September | 2016 | ExeterAstro

What goes into the repair of a telescope? A lot of time and technical operations.

Our robotic observatory has a 10″ Ritchey–Chrétien optical system. The system focuses by moving the secondary mirror in and out using a very finely controlled motor assembly. After years of hard work, this little assembly got jammed up solidly. The company that made the telescope has moved onto bigger and better things, namely producing to-order optics. Contacting them resulted in contacting an original engineer (James Olson… yes…) who was willing and able to do repairs on the focuser.

The focuser was removed: an intricate couple of hours removing the secondary mirror, detaching all the electronics for the dew heater and focus motor, and then balancing the telescope, since it had lost a lot of mass from its front end. The focuser assembly was then shipped to James in Arizona.

The focuser was taken apart by James, polished, lubricated, re-assembled, and tested for days before he shipped it back to PEA. Once back at its home, the focuser had to be installed back into the spider (24 bolts), the secondary mirror installed onto the end of the focus assembly (three push bolts and three pull bolts), then the whole thing tested for proper movement. A dozen runs of the focuser later, the electronics and mechanics of the system were AOK and ready for the next phase. The next phase?

Collimation! Having removed everything out on the secondary mirror region, everything was out of alignment. All the optics have to be centered on the optical axis, and aligned perfectly both perpendicularly to the optical axis, and rotationally, as these are a matched pair of mirrors… Sigh. That was a time consuming but worthwhile task. Last night the system was star tested. Success! An image of Altair was used for final touches on collimation, and an image of SS Cygni was used to test scientific data usefulness. SS CYG is now in outburst (huzzah!) and the data are perfect! We have V magnitudes to +/- 0.004. We are back in action!#astronomy #photometry #repairs #observatory #robots #PhillipsExeterAcademy