This is a short summary of UCO news of interest to the broad UC astronomy community.
Regards, Mike Bolte, Director, UCO
I am excited about a number of activities at Mt Hamilton to upgrade our key instruments, bring on some new capabilities and do some general sprucing up.
In anticipation of the Villages MEMS-based AO experiment at the Nickel Telescope a number of modifications to improve the seeing in that dome and correct problems with the secondary focus mechanism are underway. Investigations are also underway to improve the performance of the guiders at both telescopes via cooling and some image processing on the fly.
There are other projects that do not have as high a profile for the visiting scientists but are nevertheless very important for ensuring reliability. These include an evaluation of and likely improvements to the Mt Hamilton water system and replacement of the 3m dome wheel axles that were shown to have cracks when imaged with ultrasound.
The VILLAGES instrument in the LAO cleanroom.
VILLAGES had a very successful first light. This is the first MEMS-based AO system to be used at a telescope. Open-loop control was successfully tested and Strehl >0.1 was achieved at red wavelengths.
Caltech hosted the annual Keck Science Meeting and Keck Strategic Planning Meeting in September 2007. The attendance this year was high for both meetings. The quality of the presentations at the science meetings was uniformily outstanding and as always the breath of the science presented made this a particularly interesting day. Chuck Steidel and Taft Armandroff at the Keck Science Meeting 2007
ISB 375 831/459-2991
UCO/Lick Observatory and The Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
UC Santa Cruz, CA 95064, U.S.A.