Aluminisation

The mirrors have continued to be occasionally washed and cleaned both with CO$_2$ and water. M1 has clearly gone down in reflectivity, but also M2 is noticeably getting worse. Both mirrors are scheduled for aluminisation during the full Moon period in early July.

Beyond a thorough cleaning of the lower part of the telescope, we will also try to take the opportunity to do things in the adapter (e.g., clean the pick-up mirrors) which are normally hard to reach, and do things that would be hard to fit in the normal operations schedule (e.g., pump StanCam CryoTiger head, take out and clean the StanCam filters).

A detailed plan for this will be defined in advance.



Thomas Augusteijn 2009-05-14