Update from WIYN/NEID

WIYN is back on sky with commissioning activities and regular observing, mostly following the planned restart schedule described in the October issue of Currents. NEID had a “shakedown” night on 30 November, which demonstrated that the system is ready for regular commissioning in early December.

Beginning in December, we have scheduled for NEID some “extreme shared risk” nights—a term coined by the team for these extraordinary circumstances—for a limited set of carefully selected PI programs. These programs will be carried out in parallel with commissioning and offer a chance for some exciting early science.

In other welcome news, the NEID team received a NASA Group Achievement Award, which was presented (virtually) on 1 December. The award is given by NASA to groups of government or non-government personnel in recognition of group accomplishments that contribute to NASA’s mission. The citation reads: “For the development and delivery of the state-of-the-art NEID radial velocity spectrograph and port adapter to the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope on Kitt Peak.” Congratulations to the team!