And now it falls to me to write today’s blog post. The plan for the day was simple enough: adjust the focus on the science cameras and then pack up the instrument for its move to the aux building. However, while one of our fresh postdocs succumbed to the infamous Haffert disease and stayed up until 5 AM taking flat fields, we discovered that with the instrument’s recent changes, we were actually seeing some unexpected vignetting on the science cameras.
After a vigorous morning of re-aligning the beam and removing most of the vignetting (it actually went pretty smoothly, though it did eat up a decent chunk of time), there was unfortunately no time left to refocus the science cameras. MagAO-X had an appointment with some professional riggers to be moved up the mountain, and the first step was to remove all the cables.
And then it was time to move MagAO-X out of the clean room, wrap up the “gift,” and do some serious rigging to get her ready for the trip up the mountain.
All in all, it was a very successful day, and we’re more than ready to set up the instrument at the telescope and begin our first night of observing. In the meantime, we’ve had some new arrivals up the mountain and with even more reinforcements on the way:
Finally, the day was blessed with the first official viscacha sighting.
Song of the day:
A theme song for moving the instrument out of the clean room and up the mountain.
Fact of the day:
Any scramble of a 3×3×3 Rubik’s Cube can be solved in 20 moves or fewer. The highest number of moves required for an optimal solution is often referred to as God’s number in the community.