Our engineering team arrived at McDonald Observatory on Sunday night, and on Monday morning, they went right to work on the 1-meter telescope in Dome A. They thoroughly cleaned and re-aligned the components of the telescope's roll axis. The telescope is still being checked, but during initial tests it moved through its entire range of travel without triggering a fault. The telescope was made available for science observations on Monday night.
This past weekend, an accident occurred when the dry air tank on the NRES unit in South Africa was replaced. A pressurized hose came loose, damaging some equipment and injuring the SAAO staffer who was replacing the tank. The NRES unit will remain offline while we investigate this incident. ----- Because CTIO is still closed, both of our southern NRES units are currently unavailable. Requests to observe southern targets will be rejected by the scheduler.
