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The ESA teamed with Nissan to build an off-road astronomy lab
Nissan unveiled its Navara Dark Sky concept vehicle at the Hannover Motor Show this week, and it's a vehicle designed for astronomers. The truck is an enhanced version of the automaker's Navara vehicle and along with including some handy new features, it also has a trailer in tow that carries a powerful PlaneWave telescope. Designed with the European Space Agency, the trailer not only houses the telescope but has a number of features that protect the telescope and help researchers collect and transmit data.
The trailer boasts a refrigerated interior that helps stabilize the telescope and battery packs can power a WiFi hotspot, a laptop station and a UHF transmitter for data relay. Further, the truck itself makes use of red lighting in order to cut down on light pollution while the ProPilot driver assistance technology takes the trailer into account and helps locate parking that best accommodates the trailer and telescope.
Seems like a good platform for measuring occultations.
Also at Autoblog.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday September 21 2018, @11:06PM (1 child)
You could grind glass for the rest of your life yet never run out of interesting problems to solve.
And it's what got me accepted to Caltech.
My first six inch mirror grinding kit came with two thick disks of glass, I think six grades of abrasive from very hard and coarse to very fine and soft, as well as some Jeweler's Rouge, which when mixed with water looks just like human blood, a couple pounds of boiled-down pine pitch and NO INSTRUCTIONS.
There was just a brief note that informed me that those instructions are quite complex, so I'd need a book. For your first scope I enthusiastically recommend Jean Texerau's "How To Make A Telescope".
The truly hard part for me - at the age of twelve - was the mounting. I had trouble with every mount I ever made, leading to my present advice: start working on the mounting at the same time as you start working on your mirror. You'll find all kinds of things wrong with your first mount, so lather, rinse and repeat.
First light for the eight inch Newtonian I made when I was seventeen was a total eclipse of the Moon that I watched from the peak of Mount Diablo just east of Berkeley, California.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by MyOpinion on Thursday September 27 2018, @10:31PM
May I add, experimenting with mylar and different other membrane materials plus a parabolic dish works pretty well too: it can turn into a large parabolic mirror with practically no grinding (albeit a bit extra care needed to stick the membrane on the dish's surface with no air bubbles). It will also be lighter.
Truth is like a Lion: you need not defend it; let it loose, and it defends itself. https://discord.gg/3FScNwc