SOAR telescope mount acceptance

The SOAR (SOuthern Astrophysical Research) telescope mount during final acceptance testing at VertexRSI. The cylinder in the foreground is a mass simulator for one of the two Nasmyth instrument clusters, while simulators for the Folded Cassegrain instruments are shown attached to the elevation ring. The large platform to the right will hold an IFU-fed, bench-mounted spectrograph, while the smaller one to the left carries the electronics racks that control the telescope and its various subsystems. For further details, see the December 2001 NOAO Newsletter (currently only available in PDF format).