More progress at LCO today. The ASM unit was unpacked and moved into the cleanroom, the mount ring was attached to the ASM handling cart, the finishing touches were placed on our guider, assorted other odds and ends got checked off, and the Arcetri component of our team arrived. Now on with the show:
Mario and Richard removing the shipping cover from the ASM.Laird is de-burring one of our ASM feet, and Richard is vacuuming another one.A few modifications were necessary to finalize the ASM handling cart. Miguel, Juan, Tyson, and Victor are adjusting the gear box.Tyson Hare working on the ASM handling cart. It's his baby.Mario, Richard, and Povilas preparing to move the ASMMario inspecting the ASM reference body. It looks great.At the end of the day the ASM was moved into the clean room for safe keeping. All work on it will be done here from now on.
This video shows the ASM being moved into the clean room.
This is our new cable bulkhead, being test fitted on the NAS. All of our cooling hoses and electrical and communication cabling will route through this plate.
We hit another snag today. Our “wedge plate”, which is part of the mounting system which holds the ASM on the telescope, was found to have been made with a set of holes clocked by about 60 degrees. This is an easy thing to fix – we’ll drill new holes tomorrow.
Shortly after discovering the clocked holes in the wedge plate, the MagAO team spontaneously formed committees and began problem solving. Armando Riccardi and Marco Xompero arrived today from Firenze, It. They are here to help us with our thin shell and handling the ASM. They're the world's best, so we're in good hands. Here is our daily shot of LCO itself. Center frame is the dorm complex, where astronomers and staff sleep, eat, workout, do laundry, etc. In the foreground, the left hand rooftop is the cleanroom where MagAO is hard at work. At right is the Astronomer Support Building, which among other things contains the nearest coffee pot.
