SSO Update
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue43 1–31 August 2023
First Light for Veloce
In previous editions of Lunations, we reported that the Azzurro (blue) and Verde (green) arms of Veloce had been installed together with the Rosso (red) arm in the Coudé east room of the AAT.
The first commissioning run occurred in late June. Unfortunately, the entire run was lost to poor weather (clouds and rain) and no stellar photons could be collected.
The second commissioning run started on July 26. The night was clear, the dome was opened, the telescope was slewed to a bright star, and photons were collected. First Light was achieved!
First Light is a significant goal. It marks the culmination of many years of hard work by many people at several institutes, including the AITC here are RSAA.
Over the next few nights, the instrument performance will be characterised. In August, there will be a science verification run. If you are interested in trying out Veloce for your science, please contact Chris Tinney, the Veloce Instrument Scientist.
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.
Staff arrivals
At the end of June, Gerard Hutchinson arrived at SSO to take up the duties of Observatory Manager, replacing Rob Brookfield who retired on June 30. Gerard’s background is in astronomy and solar-terrestrial physics, having observed young variable stars (plus the famous supernova SN1987A, which was visible with the naked eye) at optical and infrared wavelengths at observatories in Chile, South Africa and La Palma for his PhD and worked on the Infrared Space Observatory for ESA back in 2002.
More recently, he has worked on solar and planetary missions for both NASA (SOHO) and ESA (Cluster, DoubleStar, Mars Express), and led instrumentation projects for Earth Observation missions (Sentinel 3 and Met Op SG) at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford in the UK.
He also has recent expertise with Space Surveillance and Tracking for the European Union and the development and implementation of Space Weather forecast models by UK University research teams at the UK Meteorological Office.
Both areas are becoming increasingly important for satellite navigation, safety & resilience and manned space flight.
As SSO and AAT approach significant anniversaries, Gerard is looking forward to being involved in astronomy and instrumentation once again and working with everyone at SSO and MSO over the exciting years ahead.
A new telescope at SSO
Some of you may have seen a new dome next to iTelescope. The unusual thing that you may have noticed about it, is that it is open during the day. Unlike the other telescopes at SSO, this telescope is dedicated to observing the sun.
The telescope is part of the iTelescope network and people from all over the world will be able to use it. Longer term, there is a plan to send the images to a TV monitor in the Visitor Centre.
Chris Lidman on behalf of the SSO team
