NAS Fitcheck Day 4: Head in the clouds

This morning we woke up to this:

This light dusting was the most we got, though it spit throughout the day as the clouds rolled through.

We’re here for a reason – to find out what doesn’t work so we can fix it before the real deal happens in November. Today’s discovery was that the planned route for our cable wrap through the Nasymyth platform deck won’t work. Our instrument has to rotate to track the sky through the night, which means our power, data, and cooling lines all have to rotate with it. So we need a cable wrap to manage them as they get longer and shorter. Tyson and Jason are busy sketching out plan B.

Tyson on the catwalk under the Nasmyth platform, looking for a good place to cut a hole.

Speaking of cables, the staff has been running new network fiber for us. Our system moves lots of 1s and 0s every second, so we have our own networks to handle it all.

Emilio working in the tunnel under Clay.

The observatory was inside a cloud for most of the day. We frequently couldn’t see the next building over.

The Baade from just down the boardwalk.

Tonight’s quote: “Ok, whoosh is maybe a strong term. More like swish.” (Laird Close, discussing rotator speeds and decapitation)

Lunch was a good cold and foggy selection.
Before my mom starts complaining, here's me. The bird poop is still there.
It was starting to clear by dinner. Alan got a nice sunset shot.
One of the last wisps of clouds.

Days without a motherboard failure: 3