We had some quality control stop by the remote operating room this evening. Though I wasn’t in attendance for the early shift, I did hear we passed with flying colors. Or flying animal crackers, as it were.
Initial impression: many screens. Katie explains the fundamentals.
MagAO-X has been operating true to the golden rule “Having more things just means more things can go right.” Things going right, right in the nick of time, include our stagebs. This stage allows us choose what light to send to the WFS, either a percentage or a wavelength split (specifically H-alpha /IR). Without it, Jialin’s H-alpha observations would have had fewer photons of interest heading to the science camera. Cheers to Jared and the LCO crew for helping us sort it out before observations tonight.
Major control room update: the backseat operating table.
We started the night observing for our highest tier MagAO-X loyalty member, Alycia Weinberger. Thankfully our seeing has returned to reasonable levels and was decent enough for a disk image (or four). A few weeks from now she’ll actually be in Chile observing on another instrument, and can give MagAO-X a good wave for us.
Jialin kept us on our toes in the wee hours of the morning with star hopping, a technique for reference differential imaging (RDI), as apposed to our more common angular differential imaging (ADI) approach. Rumor has it (because no one put it on the blog) that we’ve gone as fast as 39s in a hop between the target and reference star. Tonight we timed to 1m15s, which isn’t bad for a remote operation.
You could say we’ve gotten in the swing of things, hitting a standard of operation. See you next at the end of the month!
Color of the day:
I think in this marathon observing run the original rules still apply. So enjoy Oreo box blue, inspired by the true backbone of SO579.
Welcome to the day of flips, we’re back on the telescope and everything feels just a little off. Flip the platform, NASE to NASW. Flip the schedule, day to night. Flip the detectors, visible to IR. We were not victorious for all fights involving negative signs, but our 24 hour day was full of flipping successes.
Family road trip to the summit!
Flipping the alignment with fiducials –Success!
The morning was spent following Laird and Katie’s procedure for getting MagAO-X to the mirrored position of its NASE home. Through some of the smallest moves you’ve ever seen a 2000lbs instrument on rough surface make, we got right to where where the fiducials should sit relative to the instrument and guider. There was some discussion about platform height that would needed to be verified once starlight entered the system.
Katie uniquely qualified for this squeeze.Fiducials on point.
Flipping over the telescope for acc speed – Success!
Post lunch, Parker flipped the telescope on it side to install some new accelerometer raspberryPi hardware and circuits. He’s now able to read out wibbles and wobbles at 10kHz, up from with his previous limits of 4kHz. With these fast and furious speeds a future of predictive control this run is looking bright.
How low can it go?Soloing the scissor lift.
Flipping on all the switches –95%
The rest of us spent the afternoon threading MagAO-X back together again. This endeavor is partially plumbing, partially fishing around for wires in the rack, and as we cable up the DM, somewhat surgical. Everything was connected by dinnertime, and only 3 of our 50+ wires ended up being somewhat loose. We’ll still call that a success. Initial reviews of NASW are glowing
Another Katie sized space. Chemical assistant to the DM cable crew.
Flip-worthy sunset? Success!
We’re almost always on the hunt for a green flash at sunset, and tonight’s really delivered. The cloud layer was flat enough and the air was clear enough to catch a seconds-long glimpse of the green light of a refracted setting sun. We were chuffed to bits, to put it mildly. It may have been one of the clearest and brightest green flash the team has ever seen.
The classic sunset watch selfie.
Flipping MagAO-X to NASW- A success all things considered
Certain parts of our operation depend on knowing where the telescope will move next. The platform orientation flip affects how our k mirror keeps our field steady, our ADCs keeps the atmosphere from chromatically dispersing our light, and our woofer keeps the telescope on track with periodic offloads. Not all the flips were caught on the first go through, but by the halfway point of the night we had a PSF just as pretty as we’re used to back home (NASE). We didn’t even have to run up to the platform and re-adjust the bench position.
Inspecting our first target.First FDPR PSF from NASW.
Flipping to a visitor camera – Success!
Camdurham made its way back inside the instrument and tonight it saw its very first stellar photons through MagAO-X. We got beautiful single and double star spectrum throughout the various engineering tasks. In the image below, you can see MagAO-X providing diffraction limited images throughout the near IR. (You can also see our resolution decrease as the wavelengths get longer.)
Cleaning the prism used for dispersing light on the CRED2.First light raw frame, spanning 900nm to 1700nm.
Flipping off sidereal tracking – Partial success
Tiffany and Jay have been hard at work finding extended objects for MagAO-X to image, such as asteroids or satellites. These are tricky for the AO system, but they’re also tricky for the telescope which can no longer follow the well calculated paths of stars across the night sky, aka sidereal tracking. With the help of our TO Hernán, we were able to center a weather satellite on our acquisition camera. We weren’t able to keep up with it long enough to send through to our science cameras, so there’s more work to be done on the tracking front. Even with our acquisition camera we were able to resolve the solar panels on the 20ft target.
It takes a village to figure out non-sidereal tracking. CamAcq’s satellite sighting. Render of GOES-16
Flipping to remote ops – Setup success
Meanwhile, back in Tucson, we had Jialin and Josh test our remote operations computer. When the rest of us head home in a week, we’ll be using this setup to control MagAO-X remotely in April and May. A huge next step in making MagAO-X available and flexible for our observers.
The hard work of our friends back in AZ.
Color of the Day
Blink and you miss it green, seen tonight but chased after every sunset.
Flying out on Friday the 13th comes with some ominous portents. Thankfully, we only seemed to be hexed with suboptimal seat assignments and the briefest of turbulence. As of writing the early crew has made it safely to LCO, tucked in and ready to start fresh tomorrow morning.
Proof of life.
For all those traveling later, know that there are some tasty cafes right outside the B terminal now. Post security no longer contains the only sustenance offerings. The Starbucks by luggage check-in has, in fact, even kept up the important renaming ritual.
Jerry, Jen, and Iren – now caffeinated.
The welcoming committee to LCO was packed. Just as we turned off the highway a large wild horse heard greeted us. We ran into even more at the top of the mountain.
White horse in line.Sharing the road.Not sharing the road.
A family of Burros we’ve never seen before met us in the basin. One family was very bright white too! The more local mountain burros looked to have welcomed some new members recently as well.
Albino and family. Fluffball and family.
After a quick dinner (thank you chefs for staying open for us) Jay and I took a walk to double check we had our essentials in play. It looks like we’re all ready for tomorrow!
Cleanroom vizzy. MagAO-X in the cleanroom room.
The mythical white horse, the albino burro, and auspicious vizzy all must mean something. I’m sure we’ll be able to interpret these portents by the end of the run.
Color of the day: Prophetic Albino Burro White
Blog Rules: Color of the day
Every blog should include a color of the day. (Interpretative, but bonus points if a swatch of the color is included)
The color should be a reference to a blog occurrence or the song of the day
There shall be a song of the day, linked, with song title and artist in the description. (Sometimes the link dies, and the description helps us find it later.)
This is inspired by my love of dialed the color memorization game, and the fact you can color swatch your own photos.
Song of the Day:
You know, I just see horses and I know there’s a way.
We missed you! It’s been a whole MagAO-X observing run since we last saw you. We checked every day on our way up, but it seems like you were busy with other business.
Señor cleanroom Vizzy.
Last night, or morning? We had our last hurrah in the control room.
Everyone in the control room one last time.
Our take down crew went to bed early, but the night crew holdouts worked on Sebastiaan’s targets until the clouds told us it was time to pack up.
Clouds through the moonglow. “How am I expected to work in these conditions?”
The night crew’s responsible for shutting everything down, and tucking all the cables away before craning operations start. Though I’m sure you’ve heard us up to this before.
Face of a man about to take darks. The optimal position for deconstructing MagAO-X earthquake preparations
You might have seen quite a few cars swinging up and down the road to the cleanroom this morning. Josh and Parker were running up and down on errands before then we fully swapped with the day crew. I’m happy to report that both crews got a filling and balanced breakfast.
Rolling out the electronics rack.Unhooking the control room. An emptying NASE platform.
How did the day crew do? I heard they had some trouble with the bolt holes in the legs. Thank goodness the LCO crew is around to help when nuts get stuck. As you must have seen, MagAO-X is back in the clean room in good time. Some of us are sticking around one more day to attach all the sensitive parts and make sure it’s ready for remote observation.
Pondering above the fog. Evening walk to the small scopes.
I hope you’re staying warm with all these clouds coming through. We got one good walk in before they fully swallowed the mountaintop. The moisture in the air was just enough for us to finally smell the flowers. Also we finally had some free time to smell the flowers.
Geometry measurements of CLIO.All packed up for the trip to AZ.
Don’t forget to say hi to Manny! It’s been a while since the last time he was here but we promise he’s friendly. He just got here yesterday, but he’s already gotten so much of CLIO into a box.
The clouds finally covering the mountainside.
Sorry for all the noise by nap spot in the eves. I promise things will start to quiet down soon. Till next time,
Eden
P.S Song of the Day
Great No One by The Beths
P.P.S. Fun Fact.
Did you know that Seattle, USA has more cloudy days than London, UK?
If there ever was a day to wake up for lunch, Sunday is that day. While we all placed our much anticipated empanada night lunch orders, nothing beats the pastry goodies paired with the lunchtime soup choices.
Empenada de mariscos e Caldillo de Congrio.
Though delicious, the prize lunch came at the cost of some significant sleep debt for members of our crew. Nevertheless, we rallied, drank our little coffee drinks, and went right back up the hill for an afternoon of testing, bug fixing, and poking around on the internal source. I have no photos to show you the productive daytime endeavors, but I do have the motivational poster now stuck to the control room wall to sum up the energy of the participating members.
“Look at me, 4 hours of sleep and fresh as a lettuce”
Turns out if you wake up early enough, you can have a whole day before your observing work day. Enjoy these vignettes from our afternoon on the mountain.
A spurned pet. A lush path. A longing view.
Our empanada appetites did not overwhelm our TO Rebecca, who was able to muscle our nighlunch up the hill. We arrange the spread to remind ourselves of the richness and abundance of life.
The first big LCO empananda order of the run.
The first half of the night was shepherded by Parker, Katie, and Josh. We’re back on tau Ceti with the bells and whistles (iEFC dark holes and almost all the datastreams writing). The seeing gave us a good reason to work a little extra on internal source set up before it settled down to a fairly typical if a bit bumpy LCO night.
Seeing so bad they did not anticipate needing to plot it. Locked in and focused
At 1am, Parker and I switched. This was actually a big night for me! Though I’ve assisted with observations at telescopes since I was 19, this is the first time I’ve gotten to take data for my own science on my own proposed-for time. I always try to be a diligent AO operator, but it feels different for your own data. (The difference is anxiety.)
Our time on Beta Pic is split in two goals, firstly to try to push into bluer wavelengths (r’ band) where the contrast of Beta Pic b depends on the kind of atmosphere it has, and secondly see if we can observe the closer in Beta Pic c at all. Thank you Katie and Laird for installing the ri beamsplitter cube that makes these goal somewhat simultaneous.
The PIAA engineer at work.
Since Beta Pic c is so close in, and given all the good PIAA work from yesterday, we used the PIAACMC to improve our inner working angles. Thank you Elena for her PIAA expertise, and Tiffany for sticking it out with us for the rest of the night. We wrapped up not too far after our TO gave us the 15 minute warning.
Miles did not lock in on photoshop for his masterpiece to fail to make an appearance on the blog. The whole team in one photo! How lucky to be planet hunting with them all.
Play “spot the difference” with the Day 7 photo.
Fun Fact: Pablo Neruda’s favorite soup
As Duo Lingo likes to remind me, I really need to work on my Spanish. As I was ordering my soup, the chef very excitedly explained something I only vaguely understood to be about Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet. I since learned, and now you will know this too, that the soup from lunch today was popularized by Neruda’s “Oda al caldillo de congrio” (Ode to Conger Chowder). The conger chowder is one of many everyday items Neruda romanticized in his series of Odes, among soap, socks, and salt. It is considered today one of the most popular Chilean dishes, partially because of his love for how it represents Chile.
“… deliver the treasure to the flame, until in the chowder are warmed the essences of Chile, and to the table come, newly wed, the savors of land and sea, that in this dish you may know heaven.” – Pablo Neruda
Song of the Day:
Wait what do you mean Katie hasn’t used a Stroke’s song yet?
