SSO News

Published in the RSAA Lunations
Vol1 Issue1 1–29 February 2020

The past six months at SSO have been one of frequent dust storms and smoke. Thankfully, during the past couple of weeks, it has started to rain and the countryside is turning green. 

The dust coats everything, including telescope mirrors, which means that the mirrors lose reflectivity over time.  The primary mirrors of most telescopes at SSO are aluminised about once a year.  Staff have just realumised the KMT mirror.  The mirror arrived at the UKST on Tuesday morning in a specially made box designed by the SSO mechanical team.  Work then began washing, stripping and polishing, more polishing and more polishing, by the end your arms have grown some muscles!!  We then load it into the UKST aluminising plant so the real work can be done. The actual recoating only takes like 10min, but the pumping of the tank to the correct vacuum takes hours. Representatives from KMT were delighted to see their new mirror the next morning when we took it out for a look (see the attached photo with Daniel Bonello inspecting the freshly painted mirror).  The mirror then went back to the KMT to be put back to work that night!

The next mirror will the AAT mirror which will be done the week beginning the 9th March.  Preparations for this have already started.

 The past three months has seen a number of new faces at SSO. We’d like to welcome Ashley Anderson, Matthew Spencer and Daniel Cotton to the SSO team.

Authors: Zoe Holcombe, Chris Lidman