Ryan Hamilton
@AstroBokonon
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Head of Instrumentation at @LowellObs and veteran flier on @SOFIAtelescope. Never got over Macho Grande. Tweets are my own, especially the ones with bad words.
in SPAAAAAAAAAACE
Joined July 2011
I wonder what I was talking about at this exact moment. The size of a fish I once caught?
Instrument scientist Ryan Hamilton reviews the HAWC instrument's capabilities with guests from @Caltech in the lab. https://t.co/Q9f60JP1i4
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PHOTOS: For the last time the World Famous @NASA @SOFIAtelescope departs @NASAArmstrong for her final resting place at @pimaairfans Museum #avgeek #SOFIA 12-13-22
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Random question because I'm considering a crazy thing @tekwendell (or @Level1Techs), can your KVMs be remotely switched if you're not in front of the keyboard but in a VNC or RDP session?
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This isn't just a plane. It's so much more. The world’s largest flying observatory is entering retirement. Learn about the legacy of our SOFIA mission: https://t.co/WXUpj0UF9A
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The rest of the takeoff songs that series: Flight 294: Bill Halley and His Comets' version of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" Flight 295: Star Wars Theme (it was Star Wars day after all) HAWC+ came off the telescope on May 6 after many sleepless nights by all.
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And whooooo boy what a first flight for HAWC+ that was. The instrument was heavily impacted by aircraft vibrations, which were a real problem for a far-IR instrument running at a cool 0.2 Kelvin. We ended up ending the flight early because the instrument warmed up too soon.
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HAWC+'s first flight on SOFIA was on 2016 April 26, SOFIA flight # 293. There's a long tradition of takeoff songs, and I wracked my brain forever trying to figure out a good one. We took off to John Denver's "The Eagle and the Hawk" just a few minutes late.
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@SOFIAtelescope @ADSBexchange And because I can't link a GIF and an image in the same tweet, here's HAWC+'s first balance checkout moving the instrument and electronics rack between the elevation extremes
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@SOFIAtelescope @ADSBexchange When I got back, HAWC+ was already on the plane! It took a monumental amount of effort by dozens of people over almost as many years to get to this point
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@SOFIAtelescope @ADSBexchange I actually missed the first SOFIA install of HAWC+ because I had to run off to a wedding, but I had time to put our in-flight toolkit together and fill out the required tool control paperwork to get it cleared to bring on the aircraft for flight; April 2016
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@SOFIAtelescope @ADSBexchange Much labwork, paperwork, and then more paperwork ensued. Here's HAWC+ on it's first fully-integrated mounting to the SOFIA telescope simulator in March 2016
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@SOFIAtelescope @ADSBexchange First setup of all the bits in the Palmdale lab; the colored blob is the actual real-time detector readout, which looked like a mess at this early point in the initial sanity checks. But the colors would change as you waved your hand in front of the instrument, which was great!
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@SOFIAtelescope @ADSBexchange Delivery day in Palmdale - January 2016. I called the lab configuration the "choo choo" setup because the instrument just looks so ... mechanical and industrial.
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Tonight's final science flight of @SOFIAtelescope just took off with my former friend HAWC+. I have lots of feels so I'll dig through pictures over the next hour or so and post some fun ones of those crazy days. @ADSBexchange has the best real-time track:
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It's been a very active monsoon season - it was foggy a few days ago which was a bit unusual, and I was able to catch lots and lots of misty mountains on the drive back from the telescope the last few days.
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And ta-da, a mirror is born! The mirror is on the bottom, reflecting the top of the chamber. It'll sit in the chamber and slowly warm back up to ambient temps over the weekend, and the chamber will be opened up on Monday to look at witness samples coated along with the mirror.
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This is just before the coating was complete - since it's a mirror at this point, I was able to look down to get a great view of the concentric rings of coating filaments. The thing in the center is an actual/regular lightbulb. Look at those filaments glow!
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This video is a bit of a brain bender; I'm looking down at the newly coated mirror initially, and it's reflecting the chamber ceiling! Then I pan up to the actual ceiling. Keep an eye on the porthole on the far chamber wall to keep oriented.
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And they glow bright! You can see through the glass still, so aluminum hasn't significantly started to accumulate just yet.
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