BRT Observatory Link Down..

At roughly 20:30 on the 11th of December we lost communication with the BRT observatory at the Observatorio del Teide, shortly after at around 21:05 we lost communication with our night sky webcam.


Our initial diagnostic work is pointing towards both network and power issues which are disrupting the communications in our building, the Cielo Nocturno building, the GONG building and the SONG observatory (the SONG observatory has replaced the STARE building on the image below).

Left: Cielo Nocturno, Right: BRT, Front: GONG, Back: STARE (now replaced with SONG)

At the moment the OT site is suffering severe weather conditions and on Wednesday the 10th of December the Canarian Government declared 'alerta máxima' resulting in the observatory being closed until the weather situation clears.

The power and network infrastructure of the OT is outside of our control, so we will be reporting the fault to the OT maintenance team and working with them to restore communication as quickly as possible. However given closure of the site I am expecting there to be a very limited number of support staff at the OT and for them to be very busy dealing with more pressing problems.

I will blog more about this problem as new information comes to light and progress is made in the repair.. though fingers crossed, the first you will all hear about the successful repair is in a deluge of job complete emails.