![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thewayneRusset needed someone to help her do some tests on the tertiary mirror of the telescope. So she crawled under and literally into the telescope to test some movement limit switches and observe the mirror's motion as I entered commands to move it.
Pretty cool!
I am such a geek. :-)
I also helped prevent a bit of nastiness and a potential extremely expensive catastrophe. Tonight is an engineering night, so there is no one using the telescope for science, it's just Russet and a programmer in New York who is helping her with some software issues via remote access and chat. Before I helped her with the tertiary test, she had mounted an instrument on the telescope called DIS (Dual-Imaging Spectrograph). After we finished her tests, she decided to mount CoreMas, so I helped her take DIS off and put CoreMas on. Well, until I noticed one of the catches wasn't seating quite right.
The instruments mount on the side of the telescope on a rotator collar that can rotate the instrument a full +/- 360 degrees. The instrument sits on two big steel pins, then four clamps hold it flush against this ring. Standard procedure is to position the cart, lower the cart until the instrument is resting on the pins, clamp the two top clamps, lower the cart another inch or two, clamp the lower clamps, then remove the cart entirely. Generally there is a box or something on the instrument that would hit the cart and damage the instrument if the cart is not removed.
Tonight one of the lower clamps did not lock in place.
So basically, if it had not been noticed, it is possible that if the instrument had been rotated so that the insecure clamp was on top, there would be uneven stress on the three remaining clamps and it is possible that the instrument could fall off and drop to the ground.
Though I don't know for certain, I would guess that these things run $100-200,000.
Not a good thing!
So I get mentioned in tonight's log report twice: once for helping with the tertiary diagnostic, and again on the problem report for the bad clamp!
WHEEE! (I am still such a geek.)
(oh, almost forgot to mention, I also got to close and open the dome!)
Pretty cool!
I am such a geek. :-)
I also helped prevent a bit of nastiness and a potential extremely expensive catastrophe. Tonight is an engineering night, so there is no one using the telescope for science, it's just Russet and a programmer in New York who is helping her with some software issues via remote access and chat. Before I helped her with the tertiary test, she had mounted an instrument on the telescope called DIS (Dual-Imaging Spectrograph). After we finished her tests, she decided to mount CoreMas, so I helped her take DIS off and put CoreMas on. Well, until I noticed one of the catches wasn't seating quite right.
The instruments mount on the side of the telescope on a rotator collar that can rotate the instrument a full +/- 360 degrees. The instrument sits on two big steel pins, then four clamps hold it flush against this ring. Standard procedure is to position the cart, lower the cart until the instrument is resting on the pins, clamp the two top clamps, lower the cart another inch or two, clamp the lower clamps, then remove the cart entirely. Generally there is a box or something on the instrument that would hit the cart and damage the instrument if the cart is not removed.
Tonight one of the lower clamps did not lock in place.
So basically, if it had not been noticed, it is possible that if the instrument had been rotated so that the insecure clamp was on top, there would be uneven stress on the three remaining clamps and it is possible that the instrument could fall off and drop to the ground.
Though I don't know for certain, I would guess that these things run $100-200,000.
Not a good thing!
So I get mentioned in tonight's log report twice: once for helping with the tertiary diagnostic, and again on the problem report for the bad clamp!
WHEEE! (I am still such a geek.)
(oh, almost forgot to mention, I also got to close and open the dome!)
