DOLORES is ready for observations again
After a long maintenance, the detector of DOLORES has been reinstalled and is now ready to be used again for astronomical observations. Both the CCD and the cryostat have been thoroughly inspected and cleaned after several failures had appeared in the images at the end of January. A test with a spare CCD lent by the Astrophysical Observatory of Catania (OACT) showed that there were further issues at the level of the CCD controller.
The CCD was sent to Teledyne for cleaning and checking of the bondings, while in the meantime the cryostat was cleaned, repaired and a new CCD controller was assembled and tested with the CCD of the OACT.
After the return of the refurbished CCD, everything was reassembled to the nominal configuration and installed at the TNG. Several hours of calibrations, characterization and other test followed.
The instrument's new characterization is still ongoing, photometric zeropoints and color equations will be published in the future but we are able to offer the instrument again to the scientific community.
The LRS instrument GUI is showing a very sharp PSF in I filter corresponding to 0.48 arcsec, after the maintenance of the instrument (July 7th).
Comparison between the news and the old zero points of the instrument