Pisces is on the telescope!

PISCES arrived on the mountain on Saturday (Sep 28). It was installed on its flange in the lab without any problem and was up and running by the end of the day.

PISCES integration in the lab

Today (Sep 30) by 14:30,  PISCES was installed on the telescope at the RFBG (Right Front Bent Gregorian) port, the one LUCI2 was using over the past days for various warm tests and alignments.

PISCES at RFBG

First images were taken at 15:30 and a 1st-order pupil alignment to AdSec-DX was completed at 16:30! A very smooth process...

Pupil image in H-band. Enclosure structure is seen in the background 

and the secondary is in the center with its swing arm spider at 5 o'clock.

Good news about the read noise of the detector: It is reduced from 5 ADU from the last run (23 e-) to about 3.5 ADU (15 e-), now that the armature current is zeroed on the filter wheel motor during integrations. 

Many thanks to the PISCES team (Don McCarthy and Craig Kulesa) and the LBTO staff!