An amazing amount of rain fell on Mt. Bigelow during the last three hours of daylight and the usual monsoon clouds and humidity threatened to claim their third straight complete night. However, a partial clearing at about 0200 local time coupled with humidity just within the operational limits, allowed the final three blazars to be observed to finish Campaign 112, Fermi Cycle 10 observing, and the Steward Observatory blazar monitoring program. Although there were transparency issues, the seeing was good at 1.3 arcsec. Over 50 observations were managed during this final campaign. This is roughly half the number achieved in a typical campaign, but worth the effort, especially when compared to the dismal, record-setting (only 15 polarization measurements) campaign during 2017 July.
Well, that brings us to the official end of the program. What an epic! Like the Bok Telescope, the 1.54m Kuiper Telescope performed in an outstanding fashion over the past decade. Data were obtained using this telescope on a total of 454 nights. Thanks to all of the personnel at Steward Observatory involved in keeping the telescope in excellent working order and making it the backbone of the program, especially during the final three years.
When adding the 24 nights in which data were acquired at the 6.5m MMT, blazars were monitored on a total of 835 nights over the first 10 Fermi mission cycles. What started with an observation of Mrk 501 on 2008 October 3 (MJD = 54742.1), ends 3570 nights later with an observation of PKS 2155-304 on 2018 July 13 (MJD = 58312.4). Thanks to all who encouraged and helped this program and to the researchers that have used, or will use, these data products.
End -- Fine -- Конец.
