Due to ongoing infrastructure renovations, the duPont telescope will remain without nighttime operations through at least the end of September 2021. Activities include a complete renovation of the former Coude room to a new two story lab and instrument storage facility, relocation of the control room to the former library on the first floor, installations of all fiber optic and other facilities cabling routing to the cassegrain rotator in preparation for SDSSV implementation of a new instrument mounting base for the Fiber Positioning System and the BOSS and APOGEE spectrographs, centralized computing and network infrastructure in the first floor equipment room, painting and sealing of the dome floor, renovation of the kitchenette area, and an overall organization of functional storage for instrumentation and operations equipment.
In addition, observatory staff have been preparing and testing the aluminization chamber with a planned re-aluminizaiton of the primary mirror in the 17-25 October time period.
We appreciate your forbearance as we continue to maintain our highest safety standards for staff and facilites at LCO.