History

In order to facilitate relatively quick construction, it was decided to purchase all off-the-shelf hardware and software packages required for remote operation of the observatory.

The observatory was originally intended to reside on top of the WIS Solar Tower, at the eastern part of the Weizmann Institute of Science’s campus. A major concern was the stability of the building to vibrations, that may interfere with astronomical observations.

Tests conducted using a portable telescope and a video camera showed that the Solar Tower indeed suffers high-amplitude, low frequency vibrations due to wind gusts. Thus the Solar Tower building had to be abandoned, in favor of a more stable one – the heavy concrete-walled service tower of the Koffler Accelerator.

The design, procurement, construction and integration started at the end of September, 2009. The dome arrived in October, 2010. It was dismantled in the factory to fit into a container and was reassembled at the bottom of the Koffler Accelerator service tower. On a cold, winter day the constructed dome was lifted by a crane and placed on top of the tower, thus forming the new observatory structure.

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