Also reported in this newsletter is the forthcoming availability of the MPE 3D integral field IR spectrometer at the AAO. This instrument will significantly enhance the AAO's IR spectroscopic capabilities and provide a more efficient alternative to IRIS for many projects. The AAO would like to thank the Prof. Genzel's team for agreeing to to bring 3D to the AAT, and for making it generally available to the Anglo-Australian community.
The AAO has also recently entered into a contract with RGO and NOT to purchase three 1024x1024 HgCdTe IR arrays from Rockwell (one for each observatory), resulting in a significant saving in cost compared to a separate order for a single array. The array, which should be delivered by the end of 1997, will be incorporated into IRIS-2, the next major instrumentation project for the AAO. More details on IRIS-2 will appear in the next newsletter, but it is hoped that the purchase of the array will `galvanise' this project and that the wide-field imaging option in IRIS-2 will now be commissioned on the AAT by the second-half of 1998, with the spectroscopy option following within the next 6-9 months.
The CCD contract previously entered into with MIT/Lincoln Laboratories is also proving to be extremely productive. As a result the AAO and MSO have extended their original contract, with the aim of securing between 8 and 10 science-grade devices. This would be sufficient to build an 8096x8096 CCD mosaic (with a 30-arcminute field-of-view) for use at the prime focus of the AAT. Further details on this instrument will appear in later newsletters.
Instrumentation is not the only encouraging aspect of recent developments at the AAO. Progress has also been made on observer support. The AAO has begun a `consolidation project' led by Raylee Stathakis, to maximise observing efficiency at the telescope by providing an integrated set of packages to evaluate and access data during observing. As elements of this project, this newsletter reports on a new pipeline-processing routine for the RGO spectrograph and the availability of the USNO catalogue.
With all these developments, project management is becoming a key issue at the AAO. Successful completion of these projects is only possible with careful planning and allocation of the resources available. We are currently taking steps to improve our project management, to ensure that we do not over-commit ourselves in the next few years. With such mechanisms in place, the AAO should be well-positioned to `play to its strengths' as a highly-efficient and well-instrumented observatory playing a world-leading role in wide-field imaging and spectroscopy in the years to come.
Brian Boyle