SSO Update

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue40 1–31 May 2023

New Arrivals at SSO

It has been another busy month at SSO, with the commissioning of the GOTO telescopes, two weeks of sunset-to-sunrise observing with Hector, and a new arrival.

The coming month will be equally busy with the switch to the new fibre network using the, we-shall-see, rat-proof fibres and the installation of the upgraded Veloce on the AAT.

It is with great pleasure that I welcome Adam Gaudry to SSO. Adam joins as SSO project manager. Adam comes from an Army Engineering Officer background where he specialised in Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear and Explosive Defence operations. He went on to obtain a PhD in chemistry and has worked in technical workshop and research and development manager positions. Most recently he has been senior practitioner of energetic materials at the Defence Science and Technology Organisation. He is hopeful that his new role will be just as exciting, though somewhat less spicy.

We wish Adam all the best in managing the very many projects that SSO is about to embark on.

Two months of robotic operations

On March 4th, the ANU 2.3-metre telescope was switched to robotic operations. Since that time, the telescope has observed 1,371 targets using 257 hours of telescope time. 28% of the time was lost to poor weather (about average for SSO) and about 6% was lost to technical faults. Astronomers have been very satisfied with the quality of the data. The plot shows the distribution of objects observed with the 2.3-metre over the entire sky with the size of the symbol proportional to the exposure time. A special thanks to Ian Price for producing the plot.

Chris Lidman on behalf of the staff at SSO

Image 1: An image of GOTO’s 16 telescopes and two domes. Directly behind GOTO is the old APT telescope, the future home of the DREAMS telescope.

Image 2: The plot showing the distribution of objects observed with the 2.3-metre over the entire sky