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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: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 22 2018, @01:01AM
It may be a fluff piece, but it involves science. In this day and age where science is being kicked around by any number of powerful groups, this is a nice ray(sorry) of hope for nerds.
My question, where are the stabilizing legs on the trailer that make the telescope usable? Sitting on those big squishy tires would make it impossible to aim the telescope with any accuracy.