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Scanning the Skies: The Discovery Channel Telescope

Added Apr 05, 2019 •

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This video describes the process of site selection, component functions, and construction of a telescope. Watch the video and answer the questions provided by your teacher.

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where did we come from how was our Solar System created what dangers do we beyond our rise of the Discovery Channel telescope will find out the search for the answer that's what we do to a cutting-edge design for a new age of curiosity bigger and more powerful it could lead a century-old Observatory to the Forefront of modern astronomy Paradigm sister with 10,000 moving Parts Creek Winery dimensional Precision the tiniest mistake has huge consequences is a greater chance of something going wrong we are 10 will be catastrophic before the telescope can cap its first picture of the sky the first time we open the slot next to a sea star light shining in metal being the wonderful moment that is their critical call the first page in the next chapter of Lowell Observatory astronomers call it first light since the dawn of civilization man has been looking up trying to make sense of the heavens navigation the calendar the 24 hour clock all products of early attempt at astronomy we do astronomy to answer Humanity's oldest questions it seems to be a natural part of human curiosity to wonder most how to change that seemed most inaccessible or infant heavy atoms that make up the Earth in our bodies were fused many billions of years ago in Coralville Gangstar understanding the universe in a very profound way is understanding ourselves makes astronomy one of the most fundamental and most interesting of scientific Pursuits we study the universe by observing light for thousands of years the essential instrument we had was our eyes girl with the invention of the first telescope glasspointe here's the really ocean eyes our view of the universe we live in our place in that that's because of the telescope we can reach out from our play on the surface of the Earth window places where previously only our imagination would take us a telescope is a white bucket and that's how we understand the universe through light we can't put a into a beaker in a lab and squeeze it and poke it and test it all we can do is point our telescopes up at the heavens and collect light pink star by pouring into a telescope is gathered in the primary like a basin for catching rainwater the bigger the more the more like it can collect from their the light reflects into a smaller secondary mirror where it is condensed into a single and focused on Dual Highway motion camera astronomers in the 21st century are in a very fortunate position because we have technology at our disposal limits what we can do pretty much just to our imagination there is one major problem Cutting Edge technology has made Modern telescopes incredibly expensive which means not enough high-tech telescopes are being built competition for exerting time is Fierce your odds are very well health department in white 61821 it's this very problem that is about to set a small history Toscana mean on an incredible journey from the top of Mars Hill on Flagstaff Arizona Lowell Observatory has been unraveling the mysteries of the universe for more than a cent Tombaugh discovered Pluto here in 1930 no surveys Health Plan Moody missions important discoveries prove that our universe is expanding first king from the telescopes on Mars Hill with the completion of the Perkins telescope in 1960 Louis XIII largest telescope but it was soon overshadowed why was the Space Race heated up in the years that follow Government funding help build even bigger more technologically advanced telescopes elsewhere we were finding ourselves increasingly at a competitive disadvantage observatories like roll Survive by acquiring scientific once we receive substantial from the National Science Foundation and from NASA competition for those dollars is very stiff in this regard astronomy is a hyper-competitive field having access to our own state-of-the-art telescope would be an enormous competitive advantage from Mobile to stay relevant and operate they'll need a world-class telescope matter if we want to remain an observer when people observe we need a bigger telescope pocket large telescopes cost pump porch needs a part and they find in the unlikeliest of places the Discover channel does research and get Returns the results of that research to the public Discovery is greatly enhancing our ability to broadcast that research Millions around the world with the first years from now and the world will have this before the solar system and the universe beyond Discovery Channel will come it nearly of third of the telescope's proposed 53 million dollar budget the rest will come from Lowell Observatory self for it they'll have to spend every penny they got if they fail it will be the last failure ever experienced at Lowell Observatory everything hinges on Lowell research competitiveness depends on this telescope and we have to make it work for betting the farm on it it will be called the Discovery Channel telescope the DCT with computer control guidance and focusing next-generation instrumentation and a 14 foot wide mirror it will be among the world's most advanced telescope to capture detail on images millions of thousands of components must work together with extreme Precision there is Little League overall tolerances are measured in nanometers roughly 1 million 7-inch it's another world in a lot of your intuition goes out the window manufacturing at that level of precision in a machine the size of an office is no easy task telescopes are among the most difficult and complex devices man has ever built the DCT will take years to construct and cameras will follow the build every step of the way in the summer of 2005 construction begins in the Coconino National Forest near the Happy Jack ranger station Ramona Society hello pretty good the weather on top of Happy Jack can be harsh but it is a welcome trade-off for the sites create event Bowl engine spent more than a year looking for the perfect site for their new telescope a site for a modern state-of-the-art telescope has a lot of requirements you need Dark Skies my question guys fairly stable atmospheres you need a route Union power you need water utilities all the usual things you take for granted after the ethical concerns were Matt engineer spent months collecting weather data from the four most promising sites the Happy Jack site offers the right atmospheric conditions for good scene in particular thermal variation over the crest of the Hill warm air refract light differently than the cooler are around it causing an optical Distortion the same principle that makes wavy lines appear above a hot charcoal grill is respond bo4 making Stars seem to twinkle astronomers hate twinkling stars they set up equipment to measure the long-term weather patterns and yesterday with the same properties and what they came up with their is at that site for better than the other side's overlook in fact about as good as any site in North America this means the DCT will be able to capture sharper more accurate images with its Precision Optics system this system saves the heart telescope mirror sculpture classified by the size of their primary mirrors at 4:14 across the DCT will be largest telescopes in the US give a telescope to function properly the primary mirror for M1 must be shaped to uniformity more than a thousand times smaller than a human hair Upstate New York Corning the glass company that likely made the screen for your smart off is already hard at work on the primary mover what's good it will take six and a half million dollars in 7 years to complete no other single component will take as long to produce and a fate of the entire world Robert Horry is resting on this one fragile piece of glass is a Corning Glass. Upstate New York work continues on the telescope's primary were the AMP one manufacturing begin ago and it will take seven years and total before it is Jamaica mirror this size Corning started with seven smaller hexagonal pieces of glass assembled and for several weeks at over 3000 degrees Fahrenheit the pieces are puree do a single glass disc called the mirror black the mirror plank is that given its curved surface through a process called sag firing the actual sagging of a blank is a very critical process died and that's where we create a sag form 2 inch Warcraft during the shipping the glass has to be cooled very slowly Ultra Pro expansion glass used specifically what telescopes galaxies millions of light-years away mile day-to-night temperature fluctuations are enough to affect visibility a way to combat that issue how to make a material that doesn't expand or contract as a temperature changes as you heat or cool this glass it will not move it stays perfectly stable so if you had a piece of glass the size of the United States and you need is at 1 degrees C they would expand synonym that level of quality is absolutely essential for the M1 it must be perfect to catch the fade Heaven light reflecting off dark objects in our solar system people freak will ask how far can that telescope see really it's not how far can it say but how faint can it see Saints E news crucial because some of the hardest objects to observe are actually the ones that are most days is 2 worth asteroids and comets in the inner solar system these near Earth objects are small and often made of material that reflects by poorly that makes them very hard to find these objects are very far away Silvestre speaking but they're really really think our own solar system even though physically compared to the size of the Galaxy or the universe has a lot of mysteries and a very very difficult to observe objects 1994 brightness of comet shoemaker-levy 9 crashed into Jupiter creating massive star play 4000 miles across earth it would have ended all life on our planet meteorites many times in the past one of them only 30 miles from Lowell Observatory the meteorite that made this crater hit the plateau at about 8 blasting out a whole 600 better part of a mile across the entire landscape the impact of meteor crater happen to 50,000 years ago it will happen again NASA has been looking at ways to intercept an asteroid on a collision course with Earth to take off an impact trajectory but before NASA can land on a threat I asked her if they have to find it CT has been designed to do just that it can accommodate a wide field camera capable of seeing an area of sky may be able to cover big chunks of sky at once instead of a whole bunch of little chunks of guy you can just work that much faster personal better once blind does his final inspection with it looks real nice. firing is complete the next step is polishing the plank to a very specific final shape with a uniformity measured in atoms one of the few facilities up to the is the University of Arizona's College of optical Sciences in Tucson the mirror demon Corning weighs 7000 lbs and is only 4 in thick to thin to support its own weight yeah but most men jewelry at twenty-seven Hundred Mile Journey he's handling operation every time you move it needs to be engineer because the mirrors glass and it's very valuable pitching easy careful about how handled cuz he can't ever break it location turning on a custom trailer inside a steel shipping crate design isolate the mirror from vibration pixlab is house Underground the only way to get the mirror into the Bahamas. or if you are special access hatch in the parking lot defray will fit through the hatch with about 3 inches to spare on each side so we will be very careful about bringing it down will have guide wires attached to each corner of the so that to the folks in the lab can look up and rotate the crate so that it does not hit the walls no one has seen the mirror playing since it left corny there's a collective sigh of relief when they see that it survived the tree baby travel safely complete with a mirror intact a team of technicians wastes no time preparing it for figuring we're looking for a few million sub standpipe variations across this 4.3 surface if the mirror is made with an errand it you're not going to see it in a jury you're going to have blurred spots Precision this scale is slow audible work they cannot afford to make mistakes so they're constantly stopping to measure microscopic changes in the service of the glass to make something is exactly one foot long plus or minus a millionth of an inch a little bit long and then you would very carefully measure it and then you would rub on it a little bit you would wear it down and then stop and measure it and you go back and forth between this until you got it right 3 years is how long it will take to polish the mirror into the perfect shape everything goes according to plan meanwhile California production has begun on the dct's secondary mirror the secondary mirror is much smaller at only 5 feet in diameter Bill to the same exacting standards as its larger sibling he will be positioned in the telescope above the primary mirror to focus the reflected light into the instrument Cube unlike the M1 M2 is being light weighted microwaving a mirror is a process of cutting precisely measured holes into the back side of the glass to remove unnecessary weight the benefit of light waiting is that you can reduce the mass of the mirror and so the supports that is turning that marriage doesn't have to be so robust but light waiting comes with risk every single cut into the mirror blank is an opportunity to damage it inherently risky because glass is unforgiving they can make one wrong move and put too much pressure on one single point of crack and propagate and you can have disastrous results and the results do disaster a miscalculation in the pressure applied by the cutting tool causes a cracked bar between to cut out sections in the mirror office and Bob Mills came in and said now we got a problem with the and that's a pretty fundamental problem May 2009 devastating news the second was damaged after analysis it is determined that the damage is too severe the N2 cannot be saved broke right through the front big hole in the Mirror part is lost that's a that's pretty big setback a Year's worth of Labor half a million dollars are lost it is a catastrophic blow to the budget and the schedule work on a replacement begins at once but the delivery date for the completed M2 by 14 months another delay of this magnitude could derail one of the very first projects astronomer survey of the Kuiper belt the Kuiper belt is a region outside the most of the plans for the solar system discovered and we didn't discover any more for something like 60 years and then at that point we started discovering mother rapidly there are tens of thousands of these icy bodies out in the outer edge of the solar system and I really don't fossil Relic to the formation of the solar system they are ancient they contain evidence our Origins objects closer to the Sun have been greatly transformed by solar radiation has a very different place now than it was in the early stages of the solar system way out in the deep dark pictures of the solar system we see things that are more or less as they were so the question is what are they made out of what happened to them to study Kuiper Belt objects Rose Building the dct's first instruments the near-infrared high throughput spectrograph or nights for sure the object and splitting it off into wavelength how much green light how much blue light orange light info on the infrared with different material refract light different ways analyzing that reflected light will give them an idea of a composition of hyper belt objects history of what happened out there we can what happened to our solar system to track small Kuiper Belt objects across the sky 50ct is being built with a highly Advanced Focus control system called Optics it will make the GCT one of the most accurate telescopes on the plant mounted on the back of the M1 will be 120 mechanical actuators that must push pull the M1 by up to 3 millimeters like the muscles in a human eye sees actuators all work together to flex the mirror into the proper shape to focus sharply to the more sophisticated the autofocus send me on your camera gravity against the M1 civility to folk is critically so the active Optics system must make constant adjustments to compensate take a note that you have complete control over your mirror and you can make it run in circles and do backflips the bad news is to get it to do anything here have to control it everything in that chain has to work call system to work with a very complex system so there's a lot of things can break the active Optics realized the system uses a reminder to the back of the telescope Star Trac it across the night sky operational automatically control the position and the movement of the most expensive component of the DCT the telescope yolk the telescope Hazard to win the primary and the secondary mirror the other is the cradle that supports it allows it to rotate dinner Factory in rural Texas General Dynamics will spend the next five months test Assembly New York making sure everything fits together perfectly when things go out in the field to the site tuna steaks expensive and time-consuming and very difficult to do and so we want to make sure everything works before these are Factory complete it stands 40 ft tall and 25 feet wide where build something the size of a three or four story building but we're making it to very precise machine shop tolerances I have colleagues we will build something very tall and if things are out 1/8 of an inch then that's great workmanship if we're out of Manchester disaster as the yolk gets refine to microscopic tolerances it's future home is taking shape in the Arizona wilderness with the Dome complete it is time to install the yolk very careful about the structure it's an expensive building and we already picking up most expensive part of the telescope Wing 30 5 tons is being praying through an opening with only three inches of clearance and the wound is picking up a strong gust could spell disaster at the top of Happy Jack high winds are making you talk work with the Yoke installation there's only up for the clearance between the thin aluminum walls and 70000 lb steel swinging on the end of a crane like Wrecking Ball the worst worst dealing with the wind and a side loads that that win puts on there so you can cause a lot of wind that increases the amount of the week hold it down the first part to install piston torque box bolted to the telescope pedestal when hold the bearings that will reveal the telescope to wrote workers use two dozen long rifle and a laser tracker to ensure proper alignment arms are lowered through the Dome with the cream and then store in the telescope body will be installed in New York which will allow it to rotate horizontally and vertically despite the strong winds the installation goes smoothly at the same time back in Flagstaff go instrument scientists are working on a state-of-the-art design that will give the DCT unparalleled flexibility the instrument Cube fitted at the back of the telescope pitbulls allowed to gcg to carry five scientific instruments simultaneously the DC cheese instrument cube is equipped with Deployable mirrors inside that allow us to deflect the light from one instrument to another very quickly changing between the five instruments mounted to the cube will take less than a minute so we're building a telescope that has not only uncommon is a v uncommon versatility it's a Swiss army knife of telescope astronomers using the DCT will do more science more quickly more importantly the right never be more than a few moments away this is an example of a satellite that monitor gamma ray Byrd and the internet knows where a gamma ray burst was it triggers alert astronomers all over the world I want to have telescopes on that went inside with a gamma report within minutes before a bowl and they want to pick instruments for that so either you build a telescope with that instrument sitting there all the time for you by the telescope where you can have multiple instruments on it 22 BTU will be able to very quickly instrument cubes versatility will allow mole astronomers Precision Optics after three years of polishing the M1 is nearly complete the entire surface of the 14 ft wide glass disc is uniform to within 15 anime1 500000 of an inch just as the Optics department is about to call the mirror success a new problem arises a recheck of their measurements shows at the polishing job is off-center by 8 millimeters a huge distance when your measure increments the size of an atom you're building a 50 million dollar telescope there are words you really don't want to hear and we have a problem with the mirror are a couple of them this is a piece of glass 14k to cross baseball contracts for the mayor of 6 and 1/2 million dollars and some things you want so we need to look at this and see what's going on the primary mirror has already been 6 years if they can't find a way to fix it the entire project could come to a screeching halt when the Hubble Telescope launched in 1990 images to the engineer's waiting back at NASA the problem was traced to a 2.2 Micron polishing error in the service of Hubble primary mirror a discrepancy 50 times smaller than a grain of sand yet big enough to derail that you point five billion dollars fixing Hubble took planning a space mission and enough money to build the entire Discovery Channel telescope twice a similar problem faces the team at Lowe's the optic steam polish the correct shade into the glass but it was offset by 8 mm in relation to the hole in the center of the class in his present condition will not function properly inside the DCT slightly wrong location on the blank or more years of polishing eventually a relatively simple solution is proposed the two will work the mounting brackets that hold the mirror into the active Optics cell to compensate for the offset it's going to set us back several weeks the engineering team will have to do a fair amount of work redesigning the cell and the location of the mirror supports but we can deal with it why the Lowell Engineers work on new mounting supports for them the engineers at dynapac in Massachusetts are constructing the device that will give the primary mirror its shine in its current state the M1 more closely resembles a to put window down in a 14ft mirror so working the DCT it needs to be as reflective as possible the telescope mirror required the aluminum coating to enhance the reflectivity of the surface similar to a household word it is that layer of aluminum that provides the reflectivity both of the dct's mirrors will receive their Coatings inside this large vacuum chamber over. time exposure to the air will tarnish the aluminum so the mirrors will need to be recoated every few years complex transverse the coating chamber will be installed BCT auxiliary building on the telescope the mirror is never really finished eventually it's just taken away that day has finally come for the primary mirror 3 years after first arriving the Optics lab the mirror that is beating the facility today is merely Irreplaceable it is finally headed for its permanent home at the top of Kylie Jenner like ever state with the DCT specialized process Taylor Swift's butt going a single vial of the winding dirt road is all that stands between the primary mirror and safety there are no guardrails no places to pull over if they get stuck on the ascent Almost sure they get damaged replace the purchase order for glass in 2003 and its mid-2010 at the moment. Behind the semi a second truck will help push the tailor up the hill Safeway we don't want to spin out and get stuck halfway up the road so we rode through the rear truck up with some counter late that's going to give us the traction we need to make a steady climb traveling at walking speed it will take an hour for the trucks to read Summit is it couple of tight spots and then sleep areas there so we just want to make sure it rolls up nice and steady the whole way as the trucks near the summit zip code in chamber to accept production 97 years ago today it will finally become a mirror it is a two stage process air is pumped out of the chamber to create a vacuum turn much like the evaporating steam from a catalog Potter and the arrow Plumbing the reflective layer the thickest of the coating is approximately 1 Micron and I can do a highly reflective surface 1 Micron is 1/1000 the thickness of a sheet of paper any thinner or reflecting applied but thicker than a micron in the aluminum or negating two years I put size pot This Is The Moment of Truth 7 years of shaping and polishing the primary mirror has all the buildings in this moment someone is receiving a highly reflective coating of your own room the mirror is polished to a very precise surface figure if we put an imprecise white coating over that serpas it will be gravy Optical performance of the marrow aluminum coating his promise everyone is now officially a mirrored worthy of the DCT it is early August 2011 the mirror to the active cell is ready to be installed into the telescope it is a big her money makes me nervous because you have a very large very expensive piece of glass dangling on the end of a cable that's the moment to hold your breath in this whole process can't afford to have faith middle catastrophic loss in the mirror at this stage of the game we don't do this mirror in 2003 and now it's sealed 2011 we can't afford to wait around another here's why you make a new one has to work phone number to number to North the successful installation of the mirror and active optic system is a major turning point for the telescope they will spend the next five months testing the active optic system but that is functioning properly it will add the secondary mirror the instrument Cube then let's do 5:50 and 6:15 and the ultra-high-resolution finally the DCT is ready to take its fur pictures of the night sky FirstLight the telescope equivalent of christening a ship 300000 pound of steel concrete and high-tech instruments become the Discovery Channel telescope first light really is a major Milestone because it's the first time we demonstrate that he packed this system will work could a machine this complex getting a first light image tonight is no guarantee but they are optimistic and with good reason the telescope is working better than they could play vehicles Bakery in by 10. So we'll get this thing go less than 20 minutes after they bring the telescope online they get their image first wide is a success beautiful in its 10 years of work all Consolidated into one gorgeous image on the screen they take time to celebrate but only briefly there's much work to do and the night is just getting started we are at a stage now very similar to wear Lowell Observatory was in 1896 when pushable low himself. Into the heavens for the first time I can't imagine all the wonderful things that the Discovery Channel telescope will do but they are out there and they're waiting for us

Uploaded by Debra Hood.

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Scanning the Skies: The Discovery Channel Telescope

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