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UKIRT Annual Report 2000
THE UNITED KINGDOM INFRARED TELESCOPE
ANNUAL REPORT
2000
3. Report on Operations
3.1. Summary
The decision to implement ORAC for all instruments fully occupied the
software staff until final release at the start of semester 00B. The
ORAC system revolutionises observation preparation, execution and data
reduction at UKIRT. The very slight increase in the fault rate over this
period is a tribute to the ORAC team's skill. ORAC has increased the
observing efficiency of UKIRT by between 10% and 20%, with the
clearest gains in the area of faint-object imaging.
UKIRT's fault rate increased marginally from 2.6% in 1999 to 2.9%
in 2000. Weather losses were similar to the previous year, at around
12% and 21% for the A and B semesters respectively.
More accurate techniques for measuring the telescope emissivity resulted
in a decrease in these estimates, with some measurements below 10%
(close to the theoretical minimum value).
UKIRT's image quality remained excellent throughout the year, although
never returning to the extremely good seeing of the El Niño year of 1998.
Comprehensive monitoring of the seeing is now possible as every
photometric observation produces a seeing measuremement which is deposited
in local logfiles and made available on the web.
Instrument projects at the UKATC made further progress. Michelle was the
subject of a major, concerted effort towards acceptance testing in early 2001
and UIST continued the steady progress which has characterized this project
from the outset. It was expected that UIST would appear on UKIRT only very
shortly after Michelle. Finally, the WFCAM project received formal
approval from PPARC.
Support afforded by UKIRT staff to visiting observers in 2000 was reported
by the visitors to have been of the highest quality and level of committment.
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