OSU Logo The Ohio State University
College of Mathematical & Physical Sciences
Department of Astronomy

MODS Team Progress Report
2000 March 8

This report covers activity since 2000 Feb 23.

Work continues on the mechanical and optical design of MODS. A particular distraction has been preparing papers for the SPIE meeting (last week was the submission deadline). Also, Bruce Atwood is away in South Africa at SAAO setting up the DANDICAM at the 1-meter telescope, so we did not have a meeting this week (last week was the monthly instrumentation group general meeting, at which the MODS progress to date was summarized for the rest of the group).

Tom O'Brien has produced a 3-view drawing of MODS for Jesper Storm at Potsdam. These drawings are to help the Potsdam team evaluate the impact of the current MODS design on the space above the focal plane that must be shared with the AGW units at the straight Gregorian focii.

Of particular concern are the grating turrets which occupy quite a bit of space above the focal plane. The cassette mechanism for inserting multi-slit plates at the focal plane is not yet shown. This will also have some encumberment on the space above the focal plane.

A rendering of the Spectrograph with labels of the major elements is available for download below as a 208KB DWF file:

MODS 3-view Layout (208KB DWF file)
For readers who do not have access to AutoCad for viewing DWF files can download one of two free viewers from Autodesk for the PC (none are available for Unix). These will work as either standalone DWF viewers or linked to Netscape or Internet Explorer. Sadly, the AutoDesk website prevents me from linking you directly to the viewer product pages (it diverts you to a different page instead; their server is too clever by half). Instead, you need to first go to the Autodesk Main Page and then follow the link labeled "Products & Solutions". At the bottom of the "Design+Drafting" category on the products page, follow the links to either "VoloTMView" or "WHIP!(R) Viewer" to get the software.

For reference, Volo View is the successor to Autodesk's WHIP! viewer, which will no longer be supported after this last release. Volo View Express is available for free, but you do need to register online before you get to the download page. Installation was very simple (<10min including download time). The design phases of MODS (and probably the rest of LBT) will often entail exchanging DWF files that would be unacceptably degraded in resolution when exported as PostScript or GIF/TIF/etc. It therefore seems to be a good idea for interested persons to have these viewers installed on their computers so they can read, view, and print DWF files at full resolution.

The next MODS meeting is tentatively scheduled for Wed, March 15, TBD

R. Pogge, 2000 March 9

[ Progress Reports | MODS Project Page | OSU LBT Page | OSU Astronomy Home Page ]
[rwp]