Due to a cooling liquid spillage, UT3 has been out of operations since October 23. The recovery of the affected systems is ongoing, please consult the LPO news page for updates. At the time of writing, the recovery sequence foresees to restart science operations first with SPHERE, then CRIRES and then X-Shooter. The restart with SPHERE and CRIRES is expected to take place in early November, while the X-Shooter recovery will take several more weeks. This is due to the contamination of X-Shooter with cooling liquid that requires careful cleaning and realignment of optical elements.
VLT UT3 Recovery from Cooling Liquid Spillage
Published: 30 Oct 2025
Replanning of the science observations is ongoing, and affected users of time-critical runs are being contacted by the User Support Department. If you have further questions about your ongoing observing runs, please contact us via Deskpro helpdesk support.