This is my least favorite part: packing everthing up, getting organized, finding all of our lost allen wrenches, and taking a zip-tie inventory.
The ASM came off the telescope yesterday, and rode down the hill first thing this morning.
The last major operation was to unbolt and crane the NAS off the telescope.
Once the NAS came off, we got a look at the W-Unit for the first time in a few weeks. Here’s our wollaston beamsplitter, which helped deliver some amazing SDI science at visible wavelengths.
Kate, who is using the VisAO SDI mode to study disks around young stars, had never actually seen the fully assembled instrument before. Here’s a picture of me and Kate after a quick tour of the components she’s been operating the last few nights.
We also cleaned up some of our, shall we say, less rigorous engineering solutions.
Laird’s folks happened to wander by today (why are you surprised? it’s not like we’re on a mountain top in a remote area of South America or anything). As is his wont, Laird put them to work settling the ASM into the clean room. I hear they helped flip it back to zenith. Perhaps even more appreciated was a chocalate fix for certain members of the team who didn’t plan very well.
Quote of the day:
“We should come up with something that looks less like garbage. I mean, it’s well decorated garbage. But.” – Povilas Polunas.