3 years of ruthless detective work investigating & characterising the image quality (IQ) problems of the Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) have led us here: time to bring the Spherical Aberration Corrector (SAC) down & sort out the optics...Sounds good - what happens now? Well, after making sure you have an incredibly detailed plan for Each & Every Step, assembling an impressive heap of gear & a team you wouldn't mind going to war with, you yank the seats out of a large van, replace them with the contents of the optics lab & head for the largest optical telescope in the Southern Hemisphere :)
Tomorrow the corrector makes its way down from the tracker to the clean room below the telescope. Those fortunate enough to be present are likely to experience accelerated ageing during this process!
I just want to say that I think this is the best way to document this sort of stuff chaps. It makes it so much easier for others to follow. I'm personally using the Google RSS reader in my browser. Good luck to all of you with this BIG job. All the best from Deutschland.
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