Polarbear Telescope Assembly is FINISHED

Brian and I left the site this weekend, so I am officially declaring the assembly phase done. There are many things left to be done, but I have been away from Berkeley too long, so I decided to come back.

Although it took about twice as long as I originally thought it would, the structure is basically where is should be. We have some major outstanding issues, like the servo and the enclosures, but those will hopefully get done in next few months. Expect to come back here in about a month.

I took this picture above just as the sun was setting. You can see that the pad is a bit more tidy. Brian was busy trying to pack up, so I couldn't get him to pose next to the telescope.

Thanks to the GD guys for sticking with it until the job was done. I am VERY excited that Polarbear finally has a telescope- it has been 6 years in the making for me. I was just told that we are celebrating 400 years of the telescope. Here's to hoping that Polarbear has as much impact as Galileo!

Painting the box

I spent the last few days painting this box. It is a lot harder than you might think. David convinced me to paint the box so that it would keep over the winter, and it could save us a lot of money.

It was hard because there are so many corners on the outside. Also, low grade plywood sucks up a lot of primer. It took 3 gallons of Primer and one gallon of overcoat. The roof is also not strong enough to support a person, so I had to use the lift to paint up there. Brian was using the manlift during the day to paint the telescope, so I was using it in the dark in the middle of the night.

There are a few more boxes to paint, but I have decided that next time, I will use a paint sprayer. Latex paint requires a special airless High pressure sprayer, which is why I did not get one right away, but I arm hurts way to much now to do this again.

Scorpion

I found this guy in front of the utility container in the middle of the night. I put it in bag, and brought it down to my cottage and forgot it there. I hope the bag will keep him for the next month.

Some of us have been changing out shoes at the high site, and this photo is supposed to convince you that it might be a bad idea.

Repainting the Structure

Brian has spent the last few days repainting the entire structure. It took 5 gallons of paint, and we only have about a quart left for touch ups. The original plan was to just touch up the structure, but it made it look too uneven, so we decided to go all way. We will see how nice it looks in 6 mo after we have had our grubby hands all over it.



This was some special two part epoxy paint-Interthane 990HS. I hear that it cost a lot of money, and it smelled really awesome.