Robots are speeding up the most boring job in astronomy – Science Magazine

Hundreds of fibers, arranged by hand, capture light at the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys New Mexico telescope.
DAN LONG/APACHE POINT OBSERVATORY
By Daniel CleryFeb. 3, 2021 , 3:25 PM
It was one of the stranger and more monotonous jobs in astronomy: plugging optical fibers into hundreds of holes in aluminum plates. Every day, technicians with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) prepped up to 10 plates that would be placed that night at the focus of the surveys telescopes in Chile and New Mexico. The…

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