It’s been a while since the last article, so we are going to report our activities last month. We all, both scientists and developers, were pretty busy last month.
Firstly, we had two engineering observations in May 2024.
The PFS project is in the final phase of development, aiming to start the scientific operation in the 2025A semester (i.e., February 2025), and these two engineering runs are last chance to test the instruments on-sky (on-telescope) before the review. Therefore, we took as many data as possible to evaluate the instrument performance by observing standard stars, faint galaxies and stars and so on. Accuracy in fiber positioning to the targets has been narrowed down to about 20-30 micrometer, as a result of continuous improvement software. Besides, we are practicing operation for common-use observation in queue mode, preparing the targets to assessing the data quality.
Secondly, we repaired the fiber connector of the slit for Spectrograph Module 2 in the period between the two observations.
3 members from Brazil, who developed the fiber slits, visited Subaru Telescope and carried out the repair work. It was the first time to repair the fiber slit without disassembling from the optical bench, so they discussed procedure and tools with LAM members, who integrated Spectrograph Modules. The working slot was only two weeks, but we managed to finish all repair work and get the spectrograph ready to observation.
Thirdly, the science team working very hard to finalize the their observation plan for Subaru Strategic Programs (SSP) , for which we have been discussing and brushing up the survey plan for a long time.
We are analyzing the data and prepare for the readiness review.
