Winter Starts Early in Chile
This year’s winter season has
started early in parts of the
Southern Hemisphere. While
the past several years have
adversely affected Chile with
extreme drought and low pre-
cipitation, this year has started
off very wet. Precipitation levels
reached the annual average to-
tal within just a couple of days,
bringing with it all of the cor-
responding problems, as de-
scribed in this article.
Figure 2.
Gemini South telescope
winter landscape.
Figure 3.
Gemini South day-crew
member Claudio Araya,
who helped clear snow and
ice from the dome.
Figure 4.
Blue bars show the
percentage of time
rendered unobservable by
weather, for Gemini South
over the period 2008-2016.
The orange trace shows the
average per month over
that same period.
20
First, the road to Cerro Pachón
was severely affected. Despite
improvements, several areas
were still washed away — mak-
ing it impossible, once again, for
the day crew to reach the summit for several
days. The dome was also snowed-in several
times (Figure 2); and the day crew did a fan-
tastic job clearing the abundant snow and
ice (once the summit road became acces-
sible; Figure 3). Since we now operate in Base
Facility Operations mode, we have learned to
use our cameras to assess the situation with
the dome and shutter. In doing so, we have
detected some limitations; for instance, we
have recognized that an in-situ inspection is
mandatory after any severe weather event.
Finally, despite several power cuts during this
period, our systems responded very well. To
further optimize our operations and reduce
fuel consumption, we have now enabled re-
mote switching back to commercial power,
once normal power is restored. This avoids
GeminiFocus
running the generator for unnecessary peri-
ods once commercial power is available but
access to the summit is not an option.
To put this in context, Figure 4 shows the
weather losses at Gemini South over the
period 2008-2016. The relatively reproduc-
ible year-to-year variation in weather loss (at
least until 2014) is why we started, a year or
two ago at an International Time Allocation
Committee meeting, to reduce the amount
of schedulable time in the winter and in-
crease the available time in the summer.
2016 was somewhat remarkable, and also
had an early onset of winter weather. It will
be interesting to see how the winter of 2017
turns out.
Astroconda Now Recommended
for Gemini Users
Following some significant Image Reduction
and Analysis Facility (IRAF) integration and
testing work on Gemini’s data processing
software, we now recommend that all new
installations be performed using Astroconda,
in place of Ureka; see instructions and further
information here.
New Version of GMMPS
Released
The recent release of the Gemini MOS Ma sk
Preparation Software (GMMPS) version 1.4.5,
offers full support for the new Gemini Multi-
Object Spectrograph Hamamatsu detector
array at Gemini North (GMOS-N), as well as
support for FLAMINGOS-2 (F-2) at Gemini
South. Commissioning for the MOS mode
of F-2 is scheduled
to commence in July
2017, boosting Gem-
ini’s strength in the
area of near-infrared
spectroscopy.
July 2017