The Executive Summary

Start of assembly and "First Light"
55 days and 78 days respectively after defining the requirements.
The blue panels are foam insulation.

The Details

Left: Base; Middle: Base with shock mounts;
Right: Base with frame to house Integrating sphere;

Left: Bottom plate and Invar metering truss added;
Right: Thermal enclosure support frame added.

Left: First 1/4 inch aluminum plates for thermal control;
Right: Fully assembled instrument. The "gold" baffle sits on top of the star plate and extends to just below the camera optics. The top cylinder is the Cryotiger cooler and the next to top cylinder is the dewar housing the CCD. The interior aluminum walls are temperature regulated with thermal-electric-coolers/heaters. The blue Labsphere can be seen in the bottom.

Component Closeup Photos

Left: Invar metering structure, top plate holds camera, base plate holds rotating interface plate.
Right: Rotating interface plate for attachment of integrating sphere below and star plate.

Star plate showing wiring for transit wires and fiber optics for bright saturating stars.

Camera mounting plate with fine focus adjust and PZT tip-tilt transducers underneath.

Camera head (no optics), top cylinder has CryoTiger cold finger, bottom cylinder has CCD.

CCD controller electronics (Built by R. Leach at SDSU)