NICFPS went on the sky for the first time last night during twilight, using time generously given up by Don York for the purpose, and achieved quick and striking success. The NICFPS team describe themselves as "pretty jazzed" and add that much credit for the fast progress "goes to the APO team which has been on-the-spot supportive since we arrived a few days ago." NICFPS will have 3 half nights of additional (and hopefully clear) time on the sky during the next several days/nights, and the team promises to post a more detailed report afterwards, but for now it seemed worth sharing the very initial report below. In any case, congrats and thanks to the NICFPS team and the APO staff for this first success. Ed Turner Begin forwarded message: > > Hi guys, > > We were fortunate to get a little bit of time on the sky tonight right > after sunset (thanks to Don York and the staff at APO). > We were able to get a few sky flats and a quick focus run. > > We first pointed at Vega with nominal DIS settings (focus and > offsets). The first attached pdf file shows the "first ever star > image" with NICFPS: Vega with 0 second integration (which is really > about 3.25 seconds), out of focus and very saturated through the 2.12 > microns narrow band filter. > > The second and third attached images are the best "quick" focus image > of a 10.7 mag star again through the 2.12 micron filter (30 seconds) > and its corresponding profile. The focus position was about +150 > microns and is very close to the nominal position. The star is very > close to the center of the chip when using the DIS settings. With a > pixel scale of 0.27"/pixel, our fwhm corresponds to about 0.8". > > > YEAH !!! > > APO APO APO APO APO Apache Point Observatory 3.5m APO APO APO APO APO This is message 837 in the apo35-general archive. You can find APO the archive on http://www.astro.princeton.edu/APO/apo35-general/INDEX.html APO To join/leave the list, send mail to apo35-request@astro.princeton.edu APO To post a message, mail it to apo35-general@astro.princeton.edu APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO APO