Magellan Director Report

• Personnel

• Observing Statistics

• Instrument Commissioning

• Instrument Development

• Fast Internet Connection

• Publications (A. Uomoto)

March 17, 2012, Carnegie Observatories

Personnel• New Telescope Operator

• Magellan telescope operator Sergio Vera unexpectedly resigned with scant notice in late-August

• He was hired by ESO to become a VLT operator

• A search was hurriedly organized and several good applications were received

• An offer was made to GMT site testing equipment operator Gabriel Prieto, who accepted and began working in October

Personnel (cont.)• Instrumentation Support Position

• The new Instrumentation Support Engineer/Scientist position was advertised and three excellent candidates were identified

• Interviews were carried out and an offer was made to Yuri Beletsky, who accepted and started working for Magellan in January

• From 2006-2011, Beletsky was an ESO Support Astronomer at Paranal with considerable experience in supporting a wide variety of optical and IR instrumentation

• This is a 100% support position

Personnel (cont.)• El Pino / Mountain Personnel

• In July 2011, Roberto Bermúdez replaced Emma Molina as the Administrative Assistant to the LCO Director in La Serena

• Sergio Véliz joined the LCO Mountain staff in June 2011 to assist with administrative work (lodging, food services, travel, and warehouse supervision)

Observing Statistics:Instrument Usage

2011 Mar 1 – 2012 Feb 29 Instrument UsageIMACS 23%FIRE 19%MIKE 15%FourStar 8%MagE 8%PFS 7%MMIRS 7%MegaCam 6%LDSS3 6%MIKE fibers 1%

Observing Statistics: Long-Term Instrument

Usage

Observing Statistics:Downtime

2011 Mar 1 – 2012 Feb 29 Baade Clay

Open 81.2% 83.2%

Lost to Weather 17.7% 15.6%

Lost to Telescope 0.7% 0.4%

Lost to Instrument 0.4% 0.5%

Lost to Computer 0.4% 0.3%

Total Downtime 1.5% 1.2%

Observing Statistics: Long-Term Downtime

Observing Statistics: Instrument Downtime

2011 Mar 1 – 2012 Feb 29

MMIRS 2.6%

IMACS 0.8%

MegaCam 0.7%

LDSS3 0.2%

FIRE 0.2%

MagE 0.1%

MIKE 0.0%

FourStar 0.0%

PFS 0.0%

MIKE fibers 0.0%

Instrument Commissioning

Instrument First LightPFS* 2009 OctoberMegaCam 2009 OctoberMMIRS 2009 DecemberFIRE 2010 MarchFourStar 2010 DecemberIMACS Mosaic3 (f/4) 2011 October*P.I. Instrument

MegaCam, MMIRS, FIRE, FourStar have yet to be accepted by the Magellan Council as Facility Instruments

Instrument Development

Instrument First LightAO (VisAO, Clio2) 2012BAO (BLINC MIRAC4) ?M2FS 2012B?PISCO 2013B?

What comes next? Will there be a new generation of Magellan instruments?

Fast Internet Connection• As of late-February, CTIO had implemented a new 620 mbs

connection to Internet2

• Commodity traffic will use 30 mbs; 590 mbs reserved for research network

• “In principle”, LCO bandwidth will be limited to 100 mbs

Fast Internet Connection (cont.)• Traffic destined to a network that is a member of the

Internet2 will go out over the 100 mbs route – all else will go out via the commodity network

• In order to see the 100 mbs, the application needs to use the “UDF” protocol

• The most common way is to use “bbFTP”

• Observers are encouraged to use this new capability for transferring data, etc.

Note: Downloading of movies, music, etc. is still considered unacceptable use of the network…

Publications (A. Uomoto)