. This means that the instrument will be unavailable for approximately 4 weeks.
The F2 detector has been warming up and has reached the limit for operation. We are working to recover the cooling, but until this is fixed F2 is not available for observations.