Author: Eden McEwen

MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 1: It lives!

The sun rising on a day of unpacking.

Is there anything more tantalizing than an fresh, unopened box of MagAO-X? This team just couldn’t resist. The unpacking festivities started at the first call of the returning night shift astronomers and did not finish until our good friend Orion had completely risen.

The very first gift of the day was an early morning Carlos Culpeo spotted by a Josh who’s sleep schedule hasn’t quite agreed with all the travel yet. This curious fox was later spotted at lunch, and we hope he becomes a regular.

Professional Carlos
Morning Carlos
Moving Carlos
Lunchtime Carlos

After a reviving breakfast of the highest LCO standards, we shuttled up to the clean room and got to work on our hard hat activities. This includes the reverse of everything we did in Tucson (see Logan’s packing video) but enjoy these snapshots of cranes and dollys and etc. to jog your memory.

Geared up and ready!
Getting the instrument box in position.
The bolts are taken off the door.
Door is taken off the box.
Now we de-box the box.
MagAO-X freed and in good shape!
aaaand all the bolts had to go right back on the empty shipping box.

We were so fast and efficient, we had time to catch another fan favorite, Gary, who wandered up to the parking lot to check on what we were up to.

Grad students rushing over
First picture before the grads were alerted
A contemplative Gary retiring form the hubub

With another good animal omen bestowed upon us, and lunch in our stomachs, we got back to work freeing the electronics box from it’s larger, wooden box. Don’t try this at home kids, these are advanced crane moves best performed with at some two professionals and at least four grad students standing around in hard hats, looking anxious.

Workplace briefing with a view.
Grad student stabilization.
The classic lean
Collecting bolts
Clean room move

And all of a sudden, MagAO-X was out of it’s box and in the clean room, and it was only 3pm! Every time, it seems like we do it faster. Even our crane operator Juan was surprised. About at that time we all were ready for some caffine, and a break from hard hats.

The much needed 4pm coffee break

Woof. What a blog post. We’ve unpacked it, so we must be done, right? What, we still need to set up the clean room? You mean we’re only halfway through? Well… if this blog post is long, it’s only because you’re right there in it with us.

Before we could do anything else, the clean room had to get… actually clean. The youngest and spry-est of us took on the challenge. Special recognition to Katie for surviving the fumes of the glass cleaner long enough to finish the clean room mopping.

The classic big mop and aerosol combo.
Three cheers for cleaning what no one wanted to clean!
And still, everything looks alright!
panels coming off! more bolts!
Checking out what’s up with Vis-X

Once Laird arrived, some initial optical inspection occurred! Welcome Laird! Turns out you can only do so much without the cameras on to tell you what’s misaligned, so the real alignment will have to wait for tomorrow.

We ran into some unexpected traffic on our way back up to the cleanroom from dinner at the lodge:

Once we were finally clear, we finished up with the nitty gritty of glycol and cabling

Checking that there are no leaks, and the coolant is running smoothly.
Passing on re-cabling secrets to the next generation.

The good news? ITS ALIVE. All of the computers have turned on, the new GPUS hare happily chugging along, and we are ready for the DM cabling and alignment tomorrow. If you made it this far, congratulations, you have gotten through what will probably be our second longest day of the run.

Happy sunset
Green flash?

Wow, does it feel good to be back.

Song of the day

Maggie says we gotta have some nature? Here’s a cool condor shot I took today!

And in his majestic honor, the song of the day:

I, Carrion (Icarian) by Hozier

GMagAO-X’s first PDR

Maggie giving her HCAT talk, overviewing phasing on the testbed.

GMagAO-X just hit another big milestone, we just finished up its Preliminary Design Review (PDR). If you haven’t been to one before, a PDR is a chance for a design to be critiqued and tweaked before moving on. If a project does well on its PDR, it’ll have good reason to be funded and moved to its next phase, the Final Design Review (FDR). If the committee finds it needs more work, an instrument might have another PDR in its future (this has happened to a few other ELT instruments).

Our hope is that GMagAO-X becomes a first light instrument at the GMT, and the PDR is a huge first step.

A huge thanks to the committee members who made their way to Tucson to give their expertise to the exercise:

  • Antonin Bouchez (who previously worked with GMT AO, and now is the director of AO at Keck)
  • Dimitri Mawet (PI for KPIC, the High contrast fiber fed instrument at Caltech)
  • Mike Bottom (UHawaii)
  • Markus Kasper (ESO)
  • Alan Uomoto (Carnegie Observatory)

The two days were filled with talks about everything from science motivation, to optical design, to predicted schedule and budgeting. We got to do it all in Steward’s historic dome, specially outfitted for the experience.

Jared pointing

Since we had them out here in Tucson, the festivities got to include gadgets like a to scale model of of the GMagAO-X design, a non-functional 3K like the ones planned on in the design, and the patented optical locking clamp. Maggie also got a chance to show off the HCAT bench, for some hands on learning.

The 3D printed instrument, it rotates!
Hop clamp inspecting.
Maggie demoing the HCAT bench.

This was also a good chance for the rest of the team to catch up on where the GMagAO-X project is at.

Miscellaneous grad student attendees.

Thank you again to all the people who put in the work to pull the two days of review together, the committee for their attention and helpful comments. GmagAO-X is a stronger instrument because of the PDR!

Song of the Day

Dream On by Aerosmith

Goodbye Logan Noodle & BBQ party

[We love Logan but we aren’t always great at getting Blog posts out :S ]

Editor’s note: This blog post was left in “draft” status for eight months, and Logan is long since back in Tucson, but its contents are too important to leave unpublished. The management regrets this delay.

Song of the Day

“Things Still Left To Say” – Mal Blum

CfAO Fall Retreat: high contrast chats in the hills

Hello from Arizonans in California! I just got back from the UC Santa Cruz Center for Adaptive Optics (CfAO) Fall retreat, where members of the AO work through some of the pressing problems in the field. This year was focused on High Contrast imaging testbeds, lessons learned from Magellan’s MagAO-X and Subaru’s SCExAO and what might be in the cards for Keck, and a round up of adaptive Secondary progress – LBTO, MMT, and the future of IRTF, KECK, and beyond.

The Arizona Telescopes representing, Me representing MagAO-X (Magellan Clay), Robin and Jacob the Toronto part of MAPS (MMT), and Sam Ragland (LBTO)

Some of the likely suspects were around, namely Jacob and Robin from UToronto representing MMT calibration work and Sam Ragland from LBTO operations. Thanks to a very generous student scholarship from the workshop organizers, I was able to attend and represent MagAO-X’s progress.

If someone had taken a picture of me presenting, it would look a little like this.

Sam’s update on the LBT’s progress was some of the most concrete work concerning a long-term Facility adaptive secondary, in this case using adOptica technology. Sam discussed the re-coating of the secondary, and future plans, including adopting an ASM from CHile, close to this group’s heart.

Sam Ragland giving an update talk on LBTO’s work with Adaptive Secondaries.

Jacob got the longest student talk of the conference, and got to spend an hour discussing his method for calibrating on sky. A key difference between the LBTO and other telescopes discussed being that LBTO is a Gregorian design with an intermediate focus that allows for daytime calibrations of their secondary. MAPS and systems like IRTF and Keck are Cassegrain design with no focuses before the primary, and can only take calibration matrices on a bright star on sky. Making the operating software and calibration procedure robust in the meantime is a huge step towards making these systems reliable and facility class.

Jacob Taylor presenting on one method MAPS uses for on sky calibrations.

We also got one last GMT talk from Antonin, who has recently moved from his role on GMT to the AO scientist for the Keck twin 10ms. He gave an update on the current design of the GMT adaptive secondaries, which will be using a similar technology to what’s currently on LBT. In fact, we learned that the rigorous modeling and testing on the GMT prototypes solved a resonance issue that LBT had unexplained.

Antonin Bouchez reprising his past role of GMT AO lead to talk about advancements in the GMT secondary design. He has recently accepted an AO position at Keck.

I cannot express how grateful I am to have a community that shares and collaborates as this one does. Even though MagAO-X is already built, there’s a lot to learn from the discussions that Keck is having about their own testbed. As in, what areas of interest are already met by our technology? What new avenues are being pursued? And where do all fit in the the US high contrast family?

Took a quick break to see the hills of Santa Cruz

Thank you to everyone who made this conference so fruitful! And to the organizing committee for the student scholarship.

Conference participant photo, filtered by who stayed till Sunday.

Song of the Day

Berkeley Girl by Harper Simon

GMT: The 7th segment is in the oven!

This past weekend, the MagAO-X team got to take part in a historic event, the casting of the 7th and final GMT segment! The Giant Magellan Telescope is made up of 7th petal-like segments, and the Mirror Lab—a facility on the University of Arizona campus—is the only place in the world that can make them. These 8.4-meter segments have been in production for decades now, and this weekend the final one has started the 6 month journey of melting glass in the 5-rpm rotating furnace, until it cools to a room-temperature parabola. On Saturday the furnace reached its peak temperature, and from there it begins to cool. Interested parties, donors, and investors gathered to celebrate this milestone for the GMT.

On Friday and Saturday, some of the MagAO-X team helped the mirror lab staff give tours. Jialin and I have been training as tour guides for the last few months, Jared’s been doing it since his grad days, and Maggie was there as a GMagAO-X expert. First stop on the tour is the main attraction, the Furnace Room!

The GMT Segment melting in the spinning furnace.

The furnace is actually two levels, with the lower level focused on controls and system monitoring. You can see the large holder where the mirror segment will be hosed out.

Second view of the spinning furnace.
Ohara glass, what goes into the furnace.


The furnace room was hot! You could feel the difference in the oven heating just between Friday and its peak on Saturday. The next room over, where mirrors are ground and polished, is noticeably cooler than the first room. It’s kept at a constant temperature so that there’s no expansion of the glass as it’s brought to nanometers of the specified shape.

Polishing a 6.5m mirror.

Past the polishing room is the integration room, where GMT mirrors are stored in between their different stages of production. One of them, covered in blue, is actually on it’s way to being stored off site! Others are upside down, as they need their actuated backs attached, and so on. This set up is affectionately called the “CD Switcher”.

CD switcher with 3 different GMT segments.
A mirror almost ready to ship!

The three of us were stationed at the end of the tour in the integration room. This isn’t usually a stop on public tours, but it was opened up for the festivities. We got the honor of explaining how excited we are to do the science that the Giant Magellan telescope is built to do!

Prepping the talks and setting up the posters.

In the marching order, I was first! I introduced what MagAO-X is (an extreme AO instrument directly imaging exoplanets on the Magellan Clay telescope) and explained some of the basics of AO.

Me showing MagAO-X in action.

Next was Jialin, talking about the exciting science we get to do with MagAO-X, and the motivation for wanting to make our pretty pictures even prettier.

Jialin explaining what exactly is so cool about H-alpha acreating proto-planets.

Maggie then got to talk about the plans for GMagAO-X! Her work on HCAT, where we’ve done phasing development in lab, is a huge step forward in the feasibility of the project. She got to show the visitors what a GMT pupil would look like.

Maggie explaining the phasing problem in the next generation of ELTs

Finally, Jared got to talk about his favorite planet. Not caught in action, but by the end of his talk, everyone in the audience was thoroughly convinced of the impact that GMagAO-X will make on the exoplanets we love.

Jared prepping his slides, finding the best fake image of Prox-Cen B.

Hanging out with giant mirrors and speaking on the projects we work on was a huge honor! We hope to get to be back when they pull the mirror out of the furnace in March, and for plenty of tours in between.

The team after all the mirror lab tour madness.

Bonus Video:

The team talking about the GMT in an interview recently! This was shown to some of the guests this weekend, and will be around Steward for a while, I’m sure.