SOAR Projects Status

Submitted by jelias on Thu, 2018-09-06 16:55

The SOAR Board meets in person every year, typically in August (more often if needed). As part of the meeting, the Director presents a report on SOAR projects. Since a lot has happened over the last year, and will be continuing into next year, the report (with some minor edits) is being more generally available at this link. The report summarizes the status on a variety of projects, where those of particular interest include:

• STELES (SOAR Echelle Spectrograph)
• TSpec 4.1 (Ex-ARCOIRIS, transfer from Blanco)
• Aluminizing
• Various telescope upgrades, including:
  • Calibration wavefront sensor
  • Wavefront-sensing guider
  • Primary mirror active optics
  • Mount control upgrade
• SOAR automation - preparation for networked observing. This includes the Goodman data pipeline development effort.
• SAM improvements

Look for updates on these projects as work continues during the remainder of this year and then next year. Questions about any of them can be directed to staff members identified in the report, or listed on the SOAR staff page.