Monthly Archives: August 2019

Results of the 19-2 observing period

We now have the results of the 19-2 observing period which covers from April through the end of July.    During this period we were down for bad weather for 37% of the nights and spent 16.5% of the remaining time doing engineering or instrument commissioning.   Looking at just the clear science time we had the instruments collecting photons 64% of the time.   This better than previous periods and is likely due to the improvements made by the TCS and night staff team to trim down setup times.    We only had 4% down time which suggests the HET is returning to a steady state of reliability.   Our program completion rates fell in the normal range and were 96%, 89%, 91% 72% for our Priority 0, 1, 2 and 3 time.    Of particular note is that we completed 91% of our HETDEX allocation for this period.  

VIRUS reaches 50+

Much like it is for the blogger, it is a real milestone for VIRUS to hit 50.    In the case of VIRUS it is 50 units.   This was achieved over this past weekend after spending several months with just 47 units.

Reconstruction from 50 IFU/VIRUS units on the sky.  Each small square is 50 arcseconds on a side.   There is actually a gap of 50 arcseconds between each IFU/VIRUS unit but it has been compacted in this view to avoid to much white space.

This means with every 6 minute exposure we take on the sky we get over 22,000 spectra!

On Monday we installed 2 more units bringing us to 52!!!   Well on our way toward HETDEX science!