HiVIS Rebuilt.... Again!

I have to say, this CIP fund has been awesome. It's like christmas. We've got about 1 million to spend on hardware by summer. Aw, shucks.... Guess I need to get all those toys I've been seeing in the catalogs. It's actually been super nice. We've been able to buy a ton of hardware that makes many things operate a helluva lot better. We had $10k in calcite stuck in the closet. We were able to spend 2k to get it properly coated, aligned and bonded in to a gianormous Savart Plate. We got a spare liquid-crystal driver box, polarizers, rotation stages, mirrors, and all kinds of mounts. It's been pretty sweet. I've even been able to take on an REU student for the summer to build our own AO demonstrator (about $30k). Let the fun begin!

Anyways, I rebuilt the HiVIS polarimeter to have the liquid-crystals as well as the achromatic wave plates both interchangable with the new giant Savart. It's up to the summit today... After a few hours sleep anyways.