DFM Installation of three 1.3m Telescopes for TAOS II

The three 1.3m telescopes for the Transneptunian Automated Occultation Survey (TAOS II) are located at the Observatorio de San Pedro Mártir in Baja California, Mexico, approximately 100 miles South and 60 miles east of Ensenada, Mexico at an altitude of 9,000 ft.

All telescopes were manufactured by DFM Engineering and were completely assembled, tested, dismantled and packed for shipping and reassembly before transport.  Mark Kelley, Ian Huss, and Justus Drake with DFM Engineering coordinated the logistics and performed the on-site reassembly of the telescope.  Optics were ground, polished, figured, and tested at the DFM Engineering facility in Longmont and are of very high quality.

Matt Lehrner joined the DFM team for installation to acquire as much hands-on experience as possible with installing and tuning the optics and mount.

Telescope installation required the use of a very large crane capable of hoisting each section of the telescope over 50 feet.  Each telescope section, in turn, was guided carefully through the slit in the observatory.

DFM's custom TCSGalil™ is located in the observatory control room providing local and remote observing capabilities. The TCSGalil™ includes a GPS receiver for precise time acquisition.

The 1.3m mirror cell was carefully transported into the base of the observatory then lifted up through the hatch in the observatory floor.

The final testing phase began with finding focus in the main optics and alignment of the finder telescope. After collimation, first light images were taken. Alignment drift tests guided rough polar alignment. Pointing data was taken that allowed the DFM team to improve the alignment and then remove residual Azimuth and Elevation misalignments demonstrating pointing of better than 12 arc seconds RMS. Recordings of long tracking measurements confirmed the excellent tracking performance of the telescope.