Vera Rubin Engineering – IEEE Spectrum

the Vera C Robin Observatoryin ChileanShe witnessed her first photon a few months ago, a 25 -year event. A great editor Ivan Akraman A trip to Chile, to see the observatory and talk to the team about the multiple and large engineering challenges that it overcame, took itself more than a year to plan.

The visit started by the Italian photographer Enrico SackettiThose who arranged for exclusive access to telescope. The story that we wanted to tell Akerman is more required than a quick tour. So SacChetti and Ackerman arranged three nights at the Cerro Pachón summit, sleeping during the day, then staying up with engineers and scientists while working to get Robin on “SKY”.

Akkman and Saktetiti did not know exactly what would happen while they were there. In some respects, they became lucky – a few days before the first photon was full of frantic activity. In other ways, they were not very lucky. The dome covering the telescope was not working, moon (Astronomers ’curse everywhere) She was close to the full, and SacChetti was revealed with a disease asking him to be evacuated under the mountain.

“Discovery of Zezhaa near the Observatory is a good luck to see that night.” Evan Akraman

“For 24 hours of panic, I have recruited some amateur photographers among Robin employees to make sure we have all the pictures we need,” says Akraman. You can see some of their excellent works in “How will the Robin Observatory will invent astronomySacChetti regained enough to get the decisive shots he wanted.

The same characteristics that make Cerro Pachón the perfect place for participants can make it a difficult place to work. For SacChetti and Ackerman, as well as Rubin employees, it took up to 2600 meters of sea level some modification. Akerman did not have much physical reaction to the height. But he learned this mentally, the delicate air strikes everyone slightly differently.

“I have discovered the complete inability to remember the tables,” Akraman recalls. “William Omelin, director of the Data Management Project in Robin, told me that for him, it is a feeling that he knows the answer to a question, but not what is the answer in reality.”

In addition to scheduled interviews with engineers and astronomers, Akraman wandered around the control room, and joined the conversations that seemed interesting. Robin employee is not fairy, but he heard some rumors that involve local animals.

Viscachas, which is a type of Chinchilla of the size of the rabbit, is a good omen for astronomers at the Robin Observatory.Ivan Akraman

He says: “The discovery of viscosity near the observatory is a good luck to see that night, as it should. Less gentle is the Andes of the Andes that lives on the slopes near the southern physical research telescope, which is also located in Cerro Pachón. Conduors ride it is the turbulent air around the mountain.

Even other “unnamed” parts of the visit helped make the story better. The full moon, while overcoming a lot of the sky, lit off the observatory and led to some wonderful night pictures. The non -functional dome temporarily led to many in -depth conversations about the difficulty of making all these systems dedicated to working with each other, and helped Akraman to estimate the complex job of assignment engineers.