The Gemini North secondary mirror xy positioner was successfully datumed on Friday, 21 January 2022. Fine tuning of the mirror alignment is awaiting good natural seeing, in the meantime the elevation restriction on targets has been removed.
The secondary mirror of Gemini North Observatory has had a non-functional xy positioner since Tuesday January 4, 2022. Troubleshooting actively continues, however the fault remains unresolved. On the night of Friday January 7, 2022, we started taking data for programs that can handle poor seeing, with targets that reach an elevation greater than 55 degrees. The lack of the xy positioner introduces coma into the images, which is worse at lower elevations. At the higher elevations the coma tail extends about 2 arcseconds, with an average delivered IQ of about IQ85.
The 2022A Gemini Observing Tool is now available for download. This update 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.
See the the Release Notes for a complete list of changes.
A patch release of DRAGONS, v3.0.1, is now available. This release includes bug fixes, small improvements, and fixes to the documentation.
If you already have DRAGONS v3.0.0 installed, a simple "conda install dragons=3.0.1" will update the package. For further instructions and details, see http://www.gemini.edu/observing/phase-iii/understanding-and-processing-data/Data-Processing-Software.
The Gemini observing databases will be offline for several hours on Thursday, December 9 while we perform software updates.
During this time the following services will be unavailable:
The new 2022A Observing Tool will be available after the update and will be required to access the observing databases.
A patch release of DRAGONS is available. It includes bug fixes, small improvements, and fixes to the documentation.
For a complete list of changes since v3.0.0 see:
https://dragons.readthedocs.io/en/v3.0.1/changes.html
Gemini will be releasing a new version of the Observing Tool (2021B.1.1.2) on Thursday, October 14, which includes several improvements, most notably support for the updated Horizons non-sidereal target database API.
The Gemini Observing Databases will be offline briefly on Thursday as each site is updated, during which time OT synchronizations and file transfers will be unavailable.
This version of the OT is highly recommended, especially for users with non-sidereal targets, but it is not required.
A new version of DRAGONS has been released. This version offers improvements and fixes to the imaging support. New in this version is support for GMOS longslit spectroscopy for quicklook purposes. This new spectroscopy support is not approved for science quality reduction, but can be use for "quicklook" inspection of new data. A quicklook reduction is intended to check the overall quality of the data, such as confirming the presence of the target(s) and whether the expected S/N has been achieved.
Issues with the Acquisition and Guidance unit and secondary mirror control system have been resolved and Gemini North is back on sky. Instrument and telescope checkouts are now complete and queue observations have resumed.