Lidar scanning a telescope which is partly built out of oldbattleships, in order to make it prettier. As one does.

Lidar scanning a telescope which is partly built out of old battleships, in order to make it prettier. As one does.

For the last two years though, Lovell's 5,000 square metre bowl has been undergoing restoration, which means it has to be kept static and pointed directly upward. As a result, artists and designers are deprived of its huge circular "screen".

"All we had was the superstructure, so we convinced the powers-that-be that we needed a 3-D scan of the whole thing," said Mr Bluman.

The need for that scan dates from when construction first began on Professor Bernard Lovell's great telescope in 1952. Even as the structure took shape, there were many unsolved engineering problems. Many ad hoc solutions that allowed the 1,500 tonne bowl to be steered with pinpoint accuracy were devised along the way, including the use of racks from battleship gun turrets. Possibly as a result of these swift engineering fixes during construction, there were no accurate technical drawings of the telescope available.

"We used a Lidar scan, which essentially shoots lasers at the entire telescope to create an enormously detailed point cloud - a three-dimensional map of the structure," Mr Bluman explained.

Once he and his team had simplified this map, they used it to virtually "flatten out" the whole structure into a two-dimensional plan, and used that to design the animations that would be projected onto every single strut.

Originally shared by Jenny Winder

Lovell lights: turning a telescope into an art installation #bluedotfestival
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-44900634