Telescope tune-up in preparation for new home

HANFORD — The telescope that once searched the night skies from the top of Rattlesnake Mountain is getting a thorough working over.

The Alliance for Advancement of Science Through Astronomy, or AASTA, has spent nine months looking at possible new sites for an observatory and the 0.8-meter Cassegrain telescope.

"We're hoping very soon we will have a final site," said Roy Gephart, who is leading the site selection effort for the alliance.

Sites within the Tri-Cities' vicinity have been toured, including areas north to Connell, near Prosser to the west, south to almost the Oregon border and in the Horse Heaven Hills.

"The Tri-Cities has been so great, we need to find a place (residents) can enjoy it," said Ken Swanson, executive director of AASTA.

When a site is selected the telescope will be ready, restored to almost as good as new, he said.

That's saying a lot, considering it's almost 40 years old.

"It's like a car driven 300,000 miles," said Norm Anheier, the AASTA board member who's in charge of the restoration project. "The ball bearings are worn out."

The custom-designed telescope was installed in an observatory built at the top of Hanford's Rattlesnake Mountain in 1971 by Battelle Memorial Institute. Originally used for research, the observatory and its telescope were donated to AASTA in 2005.

In March 2008, the Department of Energy notified AASTA that it would need to remove the observatory from Rattlesnake Mountain, as part of an effort to clear the mountain top of most man-made structures.

Battelle, which operates Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, agreed to provide $250,000 to help save the facility. Since the telescope and the observatory were dismantled and taken off the mountain in June 2009, they've been stored at space provided by Columbia Basin College in Pasco.

Over the past two months the pieces of the telescope have been moved into CBC's unused autobody shop. One of the final steps, painting, will start this week.

A good share of the mechanical work is being done by Robert Parchen, a CBC machine tech student.

"There's an old saying in hot rods 'If it doesn't make you dirty, it's not yours'," he said. "It's all mine."

He pulled an 8-inch diameter ball bearing out of the solution it was soaking in Monday, and demonstrated the bearing assembly's rounded interior, allowing it to swivel.

"I mean that's like art," he said. A new one would cost $500, he said.

The telescope could have used some work in its later years of use, but it was virtually impossible to dismantle parts and fix them while the telescope was installed on the mountain, Anheier said.

Not only is the telescope nearly 40 years old, but also it developed problems with precise tracking. To track a far away star and get a high-magnification view, the telescope needs very precise control to counter the Earth's rotation.

The telescope's accuracy also will be improved after the outer surface of the telescope's main drive ring was machined to smooth out pits and defects that made it no longer precisely circular.

In addition, the mirrors were shipped to a Midwest firm to be recoated, which should allow the telescope to see dimmer objects with greater clarity.

Some of the telescope's systems actually will be better than the original. State-of-the-art motors and electronics have been installed.

"We're going to have an extraordinarily smooth-moving telescope that is reliable," Swanson said.

Painting of the telescope should be completed next week, and then the 24-foot-diameter dome assembly will be brought into the autobody shop for work. Wind on top of Rattlesnake Mountain has wreaked havoc on the seals and it has developed water leaks through the years.

When a new site is selected for the observatory, it will not have the same panoramic view, elevation and darkness of Rattlesnake Mountain.

But being able to restore the telescope has been a benefit, Swanson said. And the new location should allow the telescope to be used more frequently than it could on Rattlesnake Mountain, which is closed to the public.

The plan is to use the relocated observatory in collaboration with Eastern Washington colleges and universities for education and research, allowing undergraduate and graduate students to prepare for careers in astronomy.

AASTA also is expecting to hold periodic open houses to give the public a chance to view the stars through the telescope.

* Annette Cary: 509-582-1533; acary@tricityherald.com.

This story was originally published September 14, 2010 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Telescope tune-up in preparation for new home."