A New Configuration for Mimir on the Perkins Telescope

12/15/2004 - Flagstaff, Arizona

The configuration of the Mimir instrument on the Perkins telescope has recently changed to allow access to a larger portion of the night sky. In its original configuration, Mimir consisted of the large vacuum cryostat, a vessel approximately 1 meter in diameter and a bit longer than a meter in length, and a side-mounted box containing all of the electronics and systems needed to operate Mimir.

This figure shows the "old" Mimir configuration of the cryostat at right and the electronics rack at left. In this configuration, the array readout electronics occupy the top-most bay in the electronics rack.

The problem with the old configuration was that when pointing the telescope to the East, the electronics rack was in danger of hitting the telescope floor. To solve this, the electronics rack was raised up above the cryostat and the array readout electronics were moved around to the South side of the autoguider to which the cryostat is attached.

The "new" telescope configuration for Mimir consists of the cryostat, mounted to the autoguider, the electronics rack (sans the array readout unit) raised up and mounted to the East side of the autoguider, and the array readout unit now mounted on the South side of the autoguider.