Sunday, April 26, 2009

A "long weekend" indeed

Although not quite as intense as last weekend, there's still plenty going on at SALT... :)

With all the gear installed & made to work, we pronounce the M4/M5 wavefront test "commissioned" - the age of pinhole astronomy is near!! Coming soon: live video of all your favourite aberrations (get your Zernikes here).

Also, M5 had its reflectivity measured before & after a trial make-over. A special mirror cleaning goo was applied to a small patch near the edge of M5 & allowed to dry before being peeled off to remove dust & dirt from the mirror surface. Later this was also tried on one half of a badly mangled surface relief grating - stay tuned for the results!

After spending most of Sunday recording a TV interview, Charl & Seb helped us with some essential clean room redecorating & then had to remove an unwelcome visitor from the workshop (Shireen, Darragh - skip the rest of this sentence & the image below): a baby Spotted House Snake.

In addition to the welcome improvement in the weather, we also enjoyed a really spectacular crescent moon on Sunday evening!

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