During 2016 much happened at Gemini of relevance to our user community . What follows is a compilation of news , updates , and information of interest to Gemini ’ s users from the past 12 months .
January 2017
Gemini staff contributions
News for Users
During 2016 much happened at Gemini of relevance to our user community . What follows is a compilation of news , updates , and information of interest to Gemini ’ s users from the past 12 months .
January 2017
Base Facility Operations Begin at Gemini South
Since late 2015 , the Observatory has operated Gemini North at night from its Hilo Base Facility with no staff at the telescope facility on Maunakea . Gemini South has now followed suit ; as of November the Base Facility Operations ( BFO ) project began full remote operations in La Serena , Chile . As promised in the January 2016 issue of GeminiFocus , in the interest of efficiency we copied much of the Gemini North project and pasted it into place at Gemini South , making this task as straightforward as possible . Along the way we made one or two locally-specific amendments and some minor improvements .
Figure 1 . Javier Fuentes ( left ) and Joy Chavez ( right ) operating Gemini South from the La Serena Base Facility on November 14 , 2016 .
Prior to November , we had already operated in “ Base ” mode with night staff at the summit of Cerro Pachón for more than two months — progressively confining them to the control room as we added more and more monitoring capabilities and remote control options to the summit systems . On November 14th we were ready as planned , and the nighttime staff carried out
January 2017 | 2016 Year in Review GeminiFocus
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