Well, they might have broken the telescope again

[thewayne]

This time it's the secondary mirror, it threw an error message last night that it's not supposed to throw that could indicate another problem with the epoxy that caused the problems with the tertiary mirror a couple of months ago.

Fortunately, the telescope is going into summer shutdown in three days. Normally the telescope is shut down for a month every summer, this is when they do major maintenance, such as pulling the primary (3.5 meter) mirror out of the telescope and cleaning it. This year they're putting on a new top end -- that's the support structure that holds the secondary mirror assembly on the top of the telescope. The old one had some rigidity issues (do not insert Bob from Enzyte jokes here) and is going to be replaced, they've been doing the design engineering for the new one for over a year.

As much time on the sky that they've lost in the last two months from the monsoons, if they lose another three days due to this it's trivial.

(for those new to my blog, the icon is a photo that I took of the telescope a couple of years ago, the 3.5 meter is housed in the square building on the right. Due to perspective foreshortening, the 1 meter telescope dome on the left (R2D2) appears much larger. The building on the right is probably about five stories tall.)

Comments

[quasar273.livejournal.com]

Hmmph. Jumping the gun a little, spreading unconfirmed rumors? Preliminary analysis is that the epoxy on the mirror is okay. The actuator might have gotten stuck for other reasons related to a month of 90% humidity in combination with a small mishap it (this actuator) had back in early July. Telescope is cleared to run this weekend with care, shutdown is on schedule. The parts in question were going to be replaced anyway.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Of course! This is the internet! We live on unfounded rumors, half-truths, and inuendo!

;-)

I'm glad that the epoxy seems OK and that you'll be able to maybe actually open the dome this weekend.