Peter G. Halverson, Ph.D.

Picture Comments

These are pictures of the Stern MASS Engineering Club, beginning in the Spring of 2016. Explanations of each picture.

Field trip to the CSULA engineering workshops.

First club project. Making footstools with built-in tool trays. It was good for learning how to read a diagram, making measurements and handling tools.

Leading up to the telescope project, SA Recycling (www.gotscrap.com) generously donated the wheels from a trailer. The picture shows one of the wheels being cut off by a torch,

Wheel bearing.

Telescope construction: assembling the framework.

The trailer had two wheels. One wheel was used to make a rotation platform. A student can sit on it and do experiments involving angular momentum.

The telescope framework is completed! A milestone.

Students cutting wood that will become the telecope mount.

Students drilling many holes to accomodate telescope bearings and accessories.

Telescope frame with one of the elevation bearings installed.

Field trip to a NASA lab on the CSULA campus. The lab studied the dynamics of the James Webb Space Telescope's framework.

8 inch (203 mm) diameter 80 inch (2030 mm) focal length primary mirror purchased with many donations.

Refurbishing up the 2nd wheel bearing so that the telescope will turn smoothly about its azimuthal axis.

The telescope's pointing is controlled by stepping motors. The motors were chosen to have small steps and microstepping controllers further subdivide the steps. This is the microcontroller module, driven by a LabJack computer interface (red module on the left). The computer interfaces were generously donated by LabJack Corp. (www.labjack.com)

Waveforms from the controller. It uses chopping to approximate a sinusoidal drive signal.

Students recruiting for the Engineering Club and Research Club.

Assembling the motor driver electronics.

Student using Tinkercad to design the "spider". The telescope is a Newtonian reflector and is uses a small diagonal mirror to send the focused light to the observer's eye. The spider holds the diagonal mirror. It is the trickiest piece of mechanical design in the telescope.

Making a transporter to wheel the telescope around.

Close-up of the azimuthal rotation bearing, the refurbished wheel donated by SA Recycling. Also visible is the stepping motor. The belt is not yet in place.

Assembling the 3-D printed spider.

The spider, ready to be installed.

Coding in Python to control the motors.

Python code that uses the LabJack library.

That's me! (Dr. H.) I'm cutting something for the telescope.

Typical work chaos.

Testing the telescope - it works!

Some of the Engineering Club members.

Isiac upgrading the scope by painting the interior black.

David and the donated astronomical video camera. (Donated by many people via Donors Choose.)

Robert and Boris. Boris is holding a hand-held telescope control box that he made.

There is more to come... I'm looking forward to trying the telescope on the roof of the school.

Photo of the moon taken Nov 16, 2018. Adrian De La Torre took the picture with his phone, through the eyepice of the telescope.

Engineering Club Pictures