A major assembly test has been successfully carried out for the MOONS cameras. The main mechanical structure for the MOONS cameras is being built and tested in Cambridge, but the structure to support and focus the camera detectors is being built in Edinburgh. For the first time these two complex assemblies have been joined together and no problems were encountered on this first meeting. Many of the parts shown in the image below will now be blackened to limit scattering of light within the instrument.
Cambridge have been building a dedicated cryostat to allow testing of the MOONS cameras. This can be seen in the image below undergoing its first cool down, which was also very successful.
These positive major steps mean that everything is now nearly ready for the arrival of the first set of camera optics, which are expected relatively soon, and full alignment testing can then commence.
MOONS: Multi-object Optical and Near-IR spectrograph 