First HRS camera delivered

2020-01-29

On 24 January 2020, Walter Seifert reported that the first camera for the High Resolution Spectrograph (HRS) had safely arrived at the Landessternwarte in Heidelberg. This is the camera for the green HRS channel. The system is now being characterized and is subjected to a variety of incoming tests. Following these tests the camera will be integrated into the spectrograph and the field lens will be sent to AIP for mounting on the detector head.

The HRS green camera arrived safely in Heidelberg. This picture shows the camera during unpacking.

The front of the HRS green camera.

The back of the HRS green camera.

This picture, showing optical designer and engineer Wenli Xu behind the HRS green camera, was taken during the acceptance meeting and tests in mid-December at the manufacturer's premises (KiwiStar Optics, New Zealand).

Call for Letters of Intent for Public Surveys with 4MOST

2019-11-26

During the initial 5-year period of 4MOST operations, 30% of the total available observing time will be available to the ESO community. The process of selecting the surveys to be executed during this time was kicked off by ESO on 26 November 2019 by issuing a Call for Letters of Intent for Public Spectroscopic Surveys with 4MOST (see also this announcement).

The submission deadline is 28 February 2020, 12:00 CET.

Note that letters of intent for 4MOST Community Surveys should be submitted in PDF format only to the following email: opo@eso.org. Please consult the Call for Proposals webpage and the 4MOST Public Survey policies for more information.

4MOST Mid-Term Reviews – next chapter

2019-10-29

On 21-22 October 2019 the Project Office (Brynnel, Giannone, Bellido, Frey, de Jong and Cesarini) visited the Landesternwarte (LSW) in Heidelberg to meet with the High Resolution Spectrograph (HRS) team for the project-internal Mid-Term Review (MTR). In addition to feeling the pulse of the work package, we visited the just completed new LSW integration hall. This impressive facility was built for the integration of HRS. In parallel, opto-mechanical units are integrated and tested in the adjacent optics clean room. The review itself went very well, and the Project Office left LSW with a very good impression. We noted that, just like for the LRS, the HRS schedule is heavily dependent on deliveries from optics manufacturers. Other than this no concerns were raised, and we are looking forward to the Local Acceptance Review scheduled for November 2020.

Participants of the HRS Mid-Term Review (from left to right, in front of the HRS optical table in the new LSW integration hall): Walter Seifert, Joar Brynnel, Florian Rothmeier, Steffen Frey, Roelof de Jong, Domenico Giannone, Olga Bellido, Thomas Hahn.

4MOST All Hands Meeting 2019

2019-09-27

The 4MOST All Hands Meeting 2019 took place in Potsdam on 16 – 20 September 2019. The meeting was hosted by the 4MOST Project Office at the Leibniz Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP) and took place at Potsdam University's beautiful "Neues Palais" campus.

This fifth annual All Hands Meeting (AHM) of the 4MOST Consortium brought together consortium members working to define, construct, operate and scientifically exploit the 4MOST Facility. This included the engineers, managers and scientists responsible for the delivery of the 4MOST Facility, the scientists planning the science operations in the infrastructure working groups, and the scientists from the large number of institutes involved in defining the ground-breaking consortium science surveys.

From a project management perspective, the project is in good shape, both financially and in terms of planning. Significant additional funding has been secured, and the hardware budget has remained remarkably stable. Major milestones have also been stable for the past 3-4 years. This is excellent performance for a project of this complexity and size! Of course, we have issues to deal with, but these are well identified and we are working diligently to mitigate the effects and to find solutions. Feedback from ESO regarding the AHM was remarkably positive, adding an outside perspective on how we are doing.

On the facility side of the project, a particular focus of the meeting was to add detail to the planning of the System Integration Phase. This phase, formally known as the Assembly, Integration, and Testing (AIT) phase, will take place at the AIP in the years 2020-2021. During this phase, all subsystems will be delivered to the AIP where system-level testing will take place. This is a complex process where high-level requirements and interfaces will be verified, including software. Steffen Frey, our AIT manager, said after the AHM: "The meeting was very useful for me to communicate the AIT planning and to receive real-time feedback from all our partners regarding important details".

On the scientific operations side of the project, discussions were centered on preparations for the Delta Call for Proposals Readiness Review, preparations for the Operational Rehearsals, the Consortium Survey Plan, as well as sharpening the requirements for the higher-level data products pipelines.

In addition, Andrea Merloni and Martin Roth presented highlight talks on the recently launched X-ray facility eROSITA and the latest developments in photonics for astronomical instruments, respectively.

The meeting's programme can be found here.

LRS Mid-Term Review

2019-07-19

On 10 – 11 July 2019 the Project Office visited CRAL in Lyon to meet with the Low Resolution Spectrograph (LRS) team for the project-internal Mid-Term Review (MTR). This was the fifth MTR with more to follow. The purpose of this review is to assess the status of the work package – schedule, finances, product assurance, MAIT, interfaces, technical performance, and compliance matrix – approximately half-way between the Final Design Review and the Local Acceptance Review. The review panel (Brynnel, Giannone, Bellido, Frey, and Johl) concluded that the work package is in general performing very well, and no major issues were identified. During the mandatory lab visit, the review panel could see the two LRS optical tables assembled and integration and verification of the mounts for the optics in progress. ESO has already delivered the cryo-vacuum system and MPIA has delivered the control electronics. AIP will deliver three science-grade detectors in late July. The delivery of optics from various vendors remains on the critical path for the MAIT of the two LRSs. CRAL is actively monitoring these deliveries, and in spite of some delays the dates for the Local Acceptance Reviews of LRS-A and LRS-B were confirmed.

The Project Office would like to warmly thank the CRAL team for the excellent preparation of the LAR and for hosting us during the review.

Participants of the LRS Mid-Term Review (from left to right): Arlette Pecontal, Diana Johl, Domenico Giannone, Olga Bellido, Karen Disseau, Diane Chapuis, Johan Richard, Joar Brynnel, Florence Laurent, Alban Remillieux, Eric Daguise, Aurelien Jarno.

4MOST team on Paranal

2019-07-05

Between 2019-06-21 and 2019-07-01, the 4MOST project visited the Paranal Observatory. The overall purpose of this mission was to verify the VISTA telescope interfaces, to hone the AIV plan, and to discuss technical issues with the relevant Paranal staff. The mission was quite successful, and all the items on the list could be checked off. The team, consisting of Jeff, Marco and Christophe from ESO, Michael from MPIA, and Steffen, Allar, and Joar from the AIP were able to witness the removal of the VISTA primary and secondary mirrors for re-coating. To this end the telescope top end plus VIRCAM with its cable de-rotator had to be removed, which allowed us to access all relevant interfaces and to make laser tracker measurements. In addition, the HRS and LRS interfaces were inspected and surveyed. We were able to present 4MOST and discuss the project with several Paranal staff members. Special thanks to Jeff and Christophe for their great support before and during the visit!

In front of the VISTA telescope, from left to right: Allar Saviauk, Joar Brynnel, Steffen Frey (all AIP), Michael Lehmitz (MPIA), Jeff Pirard, Christophe Dupuy, and Marco Quattri (all ESO). In the background to the right you can see the VLT.

4MOST Detector System Local Acceptance Review

2019-05-17

On 9 May 2019 the Local Acceptance Review (LAR) for the 4MOST Detector Systems was held at ESO in Garching. The LAR is the final official milestone for facility subsystems, where the hardware is formally accepted, compliance with requirements and (not the least) documentation is reviewed between the 4MOST Project Office and the delivering partner, in this case ESO. The 4MOST Detector subsystem encompasses not only the 9 science-grade CCDs in their dewars, but also readout electronics and the complete cryo-vacuum system. A spare science-grade CCD and two engineering-grade CCDs are also part of the deliverables.

The performance of the CCDs is excellent, exceeding requirements in almost all areas, and the delivery schedule is very well aligned with the rest of the project. During the LAR, Joar Brynnel stated on behalf of the 4MOST project that this has been a very successful collaboration, not only from a technical/performance perspective, but it has also been carried out in a very productive and collaborative spirit.

Jeff Pirard (ESO) added: "The LAR also gave the opportunity to warmly thank Jean-Louis Lizon, Gero Rupprecht and Roland Reiss, all three retiring in 2019. They have strongly contributed to the success of the 4MOST Detector System development. The Detector System LAR is a first step of 4MOST subsystem completion which shall open the path for system integration at AIP in the coming months. The project is moving forward. Science data are getting closer!"

Participants of the LAR (from left to right): Patrick Caillier (ESO Product Assurance Manager), Domenico Giannone (4MOST Product Assurance Manager), Joar Brynnel (4MOST Project Manager), Isabella Cesarini (on screen, 4MOST Project Controller), Olga Bellido (on screen, 4MOST Systems Engineer), Josh Hopgood (ESO Detectors), Jean-Louis Lizon (ESO Cryo/vacuum), Gero Rupprecht (ESO Product Assurance Manager), Roland Reiss (ESO Detectors), Jeff Pirard (ESO Project Manager).

Successful 4MOST community workshop

2019-05-10

On 6 – 8 May 2019, the workshop Preparing for 4MOST: A community workshop introducing ESO’s next-generation spectroscopic survey facility took place at ESO in Garching, Germany. It was organised jointly by ESO and the 4MOST Consortium to prepare the ESO community for the upcoming "Call for Letters of Intent for Public Spectroscopic Surveys with 4MOST" (currently planned for Q4 2019). This Call will represent the start of the process by which ESO will select the Community Surveys to be carried out in the 30% of the observing time of the first 5 years of operations that will be available to the community.

In a total of 17 presentations, the 4MOST Consortium provided the participants with up-to-date information on the 4MOST facility, its capabilities, survey strategy, data reduction and science pipelines, as well as the 4MOST Consortium’s scientific plans, while ESO described the application and selection process. The community, in turn, presented its ideas for Community Surveys in 16 talks, covering a wide range of scientific topics, from exoplanets, to stellar clusters, galaxy evolution, and AGN.

A number of question and discussion sessions provided the opportunity for participants to clarify any remaining issues, and to jointly discuss the connections between the scientific ideas presented by the community and the plans of the Consortium.

A full summary of the workshop is provided by Liske & Mainieri, 2019, The Messenger, 177, 61.

WFC lenses inspected

2019-03-20

Sam Barden reports that previous to the application of an anti-reflection coating an inspection and review of the five smaller (650 mm diameter) lenses of the Wide Field Corrector (WFC) was held last week at KiwiStar Optics. They are shown below. The purple colour is due to a protective layer of photo-resist applied to protect the lens surfaces. The clear lens (L4) was undergoing final measurements, so it is uncoated.

On the left is Malcolm Young (the project manager), next to him is Jin Zhang (mechanical engineer). To the right of Joar Brynnel is Abe (one of the optical techs), Graeme Jonas (optics expert), Dijana Bogunovic (Optical Engineer with the unenviable job of stitching the test data together), Sandra Ramsay (KSO upper management), and Dave Cochrane (technical leader) to the far right.

The L4 test data are still being reviewed, but the go-ahead to have all of the lenses shipped to Quantum Coating in the USA to receive their anti-reflecting coating is expected by the end of the week. The largest WFC lens, L1, is already in the USA for aspherisation. Due to the time it takes to do the aspherisation, L1 will actually be the last one to be coated, but all should be finished by the end of this year.

New appointments in the 4MOST organisation

2019-03-12

A message from the Principal Investigator, Roelof de Jong:

The new extragalactic dPS: Luke Davies

The new Galactic dPS: Diane Feuillet

It gives me great pleasure to announce a few new appointments in the 4MOST organisation.

As announced a few months ago, it was decided that the 4MOST Project Scientists needed extra support for their many tasks in the form of deputy Project Scientists. The selection has now been completed and I am pleased to announce that the new Galactic deputy Project Scientist is Diane Feuillet and the extragalactic dPS is Luke Davies, effective immediately. The different roles and responsibilities of the PSs and dPSs will be worked out in more detail in the coming months, so stay tuned for more information.

The new Galactic IWG2 leader: Jesper Storm

The new extragalactic IWG2 leader: Peder Norberg

I am also announcing a transition in leadership of IWG2. As confirmed by the SCB, the new Galactic IWG2 lead will be Jesper Storm, while the new extragalactic lead will be Peder Norberg. This leadership transition will become effective after the CfPRR review at ESO, i.e., on 22 March 2019. I hereby want to thank Thomas Boller and Cristina Chiappini for their hard work and great dedication as IWG2 leads in the past years. You have made important contributions towards establishing the foundations of the 4MOST survey strategy.

Please be extra supportive towards the newly appointed people while they are ramping up to their new tasks!