Apr. 25, 2012: Telescope and dome installed successfully. Test of optics to start.

Mar. 28, 2012: Spectrograph installed in the container. Telescope installation starts on April 16th.

Mar. 06 , 2012:  Installation of instruments and computers scheduled for March 13. The process can be followed on the webcams.

Mar. 01, 2012: A velocity precision of 1m/s is reached with the SONG spectrograph for daytime observations of the Sun in Aarhus. [More details here: LINK]

As part of the test and verification of the SONG spectrograph our pre-shipment activities have included measurements of the blue sky (sunlight!) using an optical fibre to feed scattered light to the spectrograph. During days of clear weather we obtained spectra with a cadence of 20s and R=100.000 for the spectrograph and S/N ~ 200-400 through the iodine cell.

The resulting radial velocity curve is shown in the figure below. Simultaneous observations from the BiSON (LINK TIL BISON) instrument at Las Campanas are overplotted the SONG data in red.

It is clear that the agreement is very good. In order to ease the visual comparison the SONG data have been smoothed by a 3-point moving mean. A preliminary analysis of the time-series indicates a short-term velocity precision of 1m/s per 20s observation.

Feb. 24 , 2012: All instruments are shipped from Aarhus to Tenerife.

Feb. 8, 2012: SONG Tenerife site installation planned March 2012. Telescope handover date March 21st. The progress can be followed by watching the site with Webcam 1 or Webcam 2.

Nov. 7th, 2011: The SONG China Site is now accessible at a new web page SONG China.

Oct. 31th, 2011: Telescope installation by Astelco delayed till Jan. 17, 2011. The first SONG web camera is now in operation (SONG Webcam 1 (username: guest, password: guest) ) and you can follow development at the site.

Sep. 29th, 2011: The presentations from the 4th SONG Worshop are now avalaible.

Apr 13th 2011: The danish infrastructure foundation has published its roadmap for the coming years recommending 16 projects for support. 6 projects are nominated for funding in 2011. Among the remaining projects figure two new SONG sites at 15 Mkr. each to be placed in Australia and South Africa. We expect funding to start next year, but this has not been decided.

Mar 27th 2011: First solar spectra obtained with the SONG spectrograph (check News) and dome support construction started at Tenerife (see the web camera).

Feb. 24th 2011: The 4th SONG Workshop is scheduled for September 15 - 20, 2011 at the College of
Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina.

Jan. 5th 2011: The SONG China site has just (Dec. 27, 2010) approved the detailed design of the telescopes (SONG and customized telescope) and will soon start manufacturing the telescopes. Also a mini-SONG telescope is well under way.

Nov. 11th 2010: One of the iodine cells for SONG. The 'pinkish' colour is due to the iodine absorption. The iodine cell will be used as a wavelength calibrator in order to obtain radial velocities with 1m/s precision.

Nov. 1st 2010: The construction of the site at the Tenerife has begun. First step has been to remove the STARE telescope. You can follow the development at the site by clicking on a link to a web camera from the Bradford Telescope, which has been redirected to point at the SONG site.

Mar. 9th 2010: Major progress has been made with regards to many of the components in the observation-node. Several components are now in-house and are undergoing testing. Delivery of further components is expected during the spring. For more detailed information as well as images and a list of components, please take a look at here.

Dec. 14th 2009: We are pleased to announce that the third workshop of the Stellar Observation Network Group (SONG) will be held in Beijing of China from March 29 to April 2 of 2010. More information on the SONG-workshops can be found here.