Following on from a lifetime test and 'design freeze' review in January, the Production Readiness Review milestone for the MOONS Fibre Positioning Units was successfully passed at MPS's factory in Biel/Bienne in March. This is a major project success and means that manufacture of the instrument FPUs can now begin! MPS hope to deliver the … Continue reading Fibre Positioner production begins
News
Collimation
MOONS recently took delivery of two of the largest optical components in the instrument: the main collimator mirrors for each spectrograph manufactured by KiwiStar Optics in New Zealand. Last week a team from Arcetri Observatory, Florence came to Edinburgh to install these two large optics within the not-insignificantly sized mounting structures that they had designed for … Continue reading Collimation
Mounting mighty lenses
The first set of optics for a MOONS camera have been delivered and successfully mounted into their housings. The six near-identical cameras in the MOONS spectrograph all use the same innovative optical design, more information on which can be found here. This first set of optics is for one of the two YJ-band cameras. Five … Continue reading Mounting mighty lenses
Ready to split the beam
This week MOONS has taken delivery of its first major optical components, the RI band dichroics. Each of the two MOONS spectrographs has three different spectral channels; light is split into these channels through two dichroics. The dichroics received are the first ones in the beam, which reflect the short wavelength radiation into the RI … Continue reading Ready to split the beam
Progress on the MOONS cameras
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 … Continue reading Progress on the MOONS cameras
Radiation shield fills the lab
MOONS has just taken delivery of by far and away the largest component we have received so far: the radiation shield. This colossal* structure will line the inside of the instrument's cryostat, forming the final barrier between the warm outside world and the chilled world inside MOONS, which will operate at around 130 K. The radiation … Continue reading Radiation shield fills the lab
Testing the electronics
We have received (and tested) the first batch of circuit boards for the FPUs. Each FPU requires two circuit boards; the main drive electronics that attach to the base of the FPU and a smaller board that is mounted on the alpha stage of the FPU and relays signals from the motor and switches on … Continue reading Testing the electronics
FPM baseplate delivered
The FPU baseplate was delivered today from Alimex, looking big and shiny and giving a worrying sense of scale for what is to come... The inspection report shows that the part meets the 10 micron profile tolerances on the FPU facets, which is extremely impressive considering the size and amount of material removal required. It … Continue reading FPM baseplate delivered
Collimator mirror structure
Some of largest parts of MOONS so far have just arrived in Edinburgh from Italy! Thanks Arcetri! In the box lie the support structures for the collimator mirrors, one for each of the spectrographs. Each support structure alone weighs 70kg, and another 70kg for the mirrors themselves. We don't yet have the mirrors, although one … Continue reading Collimator mirror structure
FPM baseplate in manufacture
Pictures from a visit to see the Fibre Positioning Module baseplate being manufactured at Alimex GmbH in Willich, nr Dusseldorf. The plate is being machined on a massive DMU 270P 5-axis mill. The monolothic baseplate is made from ultra-stable 5080 ACP aluminium alloy. It has 1069 'facets' onto which the FPUs, acquisition cameras and fiducials … Continue reading FPM baseplate in manufacture
MOONS: Multi-object Optical and Near-IR spectrograph 