Day 26

I spent this morning comparing the encircled energy graphs which I created for our various datasets (for each window thickness). The coverslip, microscope slide, and no glass all look pretty similar, which is great, but the thickest (and most realistic) glass appeared to be almost double the size. However, we realized that this could have happened because our spot is so dim and small, it's below the Nyquist frequency, so data blurring may have given us a response that appeared to be larger than the spot of light actually was. Because of this, we decided to next try to map Gaussian functions to our original data, but magnified with interpolation, which we would do after lunch.

After lunch however, Dmitry asked the three of us to help disassemble his telescope, mount, and tripod, all of which he'll be taking to Oregon to observe the solar eclipse in a week and a half. We spent the afternoon taking down the assembly and packing it very securely into Pelican cases.

Our original configuration had the heavy mount on the bottom of the case, with the refracting telescope arm and the cables on top, separated by a layer of protective material. That was how we brought the telescope back down from the roof, but Dmitry later realised that it would be both safer and more efficient to ship the telescope in its own box and to put the counter-balance weight in the case with the mount and cables. I stayed late today, until about 7, so while Dmitry went to a meeting, I mapped Gaussian functions to each of our datasets and plotted the different fitresults together on the same graph for comparison. Luckily, in measuring the data this way, the 0.122 inch thick glass seemed not to do as badly as it had with the encircled energy calculations.