magellan director report personnel observing statistics instrument commissioning instrument...

Magellan Director Report

• Personnel

• Observing Statistics

• Instrument Commissioning

• Instrument Development

• Fast Internet Connection

• Publications (A. Uomoto)

March 17, 2012, Carnegie Observatories

Personnel

• New Telescope Operator

• Magellan telescope operator Sergio Vera unexpectedly resigned with scant notice in late-August

• He was hired by ESO to become a VLT operator

• A search was hurriedly organized and several good applications were received

• An offer was made to GMT site testing equipment operator Gabriel Prieto, who accepted and began working in October

Personnel (cont.)

• Instrumentation Support Position

• The new Instrumentation Support Engineer/Scientist position was advertised and three excellent candidates were identified

• Interviews were carried out and an offer was made to Yuri Beletsky, who accepted and started working for Magellan in January

• From 2006-2011, Beletsky was an ESO Support Astronomer at Paranal with considerable experience in supporting a wide variety of optical and IR instrumentation

• This is a 100% support position

Personnel (cont.)

• El Pino / Mountain Personnel

• In July 2011, Roberto Bermúdez replaced Emma Molina as the Administrative Assistant to the LCO Director in La Serena

• Sergio Véliz joined the LCO Mountain staff in June 2011 to assist with administrative work (lodging, food services, travel, and warehouse supervision)

Observing Statistics:Instrument Usage

2011 Mar 1 – 2012 Feb 29 Instrument Usage

IMACS 23%

FIRE 19%

MIKE 15%

FourStar 8%

MagE 8%

PFS 7%

MMIRS 7%

MegaCam 6%

LDSS3 6%

MIKE fibers 1%

Observing Statistics: Long-Term Instrument

Usage

Observing Statistics:Downtime

2011 Mar 1 – 2012 Feb 29 Baade Clay

Open 81.2% 83.2%

Lost to Weather 17.7% 15.6%

Lost to Telescope 0.7% 0.4%

Lost to Instrument 0.4% 0.5%

Lost to Computer 0.4% 0.3%

Total Downtime 1.5% 1.2%

Observing Statistics: Long-Term Downtime

Observing Statistics: Instrument Downtime

2011 Mar 1 – 2012 Feb 29

MMIRS 2.6%

IMACS 0.8%

MegaCam 0.7%

LDSS3 0.2%

FIRE 0.2%

MagE 0.1%

MIKE 0.0%

FourStar 0.0%

PFS 0.0%

MIKE fibers 0.0%

Instrument Commissioning

Instrument First Light

PFS* 2009 October

MegaCam 2009 October

MMIRS 2009 December

FIRE 2010 March

FourStar 2010 December

IMACS Mosaic3 (f/4) 2011 October*P.I. Instrument

MegaCam, MMIRS, FIRE, FourStar have yet to be accepted by the Magellan Council as Facility Instruments

Instrument Development

Instrument First Light

AO (VisAO, Clio2) 2012B

AO (BLINC MIRAC4) ?

M2FS 2012B?

PISCO 2013B?

What comes next? Will there be a new generation of Magellan instruments?

Fast Internet Connection

• As of late-February, CTIO had implemented a new 620 mbs connection to Internet2

• Commodity traffic will use 30 mbs; 590 mbs reserved for research network

• “In principle”, LCO bandwidth will be limited to 100 mbs

Fast Internet Connection (cont.)

• Traffic destined to a network that is a member of the Internet2 will go out over the 100 mbs route – all else will go out via the commodity network

• In order to see the 100 mbs, the application needs to use the “UDF” protocol

• The most common way is to use “bbFTP”

• Observers are encouraged to use this new capability for transferring data, etc.

Note: Downloading of movies, music, etc. is still considered unacceptable use of the network…

Publications (A. Uomoto)