Today started with Tiffany putting in some plumbing work for MagAO-X. We added a new glycol port to go into the side instrument panel to cool the new IR camera being installed within the next week.
In order to make space for the new IR camera, Sebastiaan and our collaborators from Durham University, Rob and Viktoria, performed surgery to remove VisX from its home in the instrument. The goal of this upgrade is to allow for first ever IR imaging with MagAO-X and to measure the overall throughput and strehl ratio of the instrument at IR wavelengths to drive design considerations for a future spectrograph.
Luckily, we are still working in the cleanroom since some healthy-looking clouds are making tonight look unpromising for observations.
Despite a rather brisk and windy night last night, I was able to take advantage an extremely dark night and get some pretty impressive pics of the Milky Way and Small/Large Magellanic Clouds with just an Iphone14.
Color of the Day
First, I have to give a shoutout to AZ for having the largest margin win in nearly 3 decades in the tournament. But more importantly, BIG RED is one step closer to making the trip to Indianapolis for the national championship game! With the being said, the color of the day is BIG RED!
