The week of March 7

We have had a great couple of weeks at the HET. Last week we brought out down the focal plane assembly to work on the field calibration unit and replace the acquisition camera. Both went well although some further work on a few specific calibration lamps and changes to the acquisition power supply will still be required. This work took the telescope down for a few days. The telescope control software also went through a large upgrade during this period. With improvements to guiding and offsetting. One of the more complicated aspects that has been commissioned is the ability of offset the telescope and the guide probes so that we can move from one instrument to another while keeping the same guide star.

The LRS2 commissioning team came back out to West Texas from Austin and despite very poor weather they were able to train a few of the resident astronomers in the use of the LRS2 instrument and the calibration scripts. When the skies did finally clear they were able to determine the positions of the LRS2-B and LRS2-R on the acquisition camera. The LRS2 team has departed but the instrument has been left online for the resident astronomers to gain familiarity and perhaps start characterizing on-sky.

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