Another Mystery Object

Dave Pedersen found this in one of the engineering labs.  It has a magnetic base and articulated joints giving about a zillion degrees of motion.  We have no idea what it was used for.  Any ideas?

Update: Well... I found out what this is used for.  So after you make your best guess, you can scroll down to the end of this post to see the answer.  :)  Any creative suggestions for what other uses we might find for this gizmo are always welcome.

As always, you can click on the pictures to see larger versions.

Here it is with different lighting.

Here is a close shot of the magnetic base.  You can see my reflexion in the chrome push button!

Here is a wide shot of studio three, which has become the printer room and photo center

 

FLASH!  I did a little searching online and found that this is used to hold a dial indicator for measuring stuff.  Our unit has more attachments than the ones I saw pictured online.  I suspect that one would never use this device with all those arms attached at the same time.  We seem to have a particularly complete set of  attachments.

You can see the magnetic bases Eclipse makes and some of the attachments at this web site.  The manufacturer has details and some small pictures too.

 

 

Comet Lemmon

Comet Lemmon recently passed through the Southern Cross from top to bottom.  Here are a few pictures taken here in Hato around 6am on Monday.

The first wide shot has lines to show the Southern Cross.  There is glare from the water plant on the left side.  The stars are looking much nicer on the right side where the sky is darker.  There is an arrow showing the comet.  It is to the upper left of the foot of the cross.

Then next shot (below) is cropped quite a bit compared to the above image.  Can you find the Southern Cross without the lines?  And the comet?  If you click on one of these pictures, you'll see the full size images.

Here is a crop of the bottom three stars of the Southern Cross, with an arrow pointing to the comet.

These were 8 second exposures I think.  The last view is somewhat similar to what one would see in binoculars.