FORS1 at Paranal at the end of the integration phase

The first FOcal Reducer/low dispersion Spectrograph (FORS1) was sent by plane to Santiago de Chile on July 4, 1998, well packed in 22 boxes. After a two-day trip on the Panamericana, it arrived at the base camp on Cerro Paranal in the afternoon of July 10. The FORS team from Göttingen, Heidelberg and Munich (Germany) started unpacking and re-integration of instrument sections next day in the Auxiliary Telescope Hall . Functional tests of the integrated sections were performed during the following days with excellent results. In particular, the delicate Multi-Object Spectroscopy system worked perfectly. Then the test crew for special verification and alignment work took over; these activities were successfully finished on August 7. (Photo obtained on August 7, 1998).