The Phase I servers encounted significant technical issues as we approach the 2024A proposal deadline. We believe that the problems have been resolved. We are extending the proposal deadline for all participants until 19:59 MST/Pacific (16:59 Hawaii, 23:59 Chile/Argentina/Brazil) on October 3, 2023 (11:59 October 4 in Korea) so that all valid proposals can be received. Please submit a Helpdesk ticket if you have any additional problems or questions.

The Altair electronics remain in an unstable state and are not suitable for operations at this time. Investigations are continuing. We will not install NIFS until Altair is reliably functional. It is likely that NIFS will not be available until the later blocks scheduled in 2023B: in November and January.

The 2023B Gemini Observing Tool is now available for download.

This version is required to access the Gemini Observing Databases.

The Installation Instructions are linked on the Observing Tool web page, and we recommend that everyone download their programs from the databases rather than import from saved XMLs.

The latest version of DRAGONS was released on 6 April and includes full support for GMOS long-slit data. With this release, DRAGONS offers support for the science quality reduction of data from the GMOS, NIRI, GSAOI, and F2 imagers, as well as the GMOS long-slit spectrograph (including nod-and-shuffle observations). The 3.1 release also includes new data-reduction recipes, tutorials, interactive tools, an improved calibration manager, GSAOI alignment/stacking (replacing disco_stu), improved procedures for bad-pixel masks, and Python 3.10 compatibility.

The 2023B Gemini Observatory Call for Proposals has been released. Proposals are being accepted for observations from 1 August 2023 to 31 January 2024. Gemini North and Gemini South are expected to have 162 and 141 nights available for science, respectively. A new version of the Phase I Tool (PIT) has been released to support proposal submissions.

Due to a planned commercial power outage for infrastructure improvements and failures of both the main and backup generators, the Gemini South Telescope will remain closed tonight.  The main generator has been repaired and tomorrow (Feb 2) we aim to recover all the systems from the unplanned shutdown that occurred last night (Jan 30/31).  If necessary, further information will be posted here.

We are pleased to announce that we will be moving the Gemini Helpdesk to a new cloud-based platform on January 30, 2023. The general system of tiered support from the National Offices and Gemini support staff will remain unchanged. The primary changes for our users are the requirement for creating an account on the system for ticket submissions, and moving to a fully web-based system for ticket interactions. Users will still receive email notifications when their tickets have been updated.