We are continuing the acceptance and development tests on the telescope begun in July, 2000. Because of the summer rainy season in Arizona, our work in July and August was mainly in Nashville and concentrated on the spectrograph and on tweaking the control system. This group of tasks, most of which don't have any effective deadlines, have extended over the last half of 2001, and some will extend into 2002.

The work planned fell into four categories as follows:

1. MECHANICAL ADJUSTMENTS of the telescope and spectrograph.
1. Finish putting the calibration bench together and wire its controls into a computer in the lab. (Eaton&Williamson--appx. 1 week; deferred to 2002.)
2. Finish mounting the colimator/reimaging mirrors for the spectrograph and test their adjustments. (Eaton--We started this task in early November but have deferred it to 2002.)
3. Mount the echelle grating in its stand. (Eaton; deferred to 2002.)
4. Try to decide on what coating to use on the mirrors in the spectrograph and on the diagonal mirror in the instrument head. (Eaton; we contacted some coating companies with little to show for it, so this task is deferred to 2002.)
5. Finish making the primary feed for the echelle spectrograph. (This requires a number of little jobs involving hand fitting of small parts.) (Eaton&Williamson; deferred to 2002.)
6. Finish putting the motors in the spare drive tractor for the telescope and test them. (Eaton; we did a little layout work on the tractor have deferred this task until we need the lab space the tractor is taking.)
7. Buy brush seals for the telescope enclosure. (Eaton and Busby started ordering these seals on 7/03/01, and we received them at the observatory on 9/21/01. Eaton put most of them into the enclosure during that week. During our work session in October, we caulked the bases of the seals in some locations and put thresholds into the doors to reduce infiltration by wind-blown rain during certain adverse weather. The sealing system still needed to be modified in two places to get the brushes to seat properly, and we did this in December.)
8. Buy the fiber-optic cable for coupling the spectrograph to the telescope and assemble all the hardware required for making up the actual cables. (We obtained a price from Polymicro for 200 meters of cable with 4-micron tolerance on the core diameter in September and began the paperwork for ordering it in October. We also ordered 100 meters of standard cable to use for tests and as a backup, which we received in November. The purchasing for the good cable was finished by 12 November, and we received both orders it late 2001. We have deferred assembly to 2002.)
9. Design tools for rotating the telescope back to its home position by brute force in case the oil bearings fail. Also design fixtures for lifting the telescope off its base for working on the oil bearings if ever required.(Eaton: Started 28 September. As of mid October, we had made conceptual designs for all this equipment, detailed designs for some of it, and had located some of the material.)
2. ELECTRICAL WIRING.
1. Buy new motor and variable-speed controller for the oil pump. (Eaton; deferred--low priority)
2. Make up fans for cooling the electronics boxes during the day time. (We received the material on 7/3/01 and fabricated the units in time for Eaton to take them to the observatory for installation and testing in early August. They seemed to be working, but we needed to record the temperatures in the box to tell just how well. We ran these tests during our work session in October, finding the fans had very little effect on the day-time temperature in the main electronics box [computer and Galil controller]. The temperature in the box for the amplifiers stayed lower, so extra cooling is not as important for it. This initiative was a failure, so we shall have to find another way of cooling the electronics or be content to live with the high temperatures.)
3. Design the air conditioning systems for the spectrograph enclosure and control building and for the other control buildings at Fairborn Observatory and estimate the costs for them. (Busby started this design on 6/28/01 and continued it as a student project. The three students finished their design in September and wrote a report giving the airconditioning units they chose and the rationale for choosing them. The units in question have a compressor outside the building connected through tubing to cooling coils inside it. Busby has looked into the question of how precisely the temperature can be controlled with this technology, about 2 deg F, which should be adequate with insulation of the spectrograph itself. Busby has priced units for this purpose, but we still need to discuss wiring them with L. Boyd. This task is essentially done until we finish plans to move the spectrograph to the observatory. The next step may be to simulate heating by the expected loads during the winter to decide whether cooling alone will be adequate for the spectrograph enclosure.)
3. Work on MIRRORS.
1. Get the remake of the secondary mirror for the telescope underway, hopefully finished before time to start work with the telescope in the fall. (We have been negotiating with MSFC since the beginning of the summer for remaking this mirror. MSFC will have to remake the mirror [which requires a new blank, new Hindle shell, and a test plate for making the Hindle shell]. MSFC prepared an estimate of the cost for us, which we received on 11 October. The estimate, roughly $100K, was so high that we decided to approach with Oak Ridge again for a metal mirror before negotiating with MSFC again about the glass mirror. As of mid October, this question was completely unsettled. Given the long time it took to get this estimate, about four months from start to price in hand, we expect it would take the better part of a year to get any hardware from MSFC. About 12 November we agreed with MSFC to use a flat-backed mirror which lets them dispense with making a Hindle shell for testing. We also began negotiating anew with ORNL to make one aluminum secondary, which we should be able to test adequately with the existing Hindle shell, and we have established a contract with ORNL to make it by the end of 2001.)
2. Get NASA MSFC to make the folding flat for the spectrograph. (Eaton arranged with Roy Young in late June to do this, and MSFC delivered the mirror in mid August. It will have to be coated once we figure out what coating to use on the other mirrors.)
3. Finish polishing the spare folding mirror to the point that it could be aluminized and overcoated for use in the telescope. (Eaton began working on it with very fine-grit polishing paper in mid October but did not finish it by the end of 2001.)
4. Work on the DRIVES and CONTROL SYSTEM.
1. Write a simulator for the telescope that can realistically predict how it will observe stars on a given night with a given list of desired observations and constraints. Use it perfect the algorithm for setting priorities for various parts of the sky. (This is a student project of Allen Keel which got underway, 6/15/01. He finished it sufficiently to use it for planning operations of the telescope and wrote a report in August. We will use a student to maintain and extend this program during 2002.)
2. Decide on what information to log during operation of the telescope and write preliminary programs to extract information from the logs and display it. (Allen Keel and Eaton; started 6/23/01. This process is continuing during our visits to the observatory in the fall to run the telescope and make it operate reliably. We collected extensive log data in September for deciding just what information to collect and keep for quality-control purposes, systematized the logging in the control programs, and tested it during our visit in to the observatory in October. This logging should suffice for initial operations. During December, we changed the logging sufficiently that it should serve for operations of the telescope until the spectrograph is ready to integrate into the operating telescope. We also wrote a program to cull data from the logs and plot various information for quality control, based on the format and nature of the information logged.)
3. Decide on how to handle the FO weather data in deciding when to shut down for bad weather. (Williamson wrote the weather checking into the control programs in time to test it in September. The procedure worked very well during one night of marginal weather, and we have used that experience to refine the tests for closing the telescope for poor conditions. This task is finished as of 25 October.)
4. Finish program to control the telescope enclosure to the point it's ready for the first year of operations. (We have determined a few changes in the control program necessary for automatic operation as a result of our experience in September. Mainly this involves checking to see if the procedure for closing the roof doesn't finish because the sensor that detects the telescope is interrupted by bugs (as seemed to have happened). We have since developed a procedure for mailing back to Nashville status files from the roof controller to assess the working of the roof. The roof-control scheme is now ready for routine operations, as running the telescope automatically from Nashville proves. As the result of routine operations in November, we wrote a procedure to make sure the roof-control program is always running by checking on it every hour. It had died on a reboot, keeping the telescope from running on two nights.)
5. Get the X10 device for controlling the lights at the observatory working with the computers so we can turn them on from Nashville for diagnostic work. (Starting on 6/27/01, we were able to get a CM17A radio-transmitting unit to work with a radio-receiving wall unit and set it up at the observatory in September. We found a free linux-based control program for it on the internet and are now able to turn on the lights in the telescope enclosure and dim the red lights over the Internet.)
6. Set up the CCD with an image projected on it and assess the stability of its images. (We have made a shroud to cover the light path, found a lens to use in tests [kindly lent by Dyer Observatory at Vanderbilt], and set up the CCD/projection source in a work room that can be darkened as of mid September. At that point, we could say the CCD detects light, but we have since set up a source with small holes in foil to simulate a starfield and used it to assess the CCD, which, fortunately, works.)
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