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This morning, the historic 20-ft beam Michelson stellar interferometer was disturbed from its resting place in the rafters of the 100-inch telescope building on Mt. Wilson where it has been stored in wraps ("swaddling cloth" as described by Allan Sandage) since its use in the early 1920's to measure diameters of supergiant stars. The instrument was pulled out of the rafters by a crew from Sea West Enterprises, Inc., CHARA's prime contractor on Mt. Wilson, in preparation for its restoration and display in the exhibit hall attached to CHARA Control/Office Building. That building is now under construction.
The following pictures show the interferometer freshly unwrapped but still in the same resting place where its been for 75 years. The close-up show the sophistication of the instrument, complete with the ability to remotely control the baseline and to align (tip/tilt) the feed mirrors.
A sequence shows the deft job Eric Simison, President of Sea West (and expert equipment operator), and his crew did in slipping the estimated 1-ton beam safely to the ground. After the undersigned blew decades of dust off the interferometer, the instrument was put back into the 100-inch building.CHARA (actually Sea West, of course) will place this "holy relic of interferometry" on display in the new exhibit hall. The instrument will be mounted atop the old prime focus upper end of the telescope, lowered into a pit canted at a 10 degree angle, and will thus become the central exhibit in this very specialized museum of astronomical interferometry.
The last picture shows the construction status as of today of the Control Building. The exhibit hall will occupy the right section of the building, and the excavation for the pit is cleary seen.Hal McAlister
Editors Note: I took a composite image of the 20 ft Interferometer in
June 1997, while it was still undisturbed and only partly
uncovered.
Maintained by Peter Lawson
Last Updated 21 May 1999
