Doom and gloom notwithstanding, UKIRT isn’t shut down yet. While it’s true that its lifespan is now measured in months instead of years, the staff of UKIRT and JAC continue to provide the excellent support our observers have come to know and expect.

Last night we took over 100 gigabytes of data. While this may sound like a lot, it isn’t by UKIRT’s standards, as the night was shortened due to illness. On a good night UKIRT takes over 200 gigabytes of data. On my bookcase I have 67 LTO-3 tapes, each of which holds about 650GB of WFCAM data. That’s over 43 terabytes of data, and that’s only since September 2008!

Last night we looked at all kinds of different things, from very low mass stars (T dwarfs), a galaxy cluster, a “hot Jupiter” orbiting another star, and another go-around of the UKIDSS Ultra-Deep Survey. There’s a lot of science left to do, and we’re going to get it done, funding cuts be damned!