The LBTO 2014 Users' Meeting preliminary program is out!

The preliminary program of the LBTO 2014 Users' Meeting is available here.

More information on the Users' Meeting is available on its website.

Important dates:
   - Early Registration ($320): until  Feb 15, 2014
   - Late Registration ($370): after Feb 15, 2014
   - Poster presentation deadline: March 1, 2014

Do you want to give a talk at the LBTO Users' Meeting? Hurry up! Submission deadline is Jan 15.

More information on the Users' Meeting here

Abstract submission deadline for oral presentations at the LBTO 2014 Users' Meeting is 

Jan 15, 2014 EoA (UTC+12)

- Is your current research using data from LBTO? Come and talk about it at the Users’ Meeting (UM) with the LBTO users’ community!  Scientific results or data-related issues (calibration, data processing) are welcome!

- Do you have ideas or projects related to instrument pipelines, archives, observing modes? The UM will be a good time to talk about them and get feedback from other users as well as from LBTO and the LBT partnership. 

- If you intend to submit a proposal as an answer to the call for instrument upgrades or new instruments, don’t forget to submit an abstract on your project, as the UM is your only chance to present live your proposal to the community as well as to the LBT SAC and Board.

- If you have ideas on 2nd generation instruments for the observatory in the next decade, you better submit an abstract for the UM too, as we should start talking about them as soon as possible! 

-You want to talk about something else LBT-related? Well, submit an abstract too.

Don’t forget: the deadline is January 15, 2014 AoE (or UTC+12). 

Abstract Submission is one click away from the Users’ Meeting home page and does not require you to register to the UM.

LUCI2 and Pathfinder see the sky for the first time!

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LUCI2

A few weeks after LUCI2 met LUCI1 on the telescope and quite a few closed-dome (I should write enclosure) tests, it was time for the second of our near infrared imagers and spectrographs to see first light. Six days of commissioning and a reasonable weather made for a very successful run.

Luci2 on its derotator at the front bent focus of the right side of LBT.

LUCI1 (left) and LUCI2 (right) are seen on the instrument platform behind LBTI 

If LUCI2 is mostly a twin of LUCI1, it comes with a brand new software which was checked, improved and optimized in real observing conditions. The usual commissioning observations to characterize the instrument on sky (astrometric and photometric tests in imaging mode, spectrophotometric zero-point determination for grating 200H+K, ...) were carried successfully. As the new software can handle both LUCI2 and LUCI1, an imaging script in binocular mode was sent and correctly executed. All on-sky tasks foreseen for this run have been successfully performed and the basic functionality and performance of the instrument could be demonstrated.

Two more runs scheduled in December and January should conclude the first phase of the LUCI2 commissioning in seeing-limited mode. 

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LINC/NIRVANA Pathfinder

Pathfinder is an effort to bring a substantial portion of the LINC-NIRVANA instrument to the telescope in advance. Specifically, one Ground-Layer Wavefront Sensor (GWS) and its associated drive electronics and software are implemented at the right, rear, bent focus of the LBT. The main goal is to demonstrate ground layer correction of turbulence, as well as establish the needed infrastructure for telescope and adaptive secondary communications. It will also allow the team to perfect the techniques of star acquisition and tracking. 

Working on the instrument at the rear bent focus of the right side of the LBT. The middle focus station is LBTI and the front is LUCI2 (on the right of the picture). 

Three nights following the LUCI2 commissioning run were scheduled for Pathfinder and LBT engineering. Weather has been unfortunately poor, but Pathfinder was lucky enough to have a couple of openings in the clouds sufficient to catch a couple of bright stars! In spite of a 2.3" seeing, loop was closed with 50 Zernike modes on Epsilon Auriga

There is still a long way to go - this was, after all, only a single star on axis. It is however an important step for the whole team, which left Mt Graham very tired, but happy! In coming campaigns, Pathfinder will be operated with multiple stars in ground-layer adaptive optics mode.

More images on the Pathfinder run here.

ARGOS first laser propagation!

ARGOS (Advanced Rayleigh guided Ground layer adaptive Optics System) will eventually bring Ground Layer Adaptive Optics (GLAO) capabilities to LBT.  ARGOS is dedicated to observations with LUCI1 and LUCI2, LBTO's pair of near-IR imagers and multi-object spectrographs.

ARGOS is projecting three beams per LBT's eye, creating a constellation of three artificial stars on a circle of 2' in radius. This constellation will allow a significant improvement of the image quality over the 4' field of view of the LUCIs. Each of the six Nd:YAG lasers sends a beam of green (532nm) pulses at a rate of 10kHz with a power of 14W to 18W. Three beams are launched to the sky on-axis from a mirror on the back of each of the two LBT secondary mirrors.

On the night of Nov5, 2013, the lasers were propagated on the sky for the first time. 

 The beams with the Pleiades and the Hyades 

(photo courtesy of  Julian Ziegleder) 

The beams seen from inside the enclosure under the right side shutter door

(photo courtesy of  Julian Ziegleder)  

 The beams seen from the back of the enclosure (with the left back door half open)

(photo courtesy of Kai Polsterer)

The picture above shows the first acquisition of the six beams (three per LBT main mirror) on the detector of the Mount Alignment Telescope System. For the rest of this first night and during the next three, precise alignment of the beams will be performed and checked with the elevation of the telescope down to 45 degrees, the limit under which no propagation is allowed. Focus range and brightness of the beams will be estimated and all the internal cameras of the ARGOS system will be checked out...

There is still much work left to bring ARGOS to an operational state, but tonight marks a very important step in the whole commissioning process. Following completion of this initial run on Saturday morning, the  next on-sky work is expected to continue in early spring 2014 for first light on the laser guide stars wavefront sensors...

Congratulations go to the ARGOS team for the amazing amount of work done since the Preliminary Design Review back in February 2009, and to LBTO staff for their support of ARGOS since the first hardware showed up at the telescope three years ago. Coordination with FAA and Space Command went very smoothly and the help of Safford Discovery Park docents turned plane spotters is much appreciated for these first four nights of on-sky laser propagation.

More information on the ARGOS project is available on its website here. 

MODS2 structure on Mt Graham!

After its acceptance in the lab at Ohio State University in August, MODS2, the second in the pair of Multi-Object Double-beam Spectrographs designed and built by OSU, was disassembled and prepared for shipment to Mt Graham.

The structure of the instrument is the first (and biggest!) piece of the instrument to make its journey to the observatory. 

 

 Oct 1 - Loading the structure on the truck at OSU

 On the truck, with a happy MODS team!

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Oct 7 - Arrival at the base camp

 

 Unloading

Ready to go up to Mt Graham

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 Oct 10 - In the high bay at the observatory

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The crating of all the contents of MODS began immediately after the structure left. The truck will come on Oct 16 to collect the crates and carry them to Arizona.

 

LUCI2 meets LUCI1 on the telescope

LUCI2 spent its first days on the telescope close to LUCI1 for a week of tests.

After its arrival on the mountain in mid-July, LUCI2 was reassembled and went through a long series of tests over the summer to confirm that it was still functioning well after its long journey from Heidelberg (Germany).

For its first week on the telescope (Sep 22-29), LUCI2 was kept warm.

The cable wrap was fully equipped with all lines/pipes. All connections to LUCI2 have been established and all instrument/detector functions were tested at the telescope. 

The two MOS Auxiliary Cryostats were aligned to the LUCI2 cryostat. Mask cabinets were successfully transferred between both auxiliary cryostats and LUCI-2 in the warm.

 

Both LUCIs on the telescope

In case you wonder where the LUCIs are...

LUCI2 is currently back in the lab. It has been cooled down and will go through a few additional tests before going back on the telescope on October 20 for more day-time tests, with the instrument cold this time. Its first on-sky commissioning run is scheduled to start on November 9.

On to a new semester!

The night of September 24 was the first night of LBTO's 2013B observing semester.

After an intense shutdown which ended at the end of August, LBTO staff has been very busy checking out many telescope subsystems and instruments, which went through maintenance or upgrades, as well as the adaptive secondaries (especially AdSec-DX).

Thanks to a generous engineering time allocation devoted to these efforts, much was accomplished with a decent end of monsoon weather (much better than in 2011 and 202!) A good thing, as there was much to do this year before being able to go back to science!

The first night of 13B was a good night science wise with minimum glitches. A relief after the few problems encountered on instruments at the last minute, which brought some interesting moments (!) to those involved. The LBCs, LUCI1 and AO on both sides are operational. MODS1 has an issue on its red channel (likely a controller problem), which is being addressed by LBTO and the OSU team. Hopefully, MODS1 will be back soon.

The current version of the 2013B telescope schedule is available here

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