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By Jerry Smith
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| Photo: Groundbreaking for Keck I Telescope
on Mauna Kea. Shown (from left to right) are Dr. Albert
Simone, UH President; George R. Ariyoshi, Governor of
Hawai‘i; Howard B. Keck, W. M. Keck Foundation; Dr. Marvin
Goldberger, Caltech President; Dr. David Gardner, UC
President; and UC Vice President Fraser (a key person
in the partnership between Caltech and UC). Photo courtesy
of the Keck Observatory archives. |
Astronomers have always wanted bigger telescopes because they
collect more light and hence can see fainter objects and further
back toward the beginning of the universe. For five decades
the challenge was how to build a very large mirror that was
light enough and stiff enough to hold its extremely precise
shape while being moved through different elevations and experiencing
different temperatures. Advances in computer and mirror technology
in the late 1970s inspired astronomers to think about new ways
to build larger telescopes.
Several groups started work in the late 1970s on different
technologies to try to go big. Some groups were thinking of
mirrors as big as 25 meters, but of these groups, the Keck
program was the first to go forward into actual design and
construction. A number of other programs eventually went forward,
and several smaller 8-meter telescopes were built.
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| Photo: Palomar Observatory, home of the
200-inch Hale Telescope. Photo by G. Smith. |
The most exciting thing for me about working on the Keck Telescope
was to build a telescope that was four times larger in area
than the biggest telescope in the world at the time, the 200-inch
Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory. The Hale Telescope was
one of the great projects of the 1920s and 1930s and was thought
to be the biggest telescope possible with a large monolithic
mirror design. The Russians built a 6-meter telescope with
a similar approach, but this telescope never met expectations.
So, for almost 50 years, no great telescopes had been built.
The basic idea of the segmented mirror was to make small, lightweight
segments in a mosaic, to form a large mirror surface. By making
the mirror in segments, it was possible to make the pieces
much thinner and lighter than a single mirror. This design
overcame the issue of weight, which was the major problem with
the old technology.
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| Photo: Polishing primary mirror segments
at Tinsley Lab in Richmond, California. Two segments
are being polished in this photograph. The mirrors are
polished from circular blank disks and then cut into
the final hexagonal shape. Photo by G. Smith. |
Once Jerry Nelson’s concept of a segmented mirror telescope
was selected, UC formed an Executive Management Committee (EMC),
consisting of senior UC administrators, to oversee a technology
development program to demonstrate the feasibility of Jerry’s
concept. Jerry Nelson was chosen to lead the development program.
The project was named the Ten-Meter Telescope (TMT) Project.
Mauna Kea was the favored site from the beginning.
Mauna Kea was known to be a world-class observing site. UC
undertook a comprehensive site test program, and that data
confirmed the high optical quality of the Mauna Kea site. The
only other competitive sites in the world were in Chile, and,
at the time, no serious consideration was given to locating
the observatory there. Mauna Kea also had the advantage that
it provided relatively easy access from the West Coast.
Meanwhile, in the late 1970s, I was assigned by my employer,
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), to assist the University
of Hawai‘i in managing the design and construction of a NASA
infrared telescope on Mauna Kea (IRTF). When the project was
completed in 1979, I returned to JPL and was assigned to a
NASA space telescope called the Infrared Astronomical Satellite
(IRAS) as deputy project manager and later project manager.
Because of my recent experience building a telescope on Mauna
Kea and my background with other scientific projects, I was
approached by the EMC Chair, Dr. Harold Ticho, in 1981 to inquire
if I would be interested in the TMT project manager position.
The EMC realized they needed an experienced project manager
to transition the development program into a realistic project.
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| Photo: Project manager Gerald Smith circa
1983, at the beginning of the project. Photo by JPL. |
I was very interested but still committed to the IRAS project.
From 1981 until IRAS was successfully launched in 1983, I worked
part time with the EMC and Jerry Nelson to develop a plan to
implement the TMT. In 1983 UC negotiated a contract with JPL
to acquire my services as a full time manager of the TMT project.
In 1983 and 1984 I developed a detailed schedule and cost estimate
for the project and assisted in managing the technology development
work.
During these early years, the UC was working in parallel to
find private funding for TMT. This effort continued through
the early 1980s and ultimately located a large donor. The UC
also initiated discussions with the California Institute of
Technology (Caltech) to participate as a partner. Caltech astronomers
had been thinking about building a large telescope of their
own, and they were quite interested in partnering on this effort.
In 1984 Caltech Trustee Howard Keck, President of the W. M.
Keck Foundation, came forward and offered to fund the project.
With both the UC donor and the Keck Foundation, for a short
while it looked as though the project had two very substantial
sponsors. With that in mind, we started thinking seriously
about building two 10-meter telescopes, located side by side
on Mauna Kea. Two telescopes would provide the capability to
obtain extremely high-resolution images, by combining the light
from the two telescopes. We adjusted the design of the observatory
site and support building to allow for this possibility.
Unfortunately, the UC donor withdrew, but we still had the
generous grant from the Keck Foundation as our principal funding
source. We dropped the second telescope from the initial phase
and concentrated on building one 10-meter telescope. But we
maintained a design configuration that would accommodate the
construction of a second telescope, if funds became available
at a later time.
The project was renamed as the W. M. Keck Observatory after
Howard Keck’s father. UC and Caltech negotiated an agreement
where Caltech would fund the project and retain ownership,
UC would fund operations for 25 years, and UC and Caltech would
share telescope time equally. These original agreements and
funding arrangements were subsequently modified when the second
telescope was funded, and again later when NASA joined the
group as a user.
A corporation was formed to carry out the project and was named
the California Association for Research in Astronomy (CARA).
The institutional agreements established a Board of Directors
consisting of three members from each institution plus a representative
of the Keck Foundation. I continued on as project manager of
the new Keck Observatory Project and reported to the CARA Board.
Dr. Edward Stone was Chairman of the CARA Board for most of
the project and led Caltech institutional participation and
fundraising. The project was officially funded by the Keck
Foundation in January 1985 through a $70 million grant to Caltech.
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| Photo: Some of the project staff at their
office at 535 South Wilson St, across from the main Caltech
campus, circa 1987. (back row from left) Bill Irace,
project engineer; Shirley Scholey, secretary; Sharon Conrad,
administrative assistant; Colin Silvio, administrative
manager; Cindy Cornish, accountant. (middle row from
left) Jim Uren, administrative computing and services;
Jerry Smith, project manager; unidentified secretary;
Fred Vesceles, assistant project manager; Mark Sumner,
mechanical engineer. (bottom row from left) Tom Livermore,
control system manager; Joe Magner, optics manager; Hans
Boesgaard, mechanical engineering manager; Mark Sirota,
control systems engineer; Allan Honey, programmer; Don
Schroeder, contract officer; Herb Morris, purchasing
agent. |
Our first critical task was to locate and recruit the technical
and administrative staff to carry out the project. The
initial project staff consisted of our optics engineer, mechanical
engineer, and me. Jerry Nelson was appointed
project scientist, and he was the key scientist who oversaw
the specifications and technical goals for the telescope throughout
the project. Throughout the four and a half years we were located
at the Caltech campus, Nelson commuted from Berkeley to Pasadena
on a weekly basis to participate in design meetings and reviews.
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| Photo: Jerry Nelson, project scientist.
Photo taken in 1996 by Keck Observatory. |
Several of the early full-time staff were engineers and administrative
people who had worked for me on previous NASA programs. They
were highly competent, experienced people. Hans Boesgaard was
the lead mechanical engineer, Joe Magner was the lead optics
engineer, Bill Irace was project engineer, and Colin Silvio
was administrative manager. Other early staff included Thomas
Livermore, drive and control system manager, and Hilton Lewis,
software manager. Many other key positions were filled by experienced
administrative and technical people on temporary assignment
from JPL, which was located nearby. We also had access to many
technical specialists at JPL and at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab
(LBL), who worked on specific problems and assisted in design
reviews.
One of the most critical new technology systems for the Keck
I Telescope was the mirror support and control system. The
initial technology development for these systems was done at
LBL, and we contracted with LBL to complete the detailed design
and fabrication as well. This work was accomplished under the
supervision of Andy Dubois for the mechanical support and Richard
Jared for the electronics and computer control system. Both
were outstanding engineering leaders.
After filling the critical leadership positions, we continued
recruiting other key personnel to work on electronics controls,
computer software, and a host of other technological areas.
For the most part, our project staff developed the initial
designs and specifications and subcontracted out the detailed
designs and fabrication. Only a few members of the early staff
had direct telescope experience, but all of them had worked
on complex technical projects and many were familiar with the
JPL system engineering and design principles, which we adopted.
The choice of Waimea for the Keck HQ facilities
was an interesting episode in the early days of the project. Both
Hilo and Waimea lobbied to have the Keck Observatory headquarters
(HQ) located in their community. Hilo was to be the site for
most of the new observatory support facilities and for the
new University of Hawai‘i (UH) Institute for Astronomy facility.
Caltech was already building offices for the Caltech Submillimeter
Observatory (CSO) in Hilo. UH offered an excellent rent-free
site in the then new UH Hilo Science Park. A community group
in Waimea persuaded the Parker Ranch trustees to offer the
beautiful 7-acre site in downtown Waimea as a grant.
In order to decide between Hilo and Waimea, the partner institutions
established a site review committee consisting of three members,
one each from UC, Caltech, and the Keck Foundation. The committee
reviewed the candidate sites and other relevant issues such
as housing and recreation availability. When the review was
completed, the two universities were split, UC favored Waimea
and Caltech favored Hilo. The issue was essentially decided
when the Keck Foundation, convinced that West Hawai‘i was the
future growth area of the island, recommended Waimea as the
preferred site. The project staff had a huge stake in the decision
because it would determine where we would live as well. We
were all very happy with the choice of Waimea!
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| Photo: Project scientist Jerry Nelson is
front right with the camera hanging from his neck. If
you look closely, you will see a primary mirror segment
being lifted by a crane in front and below the platform
the staff is standing on. Photo by well-known astronomy
photographer Roger Ressmeyer. He gathered all the staff
who were at the observatory that day and took this picture
in 1992. |
In July 1989 we moved our project office and most of the staff
from Pasadena to our new offices in Waimea, within sight of
Mauna Kea. The observatory building and dome were already completed
and the telescope structure was being shipped to Hawai‘i from
Barcelona, Spain, where it was fabricated. At that time the
cost of fabrication in Spain was much lower than here in the
U.S. The end product was shop assembled in Spain to verify
all the critical dimensions prior to being disassembled and
shipped to Hawai‘i.
Once in Waimea, our staff had a hands-on role in supervising
the contractors who were installing the telescope structure.
The project staff, assisted by key people from LBL, installed
the optics and controls and did all the precision alignment
and testing of the telescope systems.
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| Photo: Spare Keck primary mirror segments
in storage. Photo by Roger Ressmeyer. |
There were two major technical challenges in the Keck segmented
mirror design. The first was the fabrication and polishing
of the individual 36 hexagonal mirrors to the exacting specifications
required. The second was the precision measurement and control
of the position of the 36 segments to form a single surface
and act as a single monolithic mirror. In order to simulate
how the Keck telescope would overcome these two challenges,
the LBL team built a prototype mirror and control system. This
prototype allowed us to prove that the technology worked on
a small scale. But there were surprises when we scaled up to
the full system.
The mirror fabrication turned out to be much more difficult
than we expected. The prototype mirror was made of a slightly
different material than we planned to use for the telescope.
When we obtained the correct material, it did not behave the
same as the prototype. This is a fairly complex story, so I
will summarize by saying that we had to develop some new techniques
to polish and mount the mirror segments to meet our requirements.
This was the major cost and technical challenge with the project.
Yet, eventually we were able to meet our original specifications.
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| Photo: Keck II under construction in 1993.
Photo by G. Smith. |
We were also expecting that we would have problems in mounting
and controlling the mirrors. This was an area where critics
of our design thought we would fail. But we overcame this technological
challenge without causing schedule delays or exceeding costs.
The system we installed worked perfectly as designed.
Throughout the design and construction of Keck I, UC and Caltech
continued to seek funding for the second telescope. Keck II
was always in the back of our minds.
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| Photo: The primary mirror with the first
9 segments installed. With only 9 of its 36 mirror segments
installed, the light collecting area of the Keck Telescope
already equaled the power the 200-inch Hale Telescope
at the Palomar Observatory. This image is dated November
15, 1990, courtesy of the Keck Observatory archives. |
The Keck Foundation expressed interest in possibly funding
a second telescope adjacent to Keck I, but the trustees wanted
to be sure that our new concepts really worked. We staged an
early demonstration of the segmented mirror concept in late
1990, when we assembled the first nine mirror segments into
the telescope structure. After the controls were installed
we had a telescope with a collecting area equal to the 200-inch
Hale Telescope. When we pointed this partial telescope at the
sky that first night, we were able to get images equal to the
200-inch telescope. The second Keck telescope was funded shortly
after this successful demonstration of the segmented mirror
concept.
When I think back on the early years, it may seem strange,
but there were many, many more disappointing days than great
days. All of the disappointments meant we had to work harder
or smarter to overcome problems. With a large project like
Keck, there are both victories and problems, so you have to
grind it out over many years.
All of us working on the project knew that we were doing something
unique and very challenging, and we were all highly motivated.
We never doubted that we would succeed.
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| Photo: Mechanical engineer Mark Sumner
and project manager Gerald Smith at Smith’s retirement
party in 1996. Photo by Sarah Anderson. |
With the completion and dedication of the Keck II Telescope
in October 1996, it was time for me to retire. Dr. Fred Chaffee
was appointed observatory director and launched scientific
exploration with these two great telescopes into the 21st century. 
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