A view through the shielding to the MAGPIE chamber. Spare vacuum parts on the right, charging racks for camera batteries on the left.
One of our old school cranes in front of the 3 beam delivery lines from the high powered CERBERUS laser operated by the Imperial Laser Consortium.
The back optics bench is used for testing diagnostics and for smaller projects.
A view into the screened room, with our six very old, but very capable oscilloscopes. Also, the timing rack and some computers for data analysis.
MAGPIE by name, MAGPIE by nature – we have lots of shiny spare parts hoarded over the years, mostly cast off by AWE and other big government labs.
The outside of the screened room. The intense electro-magnetic pulse produced by MAGPIE can damage the sensitive electronics we use, so this room protects them from the pulse.
Optics in neatly labelled draws. We have lots of spare lenses and mounts so we can rapidly build new diagnostic systems.
Electronics and soldering bench. A bit of a mess now!
A view into one of the diagnostics area outside the shielded chamber. We use off the shelf D-SLR cameras for a lot of our optics work. Here we have a two colour interferometry system set up.
The array assembly bench is in the foreground, with the shielding and the chamber in the background. The array assembly bench is where we measure, cut and assemble the loads we fire on MAGPIE.
Upper floor of MAGPIE. This is part science, part workshop. The chamber is in the centre of the room.
