The big news for us this week is the lift of the wide field corrector to the top of the telescope. This involved removing the old test mass and the hexapods. The hexapods were serviced and put back on. The corrector was sealed up, rolled out of the clean tent into the dome floor and then lifted up to the top of the telescope. See the attached pictures.

The lift of the Wide Field Corrector begins. The Corrector has its side plates mounted so no optics are visible.

The corrector now at the top of the crane is lowered into the tracker. The blue and silver hexapods sticking up are only a small obstacle.

In addition the the installation of the corrector some work with the laster tracker was done and we determined the position of the base of the hexapods and see how much they may need to be shimmed to get into proper position for the corrector. At the same time we confirmed the distance to the CCAS instrument from the primary mirror and found it to be well within specifications for this corrector’s design focal distance.

Overall a great week with a major milestone passed. We now will start the PFIP installation as well as all of the plumbing and wiring connections to the new components.