SSO Update
Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue34 1–30 November 2022
It’s not an aluminising run if something doesn’t Go Wrong!
Glen, Zach, and I oversaw this year’s LCO mirror aluminising. We cleaned the mirror first thing on Tuesday morning, and we were well ahead of time. A beer at 5 pm was looking good. Once cleaned, we placed the mirror back into the lid of the chamber, where we noticed that it wasn’t sitting very well, so we fiddled for maybe 40 minutes to make sure we were all happy with how it was placed and sitting.
We were still ahead of time. YAY! We started to pump the chamber, going through the steps slowly. Everything was going well.
After doing one of the last steps, one of the high vacuum valves decided to put on a bit of a show, by not closing properly. We tried a simple on/off twice, which didn’t work. We then decided to close number 2 first instead of number 1 – that worked. YAY! We then went on to the most critical step – the firing of the filaments … and that’s when things went WRONG! There was no power from the transformer, and after nearly 3 hours of fault finding and some swearing at the plant again as the high vacuum valve didn’t want to go to bed, we gave up and went home, 14 hours later!
The next day, the team did more fault-finding. Daniel opened the 500-volt transformer. We found a tiny loose green wire. After 50 years, it decided to work itself loose. Daniel fixed it and we moved straight on to firing the filaments – within 6 minutes the job was done. We took the mirror out at 1:35 pm and it was back over to LCO by 4:00 pm. We all went home on time!
Zoe Holcombe
POLSA
The Polish Space Agency (POLSA) is establishing a network of telescopes across Australia for studies of near-Earth objects. Two of the telescopes will be based at SSO. The photo taken by Marty Gordon shows the freshly laid concrete foundation for the telescope. Beyond the concrete pad and from left to right, one sees the SOLARIS telescope, PROMPT, the 40”, the 2.3-metre, the 24” and HAT-South. It is starting to get busy at the top of SSO. The telescopes themselves will be installed during the second week of November. Another POLSA telescope will be based at MSO and the fourth will be in southern Queensland.
Staff Movements
Michael Sharrott will be leaving us in the middle of November to take up a position at Southern Cross University in Coffs Harbour. Mike has been with us for almost two years and has done a great job managing numerous projects for both SSO and the AITC. He has been a positive influence at the observatory, and he will be missed. On behalf of all the staff at SSO, I would like to wish Mike all the best in his new position, and I hope that he drops by from time to time.
I wish to congratulate Zach Smith on his promotion to Mechanical Manager at SSO. Zach took up his new role on October 31, replacing Randal Darko. Of course, we’ve just filled one hole by creating another, so we’ll be advertising for Zach’s old position soon.
Chris Lidman and Zoe Holcombe on behalf of the SSO team
