Current music:

Sonic Youth - Malibu Gas Station

FLAMINGOS 2
Just got this email below from my old supervisor at the UF Infrared Astrophysics Group:

Hey guys,
Flamingos-2 is FINALLY out of the lab. When did we start this? Summer 2004?
These last two days we have moved almost all of it from the lab to the Physics building for shipment.
One week after it is all ready to go, the shippers will come and get the stack of boxes and crates and transport them to Chile'.
It will take one to five weeks to clear customs, after that we will all be going down to Chile for the initial reassembly down there.
So it is felt that about mid to late July we will be getting F2 back up and running at the GEMINI telescope lab.
It probably won't go onto the telescope on this run, but may sometime in the early fall.

It was a long and painful process.
Most everyone acknowledges that the electronics, chassis & wiring portions were done a LONG time ago and have been extremely reliable.
That is mostly due to you all. I am very proud of what we build and you all should be too.

Thanks for everything,
Cheers & Best wishes,
Kevin

My time in the IAG lab has to rank up there as one of my favorite jobs to-date. Liquid-nitrogen-cooled M&M's, cool-ass military-grade electronics, and a lab full of brilliant and passionate engineers and scientists all working together toward a pure-science goal made working there a young boy-nerd's dream.

Here's an old report with some background information for interested parties: http://arxiv.org/ftp/astro-ph/papers/0604/0604577.pdf