Panel Alignment

As of last post, we had assembled the reflector backup structure (BUS) and were ready to start placing reflector panels. The first step was to get the BUS from where we assembled it (next to the airstrip, right where the pieces came out of the LC130 they arrived in) to where the rest of the telescope was going together --- namely the Dark Sector Lab (DSL), about 1km from the South Pole Station. We had assembled it on a sled just for this purpose.

The BUS on the move


At DSL, the BUS was dragged into a large tent built to shelter us from the wind as we worked, and we could begin the prep work needed to place panels. This work mostly fell to Jeff, who is in charge of understanding how one makes an off-axis paraboloid by placing 218 irregular shapes at different heights above an on-axis paraboloid. (If "off-axis" and "on-axis" mean nothing to you, just believe me that this is a crazy idea.) After lots of thinking on Jeff's part and some manual labor by the rest of us, we had seven panels placed in the innermost ring.

Prep work on the BUS inside the tent


Perhaps not surprisingly, how things looked after this initial placement resulted in lots more brainwork by Jeff (with a little help from the rest of us), sniffing out small non-idealities in certain parts of the system that have to be taken into account for everything to fit correctly. After a few iterations of this, panel placement can now begin in earnest.