MAROON-X Helps Restart Science Observations

MAROON-X is the new fiber-fed, red-optical, high precision radial velocity spectrograph installed last year on Gemini North. We are pleased to announce that MAROON-X was ready and able to observe straight out of the gate when the telescope reopened on the evening of 19 May. A scheduled observing run at the end of March was postponed when the telescope closed due to COVID-19, and so the instrument team, led by Andreas Seifahrt from the University of Chicago, worked with Gemini IT staff to establish the appropriate connections and processes for remote observing so that when the Gemini Science Operations Specialists (SOSs) were able to return to the control rooms to operate the telescope, the team would be able to operate the MAROON-X instrument from their homes in order to carry out the observations. The observations went very smoothly thanks to great weather, a fast connection, a stable instrument, robust software, and the patience and flexibility of the Gemini Queue Coordinator and SOSs. The seeing was so good on two nights, in fact, that these data will be used to estimate the fiber coupling loss and measure the efficiency, important steps for characterizing the instrument as we prepare to make MAROON-X available to the community starting in the 2020B semester.