Gemini-South telescope back in business after earthquake
September 25th, 2015
Science Operations Announcements
GN ODB offline Sep 24
September 23rd, 2015
The Gemini North observing database will be offline Thursday September 24 from 9-10am HST for hardware maintenance.
During this time the following services will be unavailable:
Please check this site for further announcements.
Gemini South Telescope hit by severe earthquake, closed until further notice
September 17th, 2015
La Serena was hit by a 8.4 earthquake last night at 19:54 local time, with epicenter 150km from La Serena. Fortunately the staff at the summit and all staff in La Serena are all fine. A first check of the telescope and installations where done after the quake and nothing obvious was seen, but it was decided to cancel the night. A thorough inspection of the telescope on the day after the earthquake it was found that the telescope has shifted on the azimuth platform. The telescope will remain closed over the weekend and the following week, and thus the GEMS/GSAOI run is canceled.
GN ODB offline Sep 17
September 16th, 2015
This work has been postponed until next week.
The Gemini North observing database will be offline Thursday September 17 from 9-10am HST for hardware maintenance.
During this time the following services will be unavailable:
Please check this site for further announcements.
Gemini South observing database online
August 18th, 2015
The Gemini South observing database and all associated services are now online and active as part of the recovery from the early August storm.
Gemini-S still recovering from last week's storm
August 17th, 2015
Further to the previous note about the bad weather, because of persistent problems with the electrical power on site it was decided on Aug 13 to shut down all system at the observatory. This implies that the observing database will not be available until all services are reestablshed. This may be on Aug 17th at the earliest, depending on what progress will be made over the next few days. Also we hope to resume normal night-time operation from the 18th onwards.
Gemini South observing database offline starting August 13
August 13th, 2015
An extended weather-related shutdown and an associated power cut is forcing most of the computer infrastructure, including the observing database (ODB), at Cerro Pachon to be shut down. The system will be restored as soon as possible but the timescale for this is unknown. Therefore, until further notice all Gemini South ODB services including program sync, guide star and image catalog queries, ITC calculations, key requests, and file attachment access will be unavailable.
Gemini-S closed due to bad weather from August 6th
August 10th, 2015
Large parts of Chile, including the town of La Serena and the surrounding mountains suffered from bad weather the last few days. Over the weekend Aug 8-9 about a meter of snow fell on Cerro Pachon. Once the road is cleared and the day crew can reach the summit again the appropriate measures will be taken to get the telescope back into operation as soon as possible. This will probably take a few days.
Gemini South database offline briefly August 4
August 3rd, 2015
The Gemini South observing database (ODB) will be offline between approximately 10:00 to 12:30 CLT on August 4, 2015 for datacenter maintenance. The ODB services (sync, file attachment transfers, Gemini South guide star and images searches, etc) will be unavailable during this time.
Gemini North ODB offline July 28
July 27th, 2015
The Gemini North observing database will be offline Tuesday July 28 from 10-11am HST while we perform infrastructure maintenance.
During this time the following services will be unavailable:
Please check this site for further announcements.