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The integrated test of the full FINER system at NAOJ, including the warm optics, both front-end receivers, the local oscillators, the IF chain and the DRS4 spectrometers, has been completed. FINER is now being prepared for its journey to the LMT in Mexico.

The warm optics of FINER, a coupling optical mechanism that picks up the radio waves collected by the LMT and leads them to the FINER receiver, is ready. Tatsuya Takekoshi at Kitami Institute of Technology is finalizing its integration.

The laboratory evaluation of the FINER receiver has started at NAOJ in preparation for installation on the LMT. Masato Hagimoto and graduate student Kato are leading the measurements.

The FINER team held a collaboration meeting at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics (ASIAA) in Taipei.

Members of the FINER team visited the LMT office at INAOE in Puebla, Mexico, and discussed the FINER receiver with the LMT team. The team then went up to the summit of Sierra Negra (4,600 m) for receiver tests and observations of molecular gas in distant galaxies.

The FINER project has entered its development phase. This week we signed a research agreement with the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ), under which FINER will use the receiver technologies developed for ALMA2, the next-generation upgrade of ALMA. Together with the Large Millimeter Telescope in Mexico, FINER aims at the highest spectral-scanning sensitivity in the northern hemisphere to identify distant galaxies that remain unidentified in the northern sky.