First Shipment to Chile Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGT) achieved a critical milestone today, with two 40’ containers leaving their Santa Barbara headquarters en route to the CTIO observatory node in Chile. Inside the containers are three sets of enclosure walls designed and built by LCOGT for our 1-meter class telescopes. This is the first shipment of LCOGT-manufactured equipment to an observatory site in the global network.
Update on the 0.4m enclosure The development of our custom made enclosures for our 0.4m telescopes is continuing. The project is called Aqawan, which is the Chumash word for 'to be dry'. Have a look at my previous blog entry about the aqawan design.
How to keep a telescope dry Not only keeping the telescopes dry but safe from wind, snow and all adverse weather conditions. For the 0.4m network the answer to this comes in the form the Aqawan enclosure. You can see the first model, fresh from the workshop in the top image on the right, and standing in it is the lead engineer for the project, Annie Hjelstrom. This enclosure has been installed in the parking lot of the Santa Barbara headquarters of LCOGT and will be housing a single 0.4m which will be used for testing the control software.
