SSO Update

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue42 1–31 July 2023

First data from the full Veloce

In the last edition of Lunations, we reported that the Azzurro (blue) and Verde (green) arms of Veloce were installed together with the Rosso (red) arm in the Coudé east room of the AAT. 

The first commissioning run of the entire instrument has just ended. Unfortunately, all six nights of the run were lost to poor weather (clouds and rain). Nevertheless, great progress has been made.  In the photo you can see data from all three cameras displayed on the instrument workstation.  Chris Tinney, the Veloce instrument scientist wrote, “All three cameras have been aligned and deliver lovely data from the new ESO NGC controller.” It is very pleasing to see the ESO NGC controller working well. Over the next couple of years, we will replace the old AAO controllers running AAOmega and HERMES with these controllers.

Veloce provides the AAT with a very stable, high-resolution (R=80,000) spectrograph, covering a broad spectral range (367 to 930 nm). It will be a workhorse instrument for the AAT for many years.

One more commissioning run will occur in July followed by a science verification run in August. 

Staff arrivals and departures

After 15 years of dedicated service, Steve Chapman has retired. For 13 of those 15 years, Steve was an AAT night assistant, helping countless astronomers, including the author of these lines, with their observations. On behalf of all the astronomers that Steve helped, I want to say a big Thank You. You will be missed. We wish Steve all the best for the future and hope that he comes to visit us from time to time to let us know what he is up to.

We’ve also had several recent arrivals. Gerard Hutchinson joins us as the new Observatory Manager and Gabriel Stewart has joined the electronics team.  In the next edition of lunations, they will be telling us a bit about themselves. We wish them great success in our organisation.

Chris Lidman on behalf of the SSO team.