The Wisconsin team returned to SALT in mid-October to continue with the NIR commissioning. There was some work to be done to re-order the v-groove blocks at the pseudo-slit & to add extra protection around the fibres, but after that it was time to get back on sky! The new ADC's great, the new calsys works well, the FIF behaved itself & there were spectacular galaxies all over the place during the few nights of good weather & favourable seeing that we managed to observe through.
Unfortunately, the ongoing load-shedding (scheduled rolling black-outs in South Africa) caused a fair amount of chaos & led to the team deciding to play it safe & warm up the instrument before they left, rather than trying to keep the enclosure at -40C. This will delay some of the remaining commissioning & instrument characterisation work, but definitely better safe than sorry when dealing with fragile optics that don't appreciate thermal cycling! Members of the science team will return again in January to continue the on-sky commissioning effort...
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