Top End

Andy Adamson

Head of UKIRT Operations/Director of Science

The past few months - indeed the entire period since the previous Newsletter - have been dominated by the installation and commissioning of the ORAC control system and the new telescope control interface. ORAC is fully described in a "Special Report" later in this issue. At the time of writing, the first few PATT runs using the new systems have been completed. In the new paradigm, observers are able (and expected) to prepare their programmes much more in advance than previously, and it is clear that this contributes to the considerable improvement in observational efficiency we are already seeing with ORAC. UKIRT and its observers owe a debt of gratitude to the ORAC team, at the ATC in Edinburgh and the JAC.

While ORAC has dominated our efforts in both software and training, it would be remiss not to note that we have also installed a powerful Linux PC at the summit. This system carries out all data reduction, and copes very well with the data rate from UFTI, which had been an occasional issue with the Sun workstation which preceded it (and which is still used to sequence ORAC programmes). "kauwa", as it is known, is equipped with twin heads, giving its display a sweeping, landscape quality which is certainly necessary when using the ORAC tools to prepare programmes and reduce data (see the ORAC report elsewhere in this issue).

We have welcomed Paul Hirst as a support astronomer, taking responsibility for CGS4. Paul is settling into the role very well, and has established excellent relations with his colleagues and those he has supported.

New instrument development continues at the ATC. Michelle was the subject of a series of reviews in the early summer, and is now working to a formal cost limit set by PPARC. The main problem area - the grating-exchange drum bearings - were redesigned and construction has just been completed. Both UIST and WFCAM have suffered slippage due to the ATC's concentration of effort on Michelle; at the time of writing, the WFCAM team has just been re-assembled and work is commencing in earnest. Work on defining the WFCAM surveys has been gathering momentum since early this year; the second, and highly productive, meeting of the WFCAM consortium took place at the Preston wide field meeting held in late August.

UKIRT's web pages have been under continual development since the commissioning of IRCAM/TUFTI and the arrival of ORAC. Many of the changes were required to take account of ORAC, but we have also been working on single-page printable versions of instrument manuals in response to requests from observers, who clearly still wish to print out a single document in advance of their runs. We appreciate this desire to read the documentation, but issue one caution: these documents evolve as the instruments evolve, and a printout taken now should not be taken as definitive a year from now!

TRISPEC, which had its first run on the telescope in February, was awarded eight nights in Semester 00B, and is back on the telescope at present. The instrument is more fully described in an article in this issue.

Flexible observing, which proved its worth two semesters ago, is once again being done for selected programmes. Three pairs of 00B programmes have been identified which have complementary requirements in terms of either seeing or thermal-IR transparency. We have been working to establish a relationship between submm optical depth and transmission in the three-micron window, and have a working definition for "good" three micron weather which will be tested and refined over the coming semester. We also anticipate working with the JCMT on a collaborative software project to handle the data and feedback loop between absent P.I.s and the observatory, which will be needed if we are to flex properly between a wider range of programmes than is possible at present. For now, we thank the P.I.s of the various programmes identified and hope that their experience with flexing is a positive and productive one.