SRON_Spectrum_2016

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24 SRON Spectrum - 270°C, or 4 Kelvin, 4° above absolute zero. Although everything in more primitive you can easily forget where you are because the lab has no windows. As soon as the door opens it becomes clear again, I really am on Antarctica. It is far more than just the landscape: it is the light, the cold, the wind, and the unbelievable distances, the knowledge that the nearest place with normal facilities is a 4000 km flight away. No telephone, scarcely any Internet (almost everything is blocked or highly restrict - 20 November 2015, Antarctica: Scott’s hut... Another week has passed in McMurdo. Some things have become normal: sharing my room, three warm meals per day, and long woolen underwear. Other things remain special: the fantastic landscape, the weather that can change from pleasant to extreme in five min - utes if the wind picks up, and the sun that shines from the south at 12:30 at night. It’s still strange that when you leave the pub at night, you need to put on sunglasses. I sometimes still wake up at night with a making progress but as we are working with a unique instrument we also encounter unique problems. In combination with limited labora - tory equipment and the fact that the nearest The biggest problem is ESD, ElectroStatic Discharge shops are 4000 km away, that some times demands a healthy dose of creativity. And that is why we are here. My visit to the so-called OB tube, an observation post in the ice, is memorable. Or to be ed to keep the bandwidth available for the scientific projects), no television or newspaper, the world is really far away, and the nature Our instrument is still not working well enough and that is less good news. The tensions are starting to rise overwhelmingly close by. After a few days I find a routine, but not one I can get use to, as Antarctica is just too grand for that. shock because I think I’ve overslept. In the hangar the balloon gondola is being constructed on one side: telescope, star track - er, on-board computers, altitude control, communication et cetera. Under the telescope there is a free place for our cryostat, a gigantic thermos flask, which contains our cold optical instruments, detectors, and amplifiers. On the outside of the cryostat, the warm optics, signal generators (LOs), and electronics will be placed and a computer will control all of this as well. The integration is gradually more precise, the visit that my colleague Darren made. In the OB, you descend through more than two meters of ice into a small observation space surrounded by glass. When I tried to descend through the narrow tube into the observation space my claustrophobia got the better of me. You need to know your limits... Several days later they literally had to free somebody who could no longer move up or down. On YouTube you can find a film with the view underwater. Scott’s hut on Hut Point, constructed during his first expedition in 1902, still stands as if it were built yesterday. You
can only take a glimpse inside through the window: everything is still there as if he could return at any moment, including the halfbutchered animals. Really weird... The good news today is that we have just managed to get the entire signal chain of the 4.7 THz receiver to work. A local signal enters, we see the sky and a desired signal emerges for the detector. Some optimization still needs to take place, but all of the stages work. The bad news is that the toilet is not working. cables are currently still exposed with a big risk of picking up undesirable signals. The biggest problem is ESD, ElectroStatic Dis - charge. Due to the desert environment and the low temperatures the air is extremely dry. Every movement that you make results in the build up of static electricity especially if you are wearing a fleece jumper. As soon as you touch something made of metal it sparks. These discharges are fatal for our instrument. Once everything has been incorporated there will be a reasonable degree of protection but that is not the case yet. We are all doing our reminds me of a story I read long ago about wildebeests if I remember correctly, (Google does not work). To determine which direction the herd should take, one of the animals occasionally stands up with its head in a certain direction, and then it goes and lies down again. If enough animals have looked in the same direction then the entire herd goes that way. Very indirectly, problems here are tackled in the same manner. Somebody says something, nobody appears to listen, somebody says 25 SRON Spectrum From now on it is the long drop: the Antarctic version of a privy, including snow swirling around and -10˚ C in the toilet. 2 December 2015, Antarctica: best: we wear wrist straps to discharge static electricity, avoid artificial clothing, touch metal before we get near the instrument but a mistake can easily be made of course. something else. A solution is repeated by a third and a fourth, and suddenly we have chosen that direction. Fascinating. It works, but back in the Netherlands we do things very differently. the tension is mounting... The toilet has been repaired and that is a relief. The short drop is better in the long term. However our instrument is still not working well enough and that is less good news. The tensions are rising. Ideally you want to get this integration phase over and done with as quickly as possible. Many components and Seeing penguins is apparently a spiritual experience that changes you mentally In a nutshell, the instrument must be closed quickly and it must also function properly. But what is the right way forward? And when is it good enough? The decision-making process And then suddenly several large steps follow: the cryostat must be integrated with the telescope gondola. This interferes with our own work. The most vulnerable part, the local oscillator located on the outside, is taken off again. The calibration will therefore have to be repeated and the mounting plate that now
Page 1 and 2: SPECTRUM NO. 18 MARCH 2016 DISTANT
Page 3 and 4: S H O R T N E W S sun. The sunlight
Page 5 and 6: More collaboration with China In th
Page 7 and 8: or star, space-time is curved. As a
Page 9 and 10: Nevertheless, there are several fac
Page 11 and 12: indicate that a planet is moving in
Page 13 and 14: ters of galaxies, and how do black
Page 15 and 16: Photo: NASA. In our atmosphere minu
Page 17 and 18: THE EXPERTISE TRIANGLE / SPACE INST
Page 19 and 20: low, or a component in the system t
Page 21 and 22: 2 November 2015, Los Angeles: How i
Page 23: shoe size Pipo de Clown. Air insula
Page 27 and 28: uilt in a year before I was even bo
Page 29 and 30: Mission SRON contribution Studies m
Page 31 and 32: 31 SRON Spectrum Mission facts > Un

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