SSO Update

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue38 1–31 March 2023

2.3-metre automation

On March 4th, the ANU 2.3-metre telescope was switched to automatic operations. It is now taking data automatically.  This milestone is the result of several years of effort from the IT group at RSAA (in particular, Jon Neilson and Ian Price) and generous funding received from the Centre for Gravitational Astrophysics.

However, our work is far from complete. The focus over the next 18 months will be to use funds from a LIEF grant recently approved by the Australian Research Council to upgrade the archive, the proposal preparation system, and the data reduction pipeline, and to integrate the telescope into a transient network consisting of telescopes at SSO (e.g., DREAMS, SkyMapper, and GOTO) and elsewhere.

New Facilities at SSO

In an earlier edition of Lunations, we showed a photo of the bare concrete pad on which the GOTO telescopes will be installed. In early December, the GOTO team with the help of SSO staff installed the domes. The domes are currently empty, but it will not be long before the GOTO team returns to SSO again to complete the installation, just in time for the LIGO-VIRGO O4 gravitational wave detection run, which is due to start in the middle of the year.

Chris Lidman on behalf of the SSO team.

_{Picture: A picture of the two GOTO domes in the late evening sun.  The APT building (which will house DREAMS) and JAXA can be seen in the background.}