Tuesday, June 12, 2007

First Light!!!


These last couple of weeks have been extremely busy, a lot of work and not much sleep, yet it was all worth it as around 10 p.m. on the night of Friday June 8 (Chilean Local Time) we achieved First Light.
This image of Jupiter was taken while scanning the telescope at constant 60 degree elevation over a 2 degree azimuth range every 4.4 seconds using CCam: an 8x32 bolometric array.

Sunday, May 20, 2007

Back in San Pedro


After spending a couple of weeks back home I now returned to San Pedro. Nothing has changed much, it's just a lot colder: during the night the temperature drops below freezing even in town and up the mountain gets colder than -10 C.

Saturday, April 21, 2007

CCam is here


CCam, our prototype instrument, arrived today together with a load of other miscellaneous items in a "brand new" gray container from Princeton. The truck that was transporting it up the mountain encountered some problem negotiating a soft-soil section of the road but a backhoe-loader from ConPax came to the rescue and pulled it up through the rough section. Unloading went smoothly and, at first inspection, the cargo looked in perfect conditions. While I was supervising the container delivery, Adam and Rolando went to pick up Judy and Toby in Calama

Sunday, April 15, 2007

Something different


This afternoon Rolando, Adam and I decide to take few hours off and went to Termas de Puritama to soak in the warm, mineral waters that form a series of cascading pools at the bottom of a canyon about 30 Km north of San Pedro. It was indescribably pleasant and visually stunning: the view of the ribbon of luscious vegetation at the bottom of a canyon carved through barren land comes at you completely unexpected.

Saturday, April 14, 2007

Cheshire Act


Few more panels and the telescope will no longer be visible, hopefully we will all have smiles on our faces. While ConPax is working on finishing the ground screen we are trying to get the mirror panels aligned and Mike and Jeff (Kuka Robotics) are working on getting the azimuth and elevation servo systems tuned.

Saturday, April 7, 2007

Panels & Panels


Since the ground screen frame has been completed ConPax has been working on installing all the panels that form the actual ground screen; it's a slow process often hampered by strong winds. Furthermore this week we had a work-crew change on Tuesday, Friday was a holiday and we have only a reduced crew for the Easter weekend. In the meanwhile we worked on aligning the 71 aluminum panels that form the primary mirror and the 15 that form the secondary one.

Thursday, April 5, 2007

Eppur si muove...

After reconnecting all the control electronics we tested both azimuth and elevation motion; it was a very smooth first test.

Monday, April 2, 2007

Done


Today the construction of the Ground Screen frame was completed, soon all the panels will be installed and it would become more difficult to actually view the Telescope.

Friday, March 30, 2007

Almost there...


The ground shield frame that surrounds the telescope is nearly finished, the last supporting stand should go up tomorrow morning together with the remaining cross members. The panels will take probably another week. Today the also delivered the new generators and we received some material from AMEC that was left behind. Mike Cozza and Jeff Funke (Kuka) arrived later this evening, soon we could have the telescope moving.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Steady progress


Between being very busy and the network behaving badly it's been more than a week since my last post. A lot has happened. Lyman has left on Sunday morning and on the same day in the evening Rolando Dunner arrived from Santiago. We have installed the new final cables between the generator and the Equipment Room (ER) in buried PVC conduit. We also have installed a Cat 5 cable in another buried conduit between the ER and the communication tower. Most of the cables connecting the motion control cabinet (Kuka cabinet) and the telescope are neatly laid down in the trays and connected. The two racks in the ER are also being populated with computers and network equipments. Meanwhile ConPax is busy finishing the ground screen, the frame is more than 50% completed and nearly all the two first panels rows are installed.

Sunday, March 18, 2007

Getting there...


The last few days have have been characterized by the arrival of new people: on Friday Adam Hincks, yesterday Lyman Page and today Ye Zhou (AMEC). In the meanwhile the work at the site is proceeding: the telescope motion control electronics (aka the Kuka cabinet) is now in the Equipment Room ready to be reconnected, the telescope's side ground screen has been installed and ConPax started erecting the ground screen. In San Pedro we installed the 4' parabolic dish that together with the 2' one already installed at Cerro Toco will make possible operating the the telescope remotely. Our effort in the next few days will be concentrated in getting the telescope rewired and getting the remote link operational.

If you want to ready a more detailed description of our daily activities check out Adam's new Chile Journal

Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Installation Video

I took a video while the 125 Tons crane was moving the Telescope from the cradle used for transportation to its mount. The original video file was huge but today I finally found a moment to re-encode it and post it. The first few seconds are blurry (it's YouTube's fault) but the rest is ok.

Saturday, March 10, 2007

The Telescope is here

Has been 3 days since the last post, the reason being we were very busy.



It all started on Thursday (3/8) when our friend from Astro-Norte on their way to Calama spotted two big oversized loads parked on the side of the San Pedro's bypass. The reason they stopped there turned out to be the fact they have to wait for the night for San Pedro's utility company to cut down the remaining 3 power lines that separated our precious load from the "Paso de Jama" road. This is the road that through the Jama pass connects Chile with Argentina and it's also our main way to Cerro Toco, at least until we abandon it for the dirt road.



The day after we went up the mountain fairly early sure to catch the Telescope on its way up but they beat us. They left around two in the morning and made it up the mountain around nine. By the end of the day the Telescope mount was unloaded and ready to be installed on the concrete pad, but it was late and we decide to postpone it to the morning after.

Today was a really busy day: the Telescope's mount went on by the middle of the morning, in the meanwhile our "very" temporary generator was put in operation. In the afternoon we finally had the "big lift": the Telescope was lifted from its transport cradle and installed on the mount that was bolted down to the concrete pad early today. Toward the end of the day two more containers arrived, they were loaded with steel beams to erect the ground screen. Yesterday Madhuri arrived and this afternoon (i.e. Chilean morning) she helped set the Adobe container in its final location.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

Construction site

The telescope has not arrived yet but the Cerro Toco site has been buzzing with activities. Both our containers: the 40' Silver and the 20' White one are in their final locations. These two container will serve as control room and hardware integration room respectively.


With the help of ConPax (the site main contractor) we installed the jib crane and we also put together the top extension to the White Container (a.k.a. Kinco), it will be installed tomorrow. Today we also received a temporary electric generator that will power the telescope for the initial trial period; two larger generators will be installed when we reach full capacity. ConPax has been busy getting ready to receive the telescope and unloading containers full of all the construction material needed to erect the ground screen that will surround the telescope.

Monday, March 5, 2007

Second Container

We spent most of today's morning reorganizing the Adobe container in San Pedro and discussing all kinds of logistical issues with Astro-Norte, the engineering consulting firm that support us here in San Pedro. The Adobe container is now clean, well.. as clean as you can get in San Pedro, and ready to be used. Hopefully it will be relocated to its final position soon and hooked up to the electrical power.


In the afternoon we went to the site and after less than an hour (to our surprise) the second container showed up. This is the Equipment Room (a.k.a. The Silver container) and houses the telescope motion control system, the data acquisition system and is also our office space up on mountain.
Today was also the very first day that I felt totally o.k. working at high altitude, it was still al lot harder than performing the same tasks at sea level but I didn't suffer any side effect like headaches or dizziness.

Sunday, March 4, 2007

First Container


Our first container has arrived. The, so called White Container, is our assembly room and machine shop. Everything we stored inside for transportation is perfect condition, I honestly cannot tell the difference between now and the last time I saw it in Port Coquitlam nearly four month ago. It was originally put on the ground 180° off but when you have 125 Tons crane available it's fairly easy to flip it around.

Saturday, March 3, 2007

Few days later

I have been in San Pedro for now nearly a week. The town is very animated, it's the peak of the tourist season, and is populated by wealthy Americans and Europeans that have already seen the rest of the world and slightly anachronistic hippies here "to feel" the mysticism of the place.
Yesterday I went up to the telescope site (Cerro Toco). As you can see from the pictures I posted on flickr the concrete work is practically finished. The Telescope was supposed to leave the port of Antofagasta this Friday and arrive at the site on Monday but it has been delayed, it will actually leave on Monday. It's fairly large load and in a few places along the road power and other utility lines have to be either lifted of removed.

Monday, February 26, 2007

Here we are...

I just arrived in San Pedro de Atacama this evening. I didn't have much time to look around yet but, at first, it looks like not much as changed since my first visit last year.