LSST E-News |
LSST M2 Substrate Complete and Shipped
The 3.5-meter diameter, 100-mm thick meniscus M2 blank of ULE™ substrate met all dimensional requirements with a contour generated convex profile within 40 microns of final mirror figure. The acid etched rear and edge surfaces are ready for axial and lateral pad bonding.
On a crisp, sunny November morning, the 31,000-pound, 13-foot wide LSST secondary mirror (M2) container rolled out of Corning’s Canton, New York facility, two-months ahead of schedule, and began its journey to Cambridge, Massachusetts on a 45-foot long air ride trailer. The wide load successfully negotiated the narrow rural roads and occasional horse buggy on its way through Vermont and into Massachusetts where the load switched to a different cab to minimize wheelbase in order to fit down the loading ramp at Harvard University. This LSST partner institution provided a 40-ton gantry crane sufficient for off-loading the precious cargo, a generous 14-foot wide receiving ramp (did we mention the 13-foot wide container?) and ample storage space to accommodate our mirror blank.
After considerable efforts to line up, our ace driver retreated down the ramp until the precious cargo was positioned under the crane. Life is good when you can pick and replace the entire rear of the trailer to assist in positioning. The Harvard crane then successfully hoisted the container off the flatbed as the truck pulled away and then placed our piece in the lab, where it will wait until needed for the next stage, optical polishing.
Bill Gressler contributed to this article.
LSST is a public-private partnership. Funding for design and development activity comes from the National Science Foundation, private donations, grants to universities, and in-kind support at Department of Energy laboratories and other LSSTC Institutional Members:
Brookhaven National Laboratory; California Institute of Technology; Carnegie Mellon University; Chile; Cornell University; Drexel University; Google Inc.; Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics; Institut de Physique Nucléaire et de Physique des Particules (IN2P3); Johns Hopkins University; Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University; Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network, Inc.; Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Los Alamos National Laboratory; National Optical Astronomy Observatory; Princeton University; Purdue University; Research Corporation for Science Advancement; Rutgers University; SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory; Space Telescope Science Institute; The Pennsylvania State University; The University of Arizona; University of California, Davis; University of California, Irvine; University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; University of Pennsylvania; University of Pittsburgh; University of Washington; Vanderbilt University
LSST E-News Team:
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- Additional contributors as noted
LSST E-News is a free email publication of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Project. It is for informational purposes only, and the information is subject to change without notice.
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