SSO Update

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue33 1–31 October 2022

SSO Open Day Eve

I am writing this article on the eve of SSO Open Day. It’s been three years since we had the last one, and the observatory is looking fantastic! We are looking forward to welcoming around 2,000 visitors, showing them the observatory and describing what we do. The weather forecast is favourable; however, the event is being held on top of a mountain, so anything is possible

Planning for Open Day started several months ago, and many people have contributed to the planning. I would like to note the stellar contributions of Zoe Holcombe, Mike Sharrott and Martin Gordon for all the work that they have done to get us to this point. I also want to thank all the volunteers who are travelling to SSO to help. We would not be able to run Open Day without your help.

In the next edition of lunations, we’ll show some pictures of the event.

A stellar performance

Between September 12 and 16, Siding Spring Observatory hosted a party of ANU undergraduates, with the tour being conducted by Michael Ireland.  Some of this group also had musical talents, being members of the ANU Chamber Choir and being skilled on musical instruments, and in particular Anika Chan thrilled her fellow students and AAT staff with an impromptu virtuoso violin performance underneath the cathedral-like space of the AAT dome.  Afterwards she wrote, "Back in Canberra I study a double degree in astrophysics and violin performance and the union of these two disciplines was not what I was expecting to come across this week.”

Staff Movements

Our night assistant and operations technician James Cameron has joined AITC on secondment as a software specialist on the Veloce upgrade project.  The existing ARC (SDSU) controller is to be replaced with an ESO New General Controller (NGC) at the same time as expanding the spectrograph from one to three arms.

Further down the road, we hope to replace the aging AAO2 controllers used with AAOmega and HERMES with ESO NGC controllers. The project is part of a larger vision to build detector controllers here in Australia into the future. 

Chris Lidman

_{Caption: A picture of Anika Chan playing a violin underneath the AAT dome}