Progress on telescope installation

# Telescopes

schedule 2017-09-14
Matthew Lehner

After finishing the crane work, we spent the past few days mostly finishing up some unexciting, random tasks that needed to be done. We filled in the holes in the observing floors created by trimming the corners off of the lift tables, finished most of the stuff I wanted to do during the last trip (dome home switches, mounting dome control electronics), relocated the lift table hydraulics controls from the trap door in the observing floor to the wall, cleaned all of the trash that the construction crews left on the ground floor of each enclosure, and gave all of the enclosures a thorough vacuuming. We also installed the Dec drives and Dec counterweights on the telescope center sections, and we have begun working on wiring up the telescopes to make sure the control electronics works. We also started assembling the primary mirror cell at Site #3 this afternoon.

Here are some photos form the past few days.

Installing the Dec motor and drive at Site #1.



Installing Dec counterweights at Site #1.







Dec counterweight motor.


We installed the trusses and focus ring at Site #3, but then took them back off after we realized that we couldn't test the motors since the tube assembly would be too unbalanced without the primary mirror cell. But here are a couple photos to get an idea of when the telescope will look like with the trusses.






We installed the trusses with the tube assembly inverted, but this is what it looks like normally.


Taking everything off now...


Starting primary mirror cell assembly at Site #3. This is one of 16 radial counterweights for the primary mirror.


Radial counterweights on the mirror cell.


Inside the mirror cell.


Bolting on the rest of them.




Radial counterweight covers installed.


Axial counterweights on the bottom of the mirror cell.