Hamster's Kecks

Hi

BBC HD has just broadcast quite a decent general audience show about
the Keck telescopes.

It may be repeated if you don't mind a bit of celeb padding and
dumbing down for a Top Gear audience.

Far better views of a real telescope(s) and dome(s) than in my
previous 100 years of watching S&N. ;-)

Highly recommended with the usual reservations.

On Mar 8, 8:02*am, Dan Birchall nob...@imaginary-
host.danbirchall.com wrote:

Let's see, this'd be "Richard Hammond's Engineering
Connections, Series 1 -3. Deep Space Observatory - Keck, Hawaii"
right?

Being outside the UK, when I visit it, I get "Currently BBC iPlayer
TV programmes are available to play in the UK only" which would
make me really, really sad, except that my particular instance of
"outside the UK" involves, well, being on the same island as Keck,
and spending a fair bit more _at_ it there than the typical BBC
presenter.

I see there's a bit of a trailer for it up on YouTube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_dLDpruSMM

But I'm still curious as to what all he had to say about it...

Hi Dan

There was lots of lingering views of the telescope, observatory and
summit shots for the HD viewer. Plenty of background and historical
stills and video.

It started with a history of aperture limitations of lenses and then
solid mirrors.

Hamster explained, with the help of others, how infra red was
important to observations and how infra red imaging was developed to
allow US night bombing of supply routes in the Vietnam War.

The history of refrigeration was discussed and shown to be important
to the observatory to avoid cool down time and deleterious thermal
effects on seeing conditions from within the dome.

There was discussion of the use of mirror segments, limitations of
single solid disks and how the mirror segments were polished by
glancing angles of "sand blasting" but using a rather finer 'abrasive
medium'. Adaptive optics were discussed and well illustrated

All very enjoyable if a little basic at times with the inevitable
"I'm a dumb celeb but willing to learn" moments straight out of
children's TV. Perhaps I'm just too picky and cynical but overall the
entire programme was well worth seeing with plenty of real meat for
the more astro/instrument interested viewer.

From your cryptic reference to your actual location may one assume
that you are playing with these nice toys? :-)

How are you adapting to the altitude?

I would have imagined that waving warning bats at passing aeroplanes
would keep you quite warm?

You might have more luck with a laser pointer. ;-)