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Sunday, October 07, 2007

LBT support structure

I had been thinking I'd posted all my favorite pictures from my Mt. Graham observing run, but I went back through them tonight and found one or two of the LBT telescope itself. This is the back of the telescope support structure of the LBT. The round red structure on the left is the mirror cell for one of the two 8.4-meter diameter mirrors and is about 30 feet across! The inside of the dome is probably 60 feet tall and about 80 or 100 feet wide (maybe more!). What a gargantuan structure it is. And it all moves with the precision of a watch. This image was taken with an 8mm fisheye lens with an exposure of 1/30 seconds at f/3.5, ISO 800.
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1 comment:

Tuguldur said...

wow. Last week during my astronomy-major meeting, I had seen the interferometry device for LBT weighing over 7000lb!!! Will post some pix soon. :)