[Mldxcc] Sandy Faber (XYL of Andy, AE6Y): Feature Story in SJ Mercury

[Pat Barthelow]

Re Sandy Faber,

 

Years ago I saw Sandy, present a talk on how the defect of the Hubble telescope was examined, analyzed, modeled, and fixed.  I think the principal Investigator was Sandy.

It was an incredible story.  As I recall, Sandy had the telescope take photos of point souces  (stars) and because of the defocusing problem due to a mis positioned part in the light path, the points showed as complex interference patterns.  I remember the photos of them, looking like the famous classic photo in science books of my day, the one of a micro needle tip of tungsten, where you can see the complex patterns and alignments of the individual atoms.

 

This may be that old classic photo:
http://www.astronomycafe.net/vacuum/s26b.gif

 

If you can, try to get Sandy to talk at a club meeting or Pacificon, or something like that, for a fascinating speaker program.

Anyway, she and the team reverse engineered the light rays to create the interference patterns, and then figured out what kind of alignment error could cause that kind of interference pattern.  It was incredible.

As I recall, the error was made when a tech or tech team viewed a precision pinhole in some 1 mm thick tungsten iris, and focussed that image, but they focussed on the opposite side, edges of pinhole through the hole.    So somewhere, in the light path, the error was just a 1 mm error.   

 

Based on the interference patterns, they determined what kind of corrective lens to insert into the light path to make the correction.  Then made and sent the piece(s) up to be insalled.

 

I heard there were whoops and hollars when they eventually got the first images from the lens corrected telescope.

 

All the Best, 
Pat Barthelow,   
AA6EG  apolloeme at live.com   



http://www.echoesofapollo.com
http://www.jamesburgdish.org 
"The most exciting phrase to hear in Science, the one that heralds 
new discoveries,  is not "Eureka, I have found it!"    but:"That's funny..."  ----Isaac Asimov








  

> From: webaron at gmail.com
> To: nccc at contesting.com; mldxcc at contesting.com; chat at ncdxc.org
> Date: Sat, 9 May 2009 11:53:48 -0700
> Subject: [Mldxcc] Sandy Faber (XYL of Andy, AE6Y): Feature Story in SJ Mercury
> Great article on the Hubble Telescope, and key role Sandy Faber played 
> in getting NASA to launch a final repair mission starting next week.
> Sandy Faber is the Astronomy Chair at UC Santa Cruz and the XYL of our 
> own Andy Faber, AE6Y.
> The key astronaut and robot arm operator on the mission -- making her 
> first space flight -- is Megan McArthur, a Ph.D. oceanographer from 
> San Jose.
> The two women have never met -- yet.
> http://www.mercurynews.com/
> 73,
> John K6MM