Making the Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope

A large telescope requires a proportionately robust support structure to hold it. The Nicholas U. Mayall 4-meter Telescope, then the world's second-largest telescope by aperture at the time of its first light in 1973 and currently the largest telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO), certainly needed such a strong and stable structure. In this image taken in September 1968, the construction team is hard at work building the pier, the cylindrical concrete platform on which the telescope will stand. Encircling the pier are four red hexahedrons (out of the complete set of ten hexahedrons) that will support the weight of the telescope.