Supporting the telescope on a film of oil

of the telescope to collect oil that is continually pumped through the special hydrostatic bearings. More about these bearings in a later news bulletin. In the pictures below you can see the oil tray being placed into position.

The weight of the whole telescope (approximately 23 tonnes) is supported on an extremely thin film of oil about 80 microns thick (0.00008 metre). To give you an idea of how thin this is, a human hair is approximately 20 microns thick.

The oil separates the metal surfaces to allow for very smooth movements of the instrument, this in turn allows the telescope to carefully track the stars as they move across the sky each night.

Telescope Technologies Limited (TTL) has a purpose built assembly building for the construction of telescopes and, as you can see from the sequence of pictures, the overhead crane is an extremely important piece of equipment for the assembly of telescopes as large as those required by professional astronomers.