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Site progress at Tenerife, Texas, and South Africa

Sep 7, 2011

Site construction is continuing smoothly at Tiede Observatory and at McDonald Observatory while domes have begun being assembled at SAAO.

All of the basic foundations pads and piers for the Aqawans and 1.0m domes are completed at Tenerife. The site is currently being prepped for other footings and pads including the SSB (the Site Services Building, the centralized IT building which will host all power, communications, computer control, servers, and more to distribute to each of the telescopes at site) and will be followed by trenching, grounding, and conduit work which is currently scheduled for completion by the end of September.

McDonald Observatory has prepped the site and is ready to begin pouring concrete pads, which will commence this week. All the site prep work, including pouring pads for all the Aqawans, 1.0m domes, SSB, and others is planning to be completed in mid-October. We are also working on a one-off project to be located at the McDonald Visitor Center, a 24 inch telescope known as Chow, whose site prep work will be done in parallel.

In South Africa, 1.0m dome assembly has begun which will take about a month to complete. The walls are planned to arrive shortly after the dome assembly as finished.