Re: The Last Trip

From: Howard Lester (hlester_at_mmto.org)
Date: 08/31/04 

Date: Tue, 31 Aug 2004 07:54:38 -0700

"William C. Keel" wrote

> Howard may differ, but I contend the biggest lesson astronomers
> learned from the MMT was not how to combine beams from multiple
> mirrors, but how thoroughly we'd been shooting ourselves in the
> feet with telescope and enclosure designs that created bad seeing.
>
> Bill Keel

Hi Bill,

No, I don't differ at all! In the early 80's, when I/we first learned of our
relatively exceptional seeing, I commented to our chief engineer that I bet
it has a lot to do with the open box design, rather than the usual narrow
dome slit. In fact, in the mid-80's we opened up the back of the building
and installed louvers for even more evenly distributed air circulation.

Another 'trick' we learned is wrapping every member of the optics support
structure with 3M aluminum tape to suppress their nighttime heat radiation.

Howard

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