NAS Fitcheck Day 6: Getting Ready

We start our move up to the Clay tomorrow, so today was mainly spent getting ready. We disconnected and drained the supply lines for the NAS cooling system.

Laird, Jason, and Tyson move some hose.

That hose, along with a bunch of power and data cables, was made into a cable and we started wrapping it around the NAS. The NAS will move up to the Aux building between the telescopes tomorrow.

Another detail to worry about is balancing the NAS so we don’t overload the rotator motors. The crew finished a counter-weight today, and Alan and Tyson installed it.

A counter-weight to make the NAS easy to rotate. It's on top - most of the heavy stuff is on the bottom!

Meanwhile, we also tested the main chiller which keeps the ASM itself cool.

Jason in the exhaust tunnel.

Emilio wrote some software to monitor and control the system. See below for a video of it in action during the above test.

Control software for our ASM cooler.

Here's Juan next to the PLC box. Thanks to everybody here and back at Steward who helped make this happen.

While everybody else has been getting their hands dirty, I’ve been putting our VisAO camera through some tests (mainly focusing). As I complain about regularly, we never get very much time to see what it can do. Here are some reduced images with our coronagraphic occulting spot.

Our coronagraphic occulting spot blocks our SDSS i' PSF.
Same, but in our y-ish 1 micron filter.

Tonight’s quote: “Hey Laird, how long do you plan to use this instrument? I mean it’s not just for Jared’s PhD right?” (Jason Lewis)

Hector and Jose surprised us with Sushi at lunch.
I noticed this nice little indoor garden today for the first time.
I did get out of the lab just in time to see the top of the Sun.