I can’t wait to root this thing. Android 1.5 is not enough!
What is the logic behind scheduling all street-work on Mass Ave for 10-11 am on a workday during the hottest days of the summer? As much as I don’t appreciate getting stuck in traffic with no air conditioning on my way to work, I’m sure the guys with jackhammers hate it even more standing outside in the scorching sun for hours making holes in concrete you could fry bacon on.
Not a video post but I have pictures! First, here’s one taken by the very helpful Chris Schaab, the resident correlator problem-solver at the SMA, who was kind enough to come pick me up at the airport in Hilo, get some dinner, drop me off at the hotel, and then pick me up the next day and drive me up to the summit! Here I am, your contemporary Rurik the Rus, standing outside the Smithsonian offices in Hilo.
My first day was spent mostly in the office with Chris talking about technical things, until we heard that the telescope configuration was going to change from “extended” to “subcompact.” A little background: the SMA is an array of 8 relatively large telescopes that can be placed on numerous pads all around the summit, in configurations suited to observing at different resolutions. So an extended configuration means that the telescopes are spread out to get really long baselines, while subcompact means that they ‘re tightly packed. And when the scientists decide they want to change configuration it means that something has to go out there, pick up the telescopes, and move them to different pads. As it turns out, that something is just a custom built tractor called the “transporter.” Anyway, being the nerds we are we had to go out and see this! And, being the lucky nerds that we are, the transporter operator let us get onto the machine and ride it all the way down to the inner-ring. I would have pictures but, of course, my camera was out of batteries. However, one of the visitors promised to hook me up with pictures and video(!) he had taken of the occasion.
The next night was my turn to be the warm-body in the control room, which basically means just sitting around watching the operator sit around and fix problems if things go wrong. Things rarely go wrong. But I was able to get some photos of the array and other telescopes on the summit, as well as some video of the nasty, bumpy car ride up the mountain. I’ll post that video as soon as I get some free time to edit it a bit. The first picture shows four of the SMA antennas pointing towards Mars, the next is of one of the two non-inner-ring antennas and below you can see an empty pad that they hook up to. The third photo is of the inner-ring with the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope on the hill in the background. The JCMT is also a submillimeter telescope that we’re hopefully going to include in a phased array I’m working on. In the fourth photo you can see we’re not the only astronomers on the summit, there are numerous optical telescopes with operators that get really pissed off if you leave the control room lights on at night! And finally the last two are pictures of the view from Hale Pohaku, the astronomers’ dormitory 4,000 feet below the summit.
