Blog

We finished installing the mirrors on the telescopes this afternoon. We ran into a snag Wednesday when we found a possible mixup in the secondary mirrors, and we found out this morning that the mirrors for Sites #1 and #2 were in the wrong crates. We swapped them today and finished early this afternoon. After installation of the mirrors at each site, we went ahead and adjusted the counterweights to bring the system into balance so we can move the telescopes around with the motors.Once we discovered the problem, we stopped working on the secondaries for a while and went ahead and finished the p...

We got the primary mirror and mirror cell installed on the telescope at Site #2 today. I will post photos after we get the secondary mirror and focus housing installed tomorrow.

Here is some drone footage showing the TAOS II sites.Aerial view of SPM at sunset. The TAOS II sites are in the distance. Here is a drone video of the TAOS II sites. Your browser does not support the video tag. Thanks to Eduardo Lopez for the photo and video.

The construction crew has been working to wrap up the final work on the enclosures. All of the doors have been installed, as well as the exhaust fans. This will help seal up the building,  something we found needs to be done as well as we can after Lidia blew through.Here is a photo of the exhaust fan installation at Site #1. Meanwhile, the electrical crew is back to install a robust grounding system at the three telescope sites. Here is the crew working at Site #1.

Lidia has arrived at SPM. Winds were too high this morning for any crane work, so we went ahead and fixed a problem we noticed yesterday with the lift table at Site #2, namely that the table wouldn't clear the fork when raised high enough to get the primary mirror cell onto the center section. So we cut off the two corners of the table nearest the telescope, and the problem is now solved.We need to make the same modification to the other two lift tables, but by the time we finished at Site #2, the winds had started to pick up enough that we decided to bug out for the day and head back to the d...

I will arrive at SPM Monday afternoon August 28 with Ian and Justus from DFM Engineering. We will have a couple days of preparation work (drilling and tapping a few large holes in the piers), and the crane work will start on the 31st. We expect to finish all of the heavy lifting by September 8.

We installed the domes at Sites #2 and #3 this morning. Everything went very well. This afternoon we got the dome at Site #2 leveled and powered up. We will do the same for the other two domes tomorrow.Here are the photos from the installation at Site #3.Crane setting up early this morning. Crane with spreader bar. Straps hooked to spreader bar. Completing the rigging. Rigging complete. Ready to start lift. Start of lift. I'm on my way to the top with the socket set... Mauricio relaying instructions via radio from the top of the enclosure to the cra...

Here is an update on things at SPM.Domes: We are negotiating with a new crane company after the one we were dealing with couldn't commit to a date to bring a sufficiently large crane to SPM for the dome installation. The new company is a bit more expensive, but they are a larger company and they so far seem quite a bit more professional. They will visit the site Saturday to see what needs to be done, and the UNAM crew is pushing to get them to commit to do the installation next week.We finished the installation of the "slit hoists" in the domes today. These are bars that hang from each of the...

We completed the assembly of the dome at Site #3 early this morning, and the paint crew went to work on it immediately. They finished priming the dome today, and will hopefully get it painted tomorrow. The crane is scheduled to arrive at SPM Monday morning, and we plan to have all three domes installed by the end of the day Monday. Using the forklift to move one of the top shutter sections from the staging area near the control room to Site #3. Installation of the lower shutter. Completed dome after priming.

We installed the gantry cranes, including the hoists in all three enclosures today. We welded the rails down to the main floor joists at Site #1, but we will do the welding at the other sites later. Photos below. Gantry cranes for Sites #2 and #3 loaded onto flatbed. Gantry crane being lifted to top of enclosure #3. Gantry crane being lifted to top of enclosure #3. Gantry crane being lifted to top of enclosure #2. Gantry crane being lifted to top of enclosure #2. Gantry crane being lifted to top of enclosure #2. Gantry crane being lifted to top of enclosure #2. Gantry cra...