Mauna Kea Scopes Down After Earthquake

Electronic Technicians Robert Novak, left, and Gary Anderson repair the Keck II telescope drive and control system after it was damaged by an earthquake.

I was wondering how the greatest collection of astronomical telescopes in the world were doing after the Hawaii earthquake. Looks like they're okay, but need a few weeks of minor repair and calibration. The repair work won't take that long, but the re-calibration is where all the effort will take a while. The position of the scopes, even in relation to each other, have to be known to within tenths of a nanometer. According to the Keck Observatory's spokesperson, Laura Kinoshita:

She said inspection showed the telescopes came down on the radial pads and brakes with about 100,000 pounds of force during Sunday's temblor. Once these are replaced, the Keck's engineers will have to recalibrate both telescopes to account for the seismic shifts that moved the Keck I telescope more than 1/8 inch and the Keck II telescope more than one inch.

To move two 300 ton structures 1/8 of an inch and more than 1 inch, respectively, gives you an idea of how strong the Hawaii earthquake really was. Also, the Keck I and Keck II can be linked to run interferometry experiments, basically making a new telescope with a virtual diameter as wide as the scopes are apart, for measuring distances. The operators will have to know what the new distance between I and II is, hence all the re-calibration effort. Hopefully, the two largest telescopes in the world will be back up and running very soon.