Moon, Jupiter, Laser & Hale Telescope

Here is how things looked last night on Palomar:

Inside the SWIFT team from Oxford was studying disk formation in galaxies.

Support Scientific Research in the Fight Against Leukemia

Back in December I told you about Operation SkyPhoto an effort to raise money for young Alexander Thatte, a young leukemia patient who also happened to the son of two physicists from the University of Oxford (that's where Palomar's SWIFT spectrograph comes from). After a long struggle Alexander lost his battle with the disease early this year.

The Alexander Thatte Fund has been created in his memory to support research into causes of infant leukemia and to seek a cure for this devastating disease. It is a very worthy cause. So if you have the money to give, just do it. All donations, even those made from here in the U.S., are tax deductible

SWIFT Installed: the Movie

As promised here is the time-lapse movie of the inaugural installation of the new SWIFT spectrograph. You'll see the adaptive optics (AO) instrument is installed and then some computer racks are installed into the Hale Telescope's Cassegrain cage. SWIFT then comes out onto the observing floor and then it is mated to the AO unit and the telescope.

A 104 mb higher resolution version of this time-lapse movie is available here.

SWIFT Installed

The newest instrument on the Hale Telescope, Oxford's SWIFT Spectrograph, has been installed. Tonight is its first night at Palomar.

The top photo shows SWIFT on its handling cart just before it was mated to the adaptive optics instrument in the Hale Telescope's Cassegrain cage.

In the second photo the instrument has just been installed. The next step is to cable everything up and then check out the system. They have two nights for the commissioning and a couple of science nights afterward.

I took many photos of the instrument being installed. Expect a movie soon.

SWIFT Uncrated

SWIFT, the new instrument from Oxford, England arrived last week and today it was safely unpacked. All seems to have survived the transit across the pond. Now the real work begins for the SWIFT team as they prepare the instrument for first light in mid-October.

SWIFT Arrives

It is always a good day when a new instrument arrives at the observatory. Today a big truck pulled up with boxes from England containing the new SWIFT instrument. Built at Oxford, SWIFT is an integral field spectrograph that will work with our current adaptive optics system and its successor, PALM-3000.




What do you do with an integral field spectrograph that is hooked up to an adaptive optics system? Study cool stuff like supermassive black holes at the cores of nearby galaxies, and the dynamics of galaxy clusters at great distances. It will be a while before the SWIFT team arrives and unpacks the instrument and not until next month before it gets time on the 200".

Stay tuned.