There’s a UCSC press release today announcing that Lick Observatory has received funding to implement a major upgrade for the Kast Spectrograph:

http://news.ucsc.edu/2014/12/kast-spectrograph.html

The Kast Spectrograph is the primary instrument for optical spectroscopic observations at the Shane 3-meter telescope at Lick.  Our group uses this spectrograph for reverberation mapping observations of active galaxies, to examine the environments of supermassive black holes and to measure the masses of the black holes.  The funding will support the installation of a new detector in the red camera of the spectrograph, which will mean a major improvement for the quality and efficiency of observations.  Many thanks to the Heising-Simons Foundation and to the Kast family for their generous support of Lick Observatory!