Sunset
Credit: Megan
Last night's sunset was very, very red (the Moon looked pretty red too). It looked pretty spectacular behind the Lovell telescope (bottom image). While I was watching the Sun go down, I noticed that there were several engineers on the telescope structure. The duty controller (which happened to be Andy) told me that they were using jacks to raise the entire top section of the telescope: the wheel girders and the bowl itself. This is in preparation for some major engineering work to be carried out later in the year. The plan is to add additional bearings on the bottom of the bicycle wheels so the entire mass of the telescope will need to be lifted in order to install them. To make sure they know they can do this safely, and just what equipment will be necessary, the engineers were testing out the proceedure. From the ground beside the fence which surrounds the base of the telescope you couldn't see it actually move, but it is very impressive that four people with the right equipment can lift that much metal. If you look very carefully, you can see a couple of the engineers in the lower image on the left (click on it to see a larger version).
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