November 2014 – Page 5 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

2014B Day 15: The Aoista Operation

Our T.O. for the last week, Jorge, has dubbed us “the aoista operation”. Tonight was pretty calm – no major technical problems, a few scientific discoveries, and a pretty relaxed night. The clouds rolled in a couple of hours before dawn, so we closed out with some minor engineering tasks.

Tonight was TJ’s last night. So long. Kate is (possibly) arriving today, and tonight is the first night for our Chilean observers. We’ll have some new faces on the blog this week.

bendy — Here’s what the control room looks like from the middle of a calm night

KTC — Katie worked on Clio’s FITS headers. If you look closely she’s editing the c code that runs Clio.

wtf did it go? — A lone burro was seen after dinner

evidence — No burrows at the top today. But they were there earlier.

This is not the greatest blog post in the world.

Nay. We are but men.

2014B Day 14: Remote

Watch for Vizcachas — Baade (left) and Clay (right) at sunset.

Things went pretty well tonight. Alfio called us to check in and we could proudly show him that his software is keeping MagAO running smoothly:

Ciao, Alfio! — Alfio calls in from Firenze to check on our progress.

In fact, we are mostly keeping his chair empty for him:

Grazie, Alfio! — Also, Alfio is here in spirit, running the AO system — his software has been working so well, we just leave this chair empty and let Alfio’s code run the show.

Except for when things need attention:

Smoothly too — Jared, T.J., and Jorge running AO, Clio, and the telescope

Our friends over at Cerro Pachon are observing with GPI on the Gemini South telescope for the Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey (GPIES):

At Cerro Pachon and Cerro Manqui — Chilean telescopes tonight: MagAO and GPI

I was Skype-chatting with them a bit tonight:

Helloooooooo! — Here I am chatting with GPIES

We talked about astrometric calibrator fields, such as the Trapezium:

Is that how you did it on the sub? — Jared shows us how it’s done

At the end of the night, seeing spiked up to 2” and we couldn’t keep a lock on our faint science target — it was the equivalent of clouds rolling in, we lost so much light.

Close the dome! — At the end of the night, the seeing spiked up to 2”, making the WFS think clouds had rolled in.

So we tried an experimental target instead. Here is a quick snapshot of HD 269433 (all we could get before the loop opened again, as the Sun was rising too). It looks like this one, which is in the LMC and our WFS read as R=12.1 mag, will not work as a good astrometric calibrator for GPI.

Nope — Attempting an astrometric field – a quick snap-shot of HD 269433 in Ks-band Narrow camera. The circle is the GPI field of view.

Jason Wang is blogging about GPI this week and we tried to keep up with him:

Over at GPI, the GPIES team saw a vizcacha tonight by Gemini. I wonder if they stole ours, we have had so few sightings this run! But tonight, Jared did see one or two vizzies by Magellan at sunset:

GPI didn't steal them all! — Vizcachas at sunset

Also, we also saw a herd of burros on our way up to the top tonight:

Hee haw — Donkeys on our way up to the top

And we took a picture for our loved ones back home:

Finally, today is Jared’s mom’s birthday, so here are some pictures of her favorite oldest son for her to enjoy:

And many more! — Happy birthday to Jared’s mom!

And finally, here is a beautiful song from South Africa:

2014B Day 13: Settling In

It’s day 13 – we’ve been here almost 2 weeks out of 6 now – so we’re almost a third of the way through. I think of it like running a 5k (3.1 miles) where the first mile is the phase where you try to get out ahead of the pack, and the second mile is where you settle in to your pace. That’s where we are now, we’re settling in. Here’s a little bit about what that looks like.

He did a great job! — Jared is starting up at the beginning of the night.

I’ve been monitoring the temperatures on Clio. Last week we hooked up the new pump, which is stronger than the old pump, and I was worried that the temperature wasn’t settling quickly enough.

For Phil — Clio temperature monitor, plotted as a function of # of hours since we started cool-down this run. Top: The temperature of the Clio optics in Kelvin (77 K). Center: The temperature of the Clio detector in K. Bottom: The percent the heater is turned on. Each spike in temperature of the detector is when the Clio dewars are filled with 77-K liquid nitrogen, which melts the solid nitrogen and warms it up. Then the pump starts pumping away and lowers the pressure so that the nitrogen freezes and solidifies. The temperature keeps dropping, but we want to keep it stable, so when the temperature drops below the set point (53.3 K), the heater engages and tries to keep it at a stable temperature.

But take a closer look at just the detector temperature. I don’t think it’s quite as stable as it could be. I will think about this some more and possibly throttle the pump, crank up the heater, or go back to the old pump.

Underdamped — Take a closer look at just the detector temperature (bottom plot here). It isn’t quite stabilizing at the tenth-of-a-Kelvin level. I have to examine the darks to see how much it affects us. Also, the new set-point means I had to adjust the bias voltage, which means there is going to be a new linearity correction this run. Stay tuned.

Finally, some LCO lifestyle pix as we are settling in:

click for high-res ? — Sunrise from the summit

KTfave! — Dos huevos fritos por favor con aguacate, oatmeal, and fresh-squeezed orange juice

Fresh squeezed OJ is the best! — Life at LCO – breakfast then bed (please do not disturb)

A great song:

2014B Day 12: Who’s Driving This Thing?

Now that we have 3.3V where we’re supposed to have 3.3V, and we’re using good fiber cables, everything is easy. It was also a nice night, with stable (if not always good) seeing. This is much more relaxing than some earlier nights. It also means there isn’t much to write about.

did the ASM cause a temporal distortion? — I pretended to be Yuri tonight.

co-piloting — T. J. closed the loop for himself.

These next two pictures were taken about 10 minutes apart.

on my way to the laundry — Moonrise over the Andes

While I did my laundry — Sunset in the valley

2014B Day 11: Non così normale

The other day we said we were back to normal… the clouds had gone away and we had a great night on-sky with a good AO correction, doing fun science. However, some not-so-normal problems cropped up again, and we just got through a bit of a stressful time. We were losing communication with our slope computer, and having other strange symptoms. In the end, we managed to get ahold of our Italian friends, who helped us trouble-shoot.

The project spent a lot of time in Florence and some in Bolzano, and we are so grateful for our friends and colleagues who show such great interest in our project and in helping to keep it running! Here is Arcetri where Laird and Jared built the system with Alfio, Simone, Armando, Runa, Marco, Enrico, Luca, and more:

Dance Deck — We contacted our friends in Firenze and Bolzano, Italy. Here is Arcetri Observatory in Florence.

Alfio has been following our progress this run, our first run without him. Here’s Alfio with Jared last summer:

This project has led to a lot of good friendships! — Jared and Alfio in Firenze, summer 2013. With the Arno and the Ponte Vecchio

And here is Laird, Jared, and me with Galileo in Florence:

Specola — Jared, Laird, and me with Galileo

So after Laird went home, we talked to Alfio, Roberto, and Mario, and got some ideas on what to check. So Jared, Pato, and I adjusted the voltage in the BCU and also switched to the spare fibers.