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

Attendees: Pat Osmer, Darren DePoy, Tom O'Brien, Bruce Atwood, Mark Derwent, Paul Byard, Jen Marshall, Jerry Mason & Rick Pogge

Optics

Darren visited SOML last week and saw progress on the blue camera corrector lenses. Both sides are now mostly polished, and the optic has lots of curvature. The piece was being moved to a measuring machine as part of the figuring work. Darren also saw work that is progressing on the other MODS camera primary mirrors.

Structure

Mark Derwent and Tom O'Brien reported on their visit to Indian Creek on January 30th, when they delivered another alignment fixture and trained the person doing the work in how to use it (the person assigned to the MODS structure is a terrific fabricator and is making excellent progress). They measure the last key point in space on the structure before the final welding is done. The measurments were within 1mm of the spec. Progress thus far has been excellent, and they should have a completed upper structure (all welds completed, buffing, and primer painting) done in early March. As a consequence of the construction of the first structure, they believe the second will go quickly as they have all of the measuring tools, and solved a lot of fabrication problems in the first that will speed construction.

Current Instrument Structure pictures are available. Look for images labeled "UpperFrame_YYMMDD" for dated images of frame construction progress.

Mark also reported on quotes for the MODS handling cart (vendor names and details withheld from this report as usual). We will report on the award in a future meeting.

Guide Cameras

We received the guide camera from Mike Lesser without problems. We will set it up in the lab once we get some space (we have to wait for an instrument in the space to be shipped out in March).