Top End

Andy Adamson

Head of UKIRT Operations/Director of Science

An email from Jonathan Kemp, operating the JCMT, raised the alert to the dreadful situation developing at Mount Stromlo in January. There followed a period of chasing emails and web reports whose contents were in many cases inconsistent, before (after a couple of days) the stories all converged on the true, bad news. The extent of the damage was horrifying, of course, but perhaps more so was the apparent speed with which the blaze swept away a historical and well-established observatory, at which some of us were privileged to have observed. Subsequently, the Australian government voiced its intention to restore at least in part the work and infrastructure of the observatory. One can only hope that the politician's word is good, and we send the staff of Mount Stromlo our best wishes as they start to rebuild.

Political and geographical influences are common to many observatory operations, though the proportions in which they manifest themselves vary. At Mauna Kea Observatory, the political dimension is currently more of a concern than the rather obvious danger underfoot (fortunately at present this danger is quite dormant, despite a spate of recent earthquakes). We are all aware that UKIRT is privileged to occupy its position on the summit ridge of what has become perhaps the most disputed - and still certainly the best - astronomy site in the world.

Taking full advantage of the best observing conditions in the world is the aim of the current shift of our operational paradigm, into flexible scheduling. At the time of writing we are nearly a month into the venture, and the results have to date been quite positive; programmes are being completed, some by the PI of the programme observing at the summit, and some by a visiting observer carrying out MSBs (Minimum Schedulable Blocks) for remote applicants. The OMP software on which flexing depends has proved a resounding success, and the software group should be proud of another major achievement. We are grateful to users who submitted their MSBs into the database in good time, and I would like to personally thank all the observers who have worked within the new regime to date. In particular Stuart Littlefair, who was first up, showed an extremely helpful attitude and gave us the best start we could have hoped for. His reward was a completed programme of his own and he also did well for a couple of other programmes in the course of the run.

Not everything has gone so closely to plan. In preparing for this change, we modelled the progress of a synthetic semester 03A. It was natural in doing so to assume a few things: firstly, it is common knowledge that seeing of 0.8 arcseconds or better represents the vast majority of the observing time at UKIRT, and secondly we were concerned that programmes requiring photometric weather would be hard to complete. Much time was therefore spent at the outset of the semester, in ensuring that programmes requiring photometric nights were inserted into the database as early as possible. In the event, the first few weeks of the semester have seen essentially full-time photometric conditions, combined (of course) with some of the worst seeing in living memory. Such is life, but it's good to see a number of photometric programmes nearing completion well in advance of expectations.

Whilst in the thick of the development of flexible scheduling, we are also still in shared-risks mode with UIST, the instrument having progressed from the Hilo lab to summit commissioning and into operations. Progress with UIST was rapid; it has "felt" like a UKIRT facility instrument from its earliest commissioning days. This is, in part, due to the ORAC/OMP observing infrastructure, into which UIST fits virtually seamlessly and with which we are all familiar. But UIST also looks the part, and I for one am slowly getting used to seeing CGS4 on the right on entering the dome! For further details of progress with UIST, see the article by Suzanne Ramsay-Howat in this issue. We are grateful to the UIST team for their hard work on the project and through the commissioning process, and as evidenced by the frontispiece to this issue, observers are beginning to capitalize on the instrument's unique capabilities.

By the time of the next Newsletter, WFCAM will be nearing acceptance testing; another major milestone for UKIRT and the ATC. The article by Mark Casali in this issue gives an insight into the progress of the WFCAM project, as well as some sobering images of the huge cryostat and the method by which it will be installed on the telescope. Enjoy!