& Special Note Concerning Canceled Telescope Time

On Thursday morning, October 20, 2016, Bob Peterson unexpectedly and suddenly passed away at work. Bob was the long-time head of the Steward Observatory Mountain Operations group that oversees the maintenance and operations of Optical/IR facilities of Steward Observatory at the Kitt Peak, Mt. Bigelow, and Mt. Lemmon, AZ sites as well as the Vatican Observatory's VATT telescope on Mt. Graham, AZ. It was decided by upper observatory management to cease operations at the telescopes that required instrument changes (such as SPOL being installed at the Kuiper Telescope) over the weekend to allow the staff necessary for this work some needed time and space to come to terms with this unfortunate event.

Bob was an incredibly thoughtful and effective member of the Observatory. He and his group furnished observers with reliable equipment and telescopes to do their science for more than three decades. He has been a major reason behind the continuing success of the Fermi/Steward Observatory optical monitoring program, now in it ninth year of operation. He was a good friend and will be missed.

Campaign 88 is now scheduled to start on 2016 October 25 UTC.