LT offline for ~1 week for scheduled engineering work

The Liverpool Telescope will not be observing from June 7 for a period of 7 to 10 days while major engineering upgrade and maintenance work is carried out on the telescope. Therefore the last night's observing will be tonight, 6th June.

The engineering work will mainly focus on the azimuth encoder tape, which will be cleaned and tested. It is expected, however, that it will need replacement. This is a major task which could take over a week to complete.

Additional work will be undertaken, time permitting, on:

• SupIRCam coolant pipes. The old pipes have fractured and lost coolant. We will be replacing them with pipes that are more flexible and robust.

• New Autoguider. The original autoguider supplied with the telescope does not work. We are therefore developing a new unit "in house", the hardware for which will be installed on-site.

It's anticipated that this work will lead to significant improvements in performance and data quality for all users. Check back here frequently for the latest updates on when observations will resume.