Just another South African Astronomical Observatory Wordpress site
Day 3: bRing Installation on the observing platform
Third day of bRing commissioning, with all the major testing and configuring completed. The bRing electronics, hardware and some parts of software was verified for controlling the switches, e.g. the fans ensuring bRing kept ventilated, the peltiers ensuring bRing is temperature controlled inside and directing necessary heating/cooling in the insulated hood where the West and East Camera’s are situated.
bRing on shipping and now transfer pellet
bRing with it’s shutters being opened and closed via software testing phase in electronics workshop before moving it to the observing platform.
bRing being transferred by SAAO support stuff using a forklift to the observing platform where it will be powered and connected to the local network.
bRing on the observing platform with bRing- team and SAAO technicians and other stuff supporting in getting it mounted and oriented towards South.
bRING mounted to the platform, with power and network connectivity. Now ready for a integration and dry run on the sky of Sutherland.
bRing -ZA with first light on Magellanic Clouds.
Team bRing celebrating first light !!
First stages of bRing integration and software executed perfectly and obtained first light with great success. Now bRing needs to be optimized and be ready for science verification and final commissioning before finally performing observations on Beta Pictoris.
Published by
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.
View all posts by Blaine Lomberg
