Last night was our final night on-sky in 2017A. Laird went down around 10pm — hopefully he got to sleep fairly quickly, as he had to be up at 7:30am for a long day’s work. Jared went down around 3am — and he had to be up around lunchtime to help Laird. I’m not needed as much for the dismounting of the instruments (other than Clio), so I was the one to stay up running AO for T.J. and helping him trouble-shoot VisAO. As soon as T.J. recorded his final photons at the end of the night, I shut down the wavefront sensor, the ASM, VisAO, and Clio. Then I disconnected Clio from the telescope, coiling all its wires up for safe transport, and went to bed. Meanwhile, Laird was finishing his breakfast, and came up with the day crew to remove Clio and the ASM from the telescope. Then when Jared woke up he helped Laird de-cable the Nas which they then removed. Finally, I woke up and helped clean up and put away our various tools and sundry. Now it’s 1am and I’m awake enough to post through the struggles of the weak wi-fi in buildings B-9 and B-10.
When I walked up today I saw a herd of 6 guanacos — 4 adults and 2 babies — on the hillside to the East of the road up to the Astronomer’s Support Building. I didn’t have my phone with my so I didn’t get a picture, so I just have to remember what I saw (as my Mom says). One guanaco was especially close to the road, munching on a bush — when I saw it I thought it was Gary Galileo Guanaco — and then I saw the other 5 — if it was him, he’s never brought his family before! The 2 babies were hanging out with 1 adult (their mom?) and as I walked by the first guanaco (Gary?) walked over and stood by them protectively (their dad?). The babies hid behind the other guanaco as I walked by, but they both turned their heads to watch me pass. If your internet is working very well, maybe you can find some baby guanaco pictures.
I am doing laundry right now, and just power-cycled the wi-fi repeater to try and improve the signal in our rooms, to no avail. Yesterday’s song of the day featured a girl singing excellent impressions of (mostly) female pop singers, so for today’s song of the day I have an excellent mash-up of famous songs by 4 female pop singers: