Fun with Inserts

(Backlog from 5-6 November)

With the detector focal planes completed, the telescope inserts are ready to be reassembled. This happens in parallel on all six, with the lenses being reinstalled, some cables reconnected, the whole thing wrapped and sealed. The following morning, they are ready for insertion.

We discovered a failure on another type of insert: an aluminum piece glued inside one of the gondola’s carbon fibre tubes. One was discovered partially pulled out. We pulled it the rest of the way out, and started scrambling to make a replacement.

Anne closes the wrap on one telescope

Ed works on another

Optics truss

Installed on top of an unwrapped telescope

Bottom section of telescope

(Similar to the last post)

Cables and getter

The white/black slab is very high surface area adsorber, which we bake until just before installation

Power outage

While the generators are reconfigured

Highbay in the dark

SPIDER dance party

I plug some lights into a UPS supply

Purge

Each covered/sealed telescope if purged with nitrogen, to keep water vapour out

The septapus

For purging

The bottom of Theo

Ready for telescope insertion

Telescope #1 ready to go

Insert insertion

Insert inserted

Meeting

These things happen, even to good people

Sean prepares half-wave plates

Large sheets of sapphire that we use to modulate our telescope's signal

Half-wave plate rotation mechanisms

Stackable

Another insert

Jon wrestles with the failed gondola insert

Pull test

Using the crane to pull the tube, weighed down by our cherry picker lift

Partially removed insert

Fully removed insert

At 1400 pounds (good ones survive to 40000 pounds!)

Delicate operation

Fixing cables on an installed insert

Lorenzo is equipped

CHEESE!

We picked up a wheel of aged New Zealand pecorino on the way down, as a treat