12 September 2002

The NIRI maintenance work has now been completed and NIRI has been tested cold in the lab. All the mechanisms are moving and the new bushings are working well. In addition to the preventative maintenance, we also installed the new Shack-Hartmann roof prism in the on-instrument wavefront sensor optics. We look forward to using the 2x2 spot pattern to correct for fast tip-tilt and focus in the coming months. The NIRI science-channel camera optics were realigned and the pupil alignment is nearly identical to that before the shutdown.

The NIRI web pages have been updated in support of the Phase II preparation for the current semester and for the Call for Proposals for 2003A. PIs who have not yet submitted their Phase II programs for 2002B should do so as soon as possible. NIRI will be back on the sky starting Sept. 17.

The NIRI IRAF package is being expanded to include the first release of the spectroscopic tasks. The next release of the Gemini IRAF package is scheduled for the end of this month. PIs who got spectroscopic data during 2002A will probably want to install the new version of the Gemini IRAF package before reducing their data.

Last update Sept. 12, 2002; Joe Jensen