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Day 2: bRing unboxing and commissioning
Second day of bRing commissioning, and started unboxing bRing from its shipping crate in the Electronics Workshop on the plateau!!
bRing arrived all intact and in very good condition.
After unwrapping bRing with some of its tools and peripherals, we made visual checks that bRing was in good condition before suppling power to bRing and its UPS.
First work completed for bRing was some safety checks, inspections, sealing any holes and ensuring cables and wires was all connected. In addition, some of bRings fan guards was installed on the peltier fans for cooling purposes in the insulated hood of the bRing housing. The lenses was focused and fixed to 3m on the East and West camera.
bRings platform modification’s, power supply and network connectivity was discussed as to supply these connections inside bRing to the outside world, as bRing is autonomous in operation.
bRing computers, UPS, server and network converter
Tomorrow, we plan to close bRing up and move it to the platform.
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Blaine Lomberg
Blaine Lomberg studied Physics from 2005-2008 at the University of the Western Cape. In 2009, he completed an Honours Degree specializing in Nuclear Physics. In 2010, Blaine joined the Accelerator and Engineering Group at iThemba Labs, where he worked on ion source physics focusing on a diagnostic device for ion beam quality measurements. His Master’s thesis was titled, “Studies of an emittance measurement device for beam quality optimisation of ion sources”. From September 2012 -2015, Blaine joined oPAC (optimization of the performance of any Particle Accelerator - FP7 Marie Curie Initial Training Network (ITN) scheme) an EU Consortium as a Marie Curie Fellow and was jointly based at the Cockcroft Institute for Accelerator Science in Daresbury and the University of Liverpool, UK. During his fellowship, Blaine developed advance R&D technology for novel optical instrumentation for particle accelerator diagnostic applications.
In July 2016, Blaine joined the SAAO as a PDP (Professional Development Program) fellow, with his research aimed on developing novel instrumentation for observational astronomy; specially focussing on studying exoplanets such as ringed system’s similar to Saturn. His interest includes adaptive optics and optimising imaging systems for overcoming the limitations of conventional telescopes used today. Within the NRF-SAAO collaboration, Blaine is a PhD student with the University of Cape Town working with Dr. Steve Crawford and co-supervision by Prof. Patricia Whitelock.
In addition, Blaine enjoys blogging, being active in student outreach, disseminating science and his research to the public and local communities.
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