How Telescopes Deal With Earthquakes In Chile

Reader edgeofphysics provides a technical sidelight on the earthquake in Chile this morning — some details on how the European Southern Observatory protects the mirrors of the Very Large Telescope when an earthquake strikes. "Given that Chile is one of the most seismically active countries in the world, how do astronomers protect their giant telescopes that have been built or are being built in the Chilean Andes? This blog post discusses how Chile's most advanced facility protects its priceless 8.2-meter primary mirrors in the event of an earthquake."

Comments

Re:Better than

[phantomfive]

No, this was a monster 8.8 earthquake, approaching a hundred times bigger than the Loma Prieta earthquake that hit San Francisco in 1989, collapsing a bridge and causing massive damage. This is not an easy thing to protect against: the observatory is lucky to be far away from the epicenter, and would be insane to not prepare for earthquakes in such an earthquake-prone area.

The amazing thing is that so many buildings remained standing with an earthquake that size. Structural engineers are still not entirely sure how to deal with that kind of quake, because they happen so rarely. They did better preparing for quakes than SF did, or probably any county in the US.

Re:VLEC - Very large egg cartons

[phantomfive]

moderate quakes, of less than 7.75 Richter

Only in Chile would a 7.75 earthquake be considered 'moderate.' Smaller earthquakes have devastated Haiti, Turkey, Taiwan, El Salvador, and parts of the US, India and Pakistan (and pretty much anywhere else such an earthquake has happened).