AITC Update
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue29 1–30 June 2022
On any day of the working week if you wander through Possum Hall at 10:30am or 3pm you will be sure to find members of the AITC Software and IT team with coffee in hand, either deep in conversation or deep in thought. These regular breaks away from our computers help us to avoid RSI and eye strain, but also give us a chance to connect with the broader Mount Stromlo community. We’re always happy to talk about the projects that we’re working on, but if you haven’t joined us for coffee lately then below you can find some highlights of our recent work.
GHOST
For much of the past two years the world has struggled with Covid restrictions and lockdowns. In a quiet storage area in Chile, three shipping containers sat waiting for those restrictions to lift. Just a few months ago, teams from Australia and Canada were finally allowed to travel and could begin the work of unpacking those containers and reassembling GHOST (the Gemini High resolution Optical SpecTrograph), readying it for acceptance testing and commissioning. The work has progressed well, and preliminary results are very promising. The above image shows a portion of a raw frame of the solar spectrum taken by GHOST in pre-commissioning testing. GHOST is the result of a collaboration between the RSAA/AITC, AAO-MQ, and Canada’s National Research Council. Our team’s biggest contribution has been in software, both for instrument control and data reduction. The data reduction pipeline has been developed using DRAGONS, which is NOIRLab’s new Python-based framework. In the next month we look forward to seeing on-sky data from GHOST as it goes through the commissioning process. See https://www.gemini.edu/instrumentation/future-instruments/ghost for more details.
ESO VLT Instrument Pipelines
On a server halfway around the world from our offices at Mount Stromlo, an understated handful of words on an ESO web page announces the successful conclusion of a month of intense debugging and testing for our software team. Together with the ESO Pipelines Systems Group and our colleagues at AAO-MQ we have completed the latest public release of the ESO VLT data reduction pipelines (see https://www.eso.org/sci/software/pipelines/). This release comprises almost 30 different pipelines, the majority of which the AITC/AAO-MQ team take primary responsibility for. This project, which has been running since 2019, has been incredibly successful for all three teams. ESO gain access to our skilled and dedicated software engineers. The AITC and AAO-MQ teams gain regular ongoing work and stable funding. But most importantly, through this project we have developed an exceptional level of experience with the ESO pipeline software and associated infrastructure. This is already proving incredibly useful in the design of the pipeline for the MAVIS instrument (see https://astralis.org.au/projects/eso-mavis/ for more details).
2.3m automation
Much closer to home, our faithful 2.3m telescope will be taking a step closer to fully automated operation with a science verification run, starting on the 11th of June. This will see the telescope scheduling its own observations from a database of requests submitted by the community. These requests are generated ahead of time and submitted using a streamlined web interface, as shown this image. Ian Price, who is the primary designer of the system, will be on site to guide the system through this first verification run. This project has been made possible by the support of the CGA, with enthusiastic backing and contributions from the directors of RSAA and SSO. We look forward a successful run, and to further funding from an upcoming LIEF bid.
Jon Nielsen
