DAY 1-3
In the Beginning
Hello, this is the old telescope Dome on the roof of King's College London which we are going to get going again. Please go to www.darklondonskies.com for more details.
Prologue
After 30 years of neglect, the dome was in a real state; cobwebs, filth, a smell of decay and even a snake skin were all ingredients to a humongous cleaning task.
Cleaning and more cleaning
With a mixture of bleach and soap and fairy fluid and filth the result could have only been a chemical reaction with lots of bubbles
DAY 3-5
Mind your head
One of Malcolm's top priorities was to secure our heads by creating a 'cushion' on the ceiling... Result: acceptable
A beautiful day and 'puff'
When the Sun shines over London... it really is a beautiful sight... especially if followed by Malcolm's expressions...
Clean as a whistle
The final result, a clean... and red floor... a scent of prairies and a mirror-like dome... i'm serious...
DAY 6-8
PUTTY!
Water was coming in through the dome roof, a good tube of insulating putty did the trick in securing the impermeability of the place.
Too much thinking...
The hatch was becoming a real conundrum of ifs and maybes.. why can't everything just be simple for once?
DAY 9-11
Hatch(et)
Seriously, if that thing falls on my neck or fingers once more I will go mental! Anyway, today was dedicated yet again to fixing the hatch(et) problem.
Carpentry + Heat = A long day
When something is stuck in the dome, it is really stuck, I mean, ... just how unpractical was this thing? The two panels seemed to lock tight everytime one slid on top of the other one.
DAY 12-14
Malcolm's Plans
A brief interview regarding the legacy of the telescope and its functionality.
It is all about design
Many drawings were made in the process of creative thinking, this allowed us to better visualise possible problems with our ideas.Usually Malcolm did not need the drawings to say that an idea was worthless (to put it mildly)
King's Dungeons and carpentry
The -1 floor at the strand campus is littered with relics from another age! The abandoned labs have an archaic technological beauty around them, one such lab I labelled the cannibal fly graveyard... groce but worth the visit at the same time.
DAY 15-17
Motion at last
The moment when the motor started to rotate with the power supply. In practice we would have used a 12V car battery capable of delivering 4A of current to the motors.
Oscillating Arduinos
The processing unit between the CPU and the motors was an Arduino circuit board. We built a fuse box and wrote the code which would have allowed the motors to be switched on or off or change direction of rotation depending upon the command given.
DAY 18-20
Glue and pegs
With the gears placed on the motors, now we had to stick the teeth onto the iron ring. Having been de-rusted it was a straightfarward process... which stunk... alot...
More glue and pegs
The final result, a 10 m in circumference toothed belt which would be driven by the motors
The sound of success
The theoretical positioning of the two motors is see, and the characteristic VVVVVVVVV sound in the background showing that both motors revolved. We were still sceptical about whether they would unleash enough power to drive the dome.
DAY 21-23
007
The day the roof got taken over by undercover agents...
from a film crew ... namely filming 'Hebdon's curse'
We be doing Physics
After finally measuring the torque required to move the dome, with a clever adaptation of the elevator effect, we concluded that the two motors would have done the trick.
First Images
Vibrating picture from the central London telescope on a hot day. The wobbly picture is a combination of bad focusing, vibration of the building and the heat haze coming up off the city and the surface of the Thames. It shows what we are up against!
DAY 24-26
Find North
Before mounting the telescope it was necessary to know where North was. This might sound easy .. after all you only need a compass.. but not if you are surrounded by a metal ring... hence we had to calculate North manually...
Meet Bill; Master Crafstman
A legend, the guardian of the -1 dungeons, Bill sees all and does all, we owe him a lot of craft-work which we simply did not have the skills to do. A real pity that King's is slicing the budget on these ateliers.
Meet Bill : Volume II
Nailing, sawing, fixing , screwing... whatever... have you got something that needs fixing? Bill will do it in no time!
DAY 27-29
Is it? No.. Daniel Craig?
Another master of another dungeon... the robotics labs. I'm sorry but he is the mirror image of Daniel Craig... minus the accent...
Bill fixing the gear on the motor
And there we have the two motors, fully assembled and ready to drive the dome, thanks Bill!
Malcolm's skills with a jigsaw
We spoke to Dr Malcolm Fairbairn, Department of Physics, about his plans for a new telescope on the roof of King's, which will enable staff and students to observe everything from planets in our Solar System to distant galaxies.
DAY 30-32
Telescope at last!
The telescope mount, probably should have posted before, but here is the video of us calibrating and balancing the mount.
Imperial vs Metric
A small blip in communication really did make the Mars rover mission go awry... Bill and Malcolm discuss about the issue.