NRES is LCO's set of high-resolution echelle spectrographs. The first NRES unit was installed at our Chilean site in March, and it has been undergoing development and testing ever since. Earlier this week, members of the NRES project team met to review the instrument's readiness for routine science operations. The result of that discussion is that we have decided to delay the release of NRES from our original target date, August 1. We expect the delay to be on the order of weeks, not months. PIs who are waiting to use NRES can expect to receive a notification no less than a week before the instrument will become available.
Despite this delay, NRES is in good shape. Spectra are requested, scheduled, and obtained every night. The data are shipped back to our headquarters and processed through a custom pipeline. However, we are making changes and fixing bugs every day, and we want the entire system to be stable for multiple nights before we begin science observations.
From now until the release date, we will dedicate the telescope in Dome B to NRES observations. The fl03 Sinistro camera will be moved from Dome B to Dome C, to replace the (non-functioning) fl04 Sinistro. The fl04 Sinistro will be replaced with a new Sinistro during the next site trip.
The other camera that is currently unavailable is the fl14 Sinistro in Dome B at our South African site. The Dome B telescope will not be put back into service until a replacement camera is ready. In the near-term, our IT team will travel to South Africa during the second week of August to build the computing infrastructure that will be needed for future instruments. Another NRES unit, an ASAS-SN telescope, and a 0.4m telescope will be installed at that site later this year. The IT work is expected to take the telescopes offline on the night of August 9.
Additional information on LCO's filters has been posted on the website's filters page. Each entry in the list of "Deployed Filters" is now clickable. The links take you to filter-specific pages with transmission plots and downloadable files of transmission measurements.
