was due to Rapid, rather than Standard, ToO
triggers (the peak in August was due to the
LIGO gravitational wave event).
We had frequent visiting observers in the
South as well: among them four conducted
Priority Visitor runs, and visiting Korean as-
tronomers occupied two time blocks. We
also received Phoenix at the telescope as a
visiting instrument late in 2017.
FLAMINGOS-2’s on-instrument wavefront
sensor (OIWFS) continued to generate me-
chanical problems, and we had planned an
intervention early in the semester. As men-
tioned above, the LIGO gravitational wave
event caused us to delay repairs, which we
completed late in 2017. Multi-Object Spec-
troscopy (MOS) commissioning of FLAMIN-
GOS-2 was delayed (as the MOS relies on
the OIWFS) but is now underway. Finally, the
Gemini Multi-conjugate adaptive optics Sys-
tem/Gemini South Adaptive Optics Imager
operation profited greatly from the new
TOPTICA laser (see page 14).
Possible Ways to Access
ANTARES
The future Large Synoptic Survey Telescope
(LSST) alert stream of detected transient ob-
jects is anticipated to amount to ten million
raw alerts per night, and we expect to have
a significant number of Principal Investiga-
tor programs following up on these events
with Gemini