Abstract

Various team members from McDonald Observatory will present an update on new observing capabilities and work in progress. Highlights will include: 1) At the Hobby-Eberly Telescope, work on the VIRUS multi-IFU spectrograph is nearing completion, and work will be ramping up to provide the improved High Resolution Spectrograph (HRS). At the Harlan J. Smith Telescope, the new optical integral field instrument VIRUS2 is making good progress, which will be described. It’s not too early to think of survey projects for VIRUS2. Other smaller scale improvements will be discussed. Ample time for questions and discussion will be available.