Cool high-energy astronomy news: the Large Area Telescope (or LAT), the main instrument for the Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) is ready to be mounted on the spacecraft. GLAST is a joint NASA/Department of Energy mission due to launch next year, and will observe super-high-energy explosions and other titanically energetic events like galaxy collisions and black holes gobbling down matter. I work on the education and public outreach for GLAST, so I’m happy. If it works, I’m funded for a few more years.
Here’s what the LAT looks like as it sits in a clean area (to prevent dust and other contaminants) at the Naval Research Lab just outside Washington, DC:
The picture is fuzzy due to the clear plastic curtains separating the LAT from the dirty outside air. I always think those clean rooms look like restaurant walk-in coolers.
One funny thing: in the press release, Steve Ritz, the project scientist (read: big science cheese) for GLAST said this:
The Large Area Telescope is a unique and beautiful new instrument for science…
I hope he didn’t mean that literally– here’s an image of the LAT from a few months back:
Cool? Yes. "Beautiful"? Bzzzzt. 
Still, it’ll do amazing stuff, giving us pictures and spectra of incredible events that, until even a few years ago, were totally unknown to us.
And don’t forget to add GLAST to your MySpace page!
September 22nd, 2006 at 1:37 am
I wouldn’t say beautiful… Sexy is more like it.
September 22nd, 2006 at 2:08 am
Not beautiful? You’re obviously not an enginerd… There’s a reason why they make computer cases with windows in ‘em.
September 22nd, 2006 at 5:23 am
I agree with idlemind.
Also In the top picture is the LAT standing on some type of shock-absorbing platform?
September 22nd, 2006 at 6:19 am
I’m a cook. I can say with absolutely no reservations that you can in no way compare a resturant walkin cooler with anything that has the word “clean” in it. They are filthy and disgusting. I’m amazed that people don’t die on a daily basis eating food served in resturants.
September 22nd, 2006 at 7:57 am
No beautiful? I think there’s something aesthetically pleasing about that grid of shiny metal on black.
September 22nd, 2006 at 8:25 am
“I don’t know what kind of factory you are thinking of, we just make boxes here”.
September 22nd, 2006 at 11:32 am
“I always think those clean rooms look like restaurant walk-in coolers.”
Hmmm …. I could really use some “walk-in” clean rooms. That would save all the faffing about with double-gowning, surgical masks, sterile gloves, alcohol gel and IPA sprays that I normally go through when I have to enter the clean-rooms where I work.
(but the procedures exist for a very very good reason)
September 23rd, 2006 at 12:34 pm
Gopher65: Restraunts are why we developed immune systems. So we don’t have to eat our own meals,,,so boring.
Ah restraunts, one way to make life thrilling,,,and shorter,,,and a perfect example of survival of the fittest.
GAry 7
October 1st, 2006 at 2:06 am
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Why is Miss Universe always won by a human?
Go the “Crushinator” from ‘Futurama’!