The 2016 shut-down action began today with RSS being removed from the telescope. Before that could happen, *everything* had to be disconnected, the etalons were removed & the HRS fibres were carefully stowed out of harm's way. Eben & his team then did a superb job of safely relocating the spectrograph from the top of the tracker to the spectrometer room on the ground floor beneath the telescope!
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| Removing the etalons |
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| HRS fibres stashed in the blue tube |
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| We have lift-off! |
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| This is why cranes get checked & certified! |
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| RSS approaching the hatch in the first floor |
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| Docking with the frame that RSS will call home for the next month or so |
The focus usually tends to be on glamorous scientific results, but it's these sorts of technical efforts that actually make observational astronomy a viable pursuit. To provide a feel for what all goes into taking care of a facility like this, we'll aim to post at least one captioned pic per day throughout the shut-down!
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