Eden McEwen – Page 4 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

AO4ELT7 Days 2 to 5: Go Team!

Hello, it’s me again. For various reasons, more senior members are not available for extended comments on AO4ELT. (Notably either enjoying France or other vacation escapades.) So to keep Joseph from shutting down the blog in disappointment, here’s another Eden recap of a French conference.

You can tell this was the first day, because once we figured out the first row AC, no one sat on the top row... — Lecture Hall picture courtesy of Arnaud

Day 2: WFS, DMs, and phasing – Oh my!

How do you get a gainfully employed post doc to arrive on time to an 8:30am conference start time? You make him the session chair. Maggie and I might have been a liiiiittle late to the invited speaker, Roberto Ragazzoni, the origin of pyramid WFSs, gave an engaging talk on the 27 OTHER WFS designs he’s dreamed up over the years.

The DM vendors gave their talks the second day as well, and it was nice to hear someone outside the team bragging about us for a change.

"And we delivered a 2k DM for MagAO” — Thanks BMC for the shout out!

Just to prove their point and show how to use a BMC DM in a truly extreme AO system, Laird followed up with our GMagAO-X

Not shown? The hole in the wall required to make this happen. — HCAT design overview, waterwheel and all.

This is the only non-photogenic photo of laird in the decade this blog has existed. — Photo credit Guido.

We concluded the day with dinner in the very same halls the palace of old used to dine in. Whats more, they gave us a light show of projectors to display the hall in its different eras. Rumor has it Jared has a video of the light shows, even though he prefers the hall in its more natural lighting.

Imagine what two POWERFUL projectors could do for your centuries old hall — The 300 of us filled out the dining hall quite well!

Do you feel the Papa presence? — Someone is not amused

In true french fashion, this dinner took around 4 hours and multiple bottles of wine. Sebastiaan did not eat the offered cheese.

Day 3: XWCL past present and future

Wednesday, midway through our conference days, we had our largest number of XWCL talks yet! Especially if you include the once and future lab members. We started with Lauren Schatz, recently graduated and now a critical member of space force, give her invited talk on LASSIE – Laser guide Star Sensor Integrated Extreme adaptive optics.

PI behavior — How do you make extreme AO cooler? Add lasers.

Kicking ass, taking names, wearing florals — Image credits to Guido.

Sebastiaan Haffert, current group postdoc, gave the first talk of the evening session, with a hot-off-the-press presentation on more novel WFS designs.

Laird still won longest title — Listen up, he put on a button down for this.

What you might not know is that he finished the last simulation mere minutes before we had to turn in our slides:

Procrastinator support group corner — Upon successful completing on the last plot.

We then got to see a future XWCL-er, Josh Lieberman, present on his implementation of iEFC with the KPIC instrument/testbed. We’re so excited to have Josh be a part of our group next spring!

These talks are always less intimidating because no one is really looking at the speaker. — KPIC works with coupled planet light, making speckle nulling that much more important.

Last of the day, bringing up the other half of the MagAO-X sandwich, was me! I got to give my talk on my sparkles work that I took on over the last year. Having multiple people I cite in the crowd was new, usually I have to fight to get people to care about optical gain. This talk I got good feedback and even more to think about once I’m back.

I did this whole talk without saying "sparkles" and I think that's tragic — Dr. Joseph long and his rendering abilities there with us in spirit.

After surviving the stress of presenting to some of the most knowledgible people in the field, we all relaxed by having cocktails on the Bridge of Avignon, courtesy of First Light and ALPAO. It was something special to see the bridge in such beautiful golden light.

I can see the conference room from here!

Day 4: Last talk!

Jared, giving the invited mid-morning talk, finished up the MagAO-X talks with an overview of what it’ll take to get us to the contrast of the planets we care about, and what MagAO-X is doing to get us there. Of course the whole team sat close to be sure to show our support. We weren’t the only ones who liked Jared’s talk though, younger scientists later reported it to be very accessible, which is a win among some of the other update talks we listened to.

Our fearless leader presents the MagAO-X update

"I learned something again!" - Maggie — You become a PI to guarantee audiences to your talk, right?

During the coffee break, we finally got our group photo! Feels good to know our group did so well. “Go Team!” – Jared

It being a selfie is part of the MagAO-X charm. — Our whole team got the chance to present! And we did pretty darn good.

We also had some of our friends from MAPs present later in the day, (see Joseph’s and I’s MAPS posts last month to see this group photo in full color). Jacob gave voice to the struggles that adaptive secondaries and bad weather can can give observers. The next MAPS talk will get to be much more triumphant though, I can feel it.

Some of the best parts of this conference happen when you aren’t last minute cramming for your talk and you can just appreciate the good company of your science peers. Cheers to the Arizona team!

"That beer makes me look small" — Cheers to the presenters!

Our waiter was so amused by the double order of large beers that he came over to take a picture. — Serious beer for serious scientists.

Day 5: We all gave our talks, what do you mean there’s more conference?

Even after we finished XWCL talks, turns out there were still things to stick around for! Sarcasm aside, the last day of the conference wasn’t one to miss, with plenty of atmospheric simulations to go around. Plus, we got a free tour of the Papal Palais with our badge!

All too soon though, it was over. Personally, I got so much from being around this international group of instrumentalists! After being inspired and motivated by all the various project people have been working on, I know I have a lot more too look forward in the rest of my PhD.

Except none of us are in this one.... — Conference Group Photo!

Farewell France! Thank you for treating us so well.

This is a pro-train blog. At every opportunity. — Last views of the southern countryside after we all scatter on Saturday.

Song of the Days

Putting respect on the Avignon name with:

“Bridge of Avignon” in English and French by Barney and crew

AO4ELT7 Days -5 to -2: The CDI Prologue, AO-istas in France

First stop after the plane, because how else will the people know we’re in Paris?

This is the prologue to the long sweaty conference the XWCL team will be spending in Avignon, in which some of us spend a shorter but just as sweaty time at a workshop in Paris. (There is a heatwave here, and it’s humid, and the desert kid in me is struggling to adapt.). Last year Sebastian, having good ideas as he does, collaborated with other high contrast imaging folks to think up a workshop on Coherence Differential Imaging, or CDI. As the whole point was to entice the next generation of instrumentalists with the siren song of coherent starlight subtraction in control and post processing, I was an easy target to convince to attend. Jared, having never been to Paris before, was also more than willing to spend a few days in the discussion. So here we are, tourists in a world-dominant optics hub.

Day -4: What is CDI again?

No really, it's literally an old castle they let astronomers put a telescope on — “The Castle” – Observatory de Paris, Muedon

The first day of our CDI journey gave us a late start and a delightful Uber driver, who not only saved us from walking up a long hill to the conference location, but also regaled us with a deep dive into just how bad the drivers there really are.

Distinct from previous pictures, here I do beleieve my pointing helps locate the object of interest. — We found that big tower again from the suburbs.

The Observatory itself was nestled overlooking over the city from it’s Parisian suburb, magnificent among the larger park and woods that presumably came with the original estate.

CDI in which you make speckles dance for YOU. — Overview talks included the Self Coherent Camera (SCC) design.

We started the day with a series of very helpful overview talks, in which I rapidly went from not even really knowing what CDI stood for to appreciating cutting edge efforts to use the coherent properties of starlight with our high contrast systems. Barnaby Norris, Sarah Stieger, Axel Potier, and William Thompson should be commended on how much effort they put into the breadth and depths of their review talks. If you had listened closely, over the birds and the beatific breeze, you would have heard my brain expand three sizes in just an hour.

Almost as helpful as the actual programming were our extended coffee breaks, catching up and floating ideas with some of the leading experts in the field amid delicious pastries. It’s a good reminder that no matter how deep in the trenches I am with my little calibration codes, plenty of my colleagues in the field are right there beside me, banging their heads against similar walls.

Does this make me miss Josephs baked goods? Yes, yes it does. — Gratuitous pictures of snack tarts and our struggles with slicing them.

At the end of the day we snuck in a little solar observing in an H-alpha filter. What a welcome sight to see the small saguaro on the solar telescope, designed and built by Lunt Solar Aystems in Tucson Arizona! With that petite piece of home, this place started to feel familiar.

We keep plotting H-alpha data in blue colormaps, imagine my suprise when I see it's actually a red filter... — With just this little guy we saw stellar prominences in great detail.

Day -3: Discussions and downpour

The Dutch saying for when you get poured on, because there's always a dutch saying, is " You are not made of sugar!" aka he's not worried about melting. — We did ask Sebastiaan if he wanted an umbrella…

Our second day was focused on hands-on teamwork exercises, which the MagAO-X team prepped for with the team exercise of figuring out how to get on the train, in the rain, from the wrong end of the station. It made us miss our chatty uber driver, especially with the quarter-mile hill treck from the train station to the workshop. Sweaty and drenched and a little dazed, we quickly got into our day of working through simulations and practical implementations of CDI algorithms and architectures.

"Wait... is that Labview??" — a quick look into the wavefront correction on THD2 – To the left, the pupil, and to the center the PSF

One of our hands-on notebook experiences allowed us to play with the test bench right here in Paris. Their team has done great work to show a possible use case for AO telemetry, and in some of them we were even able to use their complex coronographic phase mask to pull out the planet!

Results like this is why ground based and Space based astronomers have beef... — Using a model of the THD2 test bench and well-calibrated telemetry to reconstruct a PSF, and a planet!

After the day wrapped up, and to much nicer weather, Vincent Deo, a Paris local, walked us through the Meudon streets to a delightful sidewalk restaurant. There, discussions continued, though perhaps on much sillier topics, over wine and Belgian Beers and Charcuterie.

Sometimes you have to flag down your waiter and ask for the check so Barnaby and Sebastiaan stop debating AI world domimation. — Cheers to charcuterie

Meanwhile… word has reached us that the Space Force AO4ELT contingent has arrived on the other side of France …

Day -2: Reflect, Revise, Repeat (in 2-3 years?)

But wait! Where did Jared go? — Sebastiaan and I finally made our train, and made it to the workshop mostly on time

And before you know it its over. We wrapped up our discussions on the final day, summarizing our progress, thoughts, and future projects to the rest of the attendees. It was required that the students do the talking, and because of that the final presentations had much fresher face than the introductory ones. It did feel like

For each probe we swapped out an organizer, — Thank you to our LOC and SOC for being such wonderful hosts!

Of course, for all we’re learned, it was also a treat to be able to see another world center for astronomy, and another old telescope. Though this site is mostly for solar observing in the modern day, it has a history of observing that you can feel wandering the halls.

"Started from the bottom and now we're here" — The original Lyot Coronograph

The old reflector at the top of the dome

Finally, we finished this productive and educational tour de force with a very french dinner. More cheese, duck, and good friends from California and Australia.

You'd be surprised by the level of enthusiasm, but Jared is actually the one who took this picture — Everyone but XWCL looks good in this picture, so I guess we’ll use it.

See you all soon in Avignon!

Song of the Day(s):

Blog Rules for the french trip: Every post should use at least one french word, have a song of the day, and be tied to a memory of the trip.

Summer Breeze by The Main Ingredient

The streets of Meudon were perfumed by the many jasmine bushes, wafting along a puff of breeze. I can understand why they’d want to host a workshop out there.

MAPS 2023A Day 5: Sunset on the ASM run

It's me. I'm the unsuspecting grad student. — Manny caught an unsuspecting grad student sunset-watching.

Well, the fun had to end sometime. This post marks the official end of the MAPS 2023A run, after a weather-ful last two nights.

One of the big perks of mountain observing in AZ, especially in June, is replacing the 100ºF highs of the valley with mountain temperatures of 40-60º. The first night, as we braved the bitter winds of civilian twilight for the MAPS team photo next to our colleagues with parkas and patagonias, Joseph and and I had the sinking thought that maybe our office-AC outer layers wouldn’t measure up. For the first few nights, we shivered through the few minutes we had to be outside and remembered the summer heat wistfully.

Does this make our run lucky? — Lady bugs huddling in the outside cracks of MMT for warmth.

Careful what you wish for. After the chilly 50s of the first few nights, our second to last night we got hit with an uncharacteristically balmy and breeze-less front. Lovely for humans, but very bad for ASMs who need weather-based cooling. So yesterday, we spent a crystal clear night waiting on and off for a hot, crabby ASM with no wind to soothe it.

Tonight, however, the chilly breeze was back, and with it the clouds. We got a sunset so spectacular that the whole control room ran out to see it. Did I miss a green flash? Yes. Yes I did. Apparently I haven’t learned the proper technique even with weeks of observing at LCO.

We at MAPS recommend MagAOX — Even Joseph, perched at the ever-rotating window, had to admit the sunset was worth going out to see.

Though astronomers might love a good sunset, astronomy doesn’t like the clouds they can bring. We ended up being clouded out for a good portion of our final night, an anticlimactic way to end a week of speed-learning a CACAO system. As it became clear that the clouds weren’t going to clear out anytime soon, person by person the crew took off to bed, prepping for mountain-top departure in the morning. What was left by 3am was the skeleton crew, the bare minimum to keep everything running. Brian for the telescope, Jaren for the science camera, Manny for the ASM, Me for CACAO, and Joseph for morale.

I know what all those GUIs do now — Skeleton crew selfie right before closing.

Though Joseph and I were last minute additions to MAPS and the learning curve was steep, it was such a privilege to be able to help with an AO system on such a historical telescope. One that has been on the forefront of segmented mirror alignment and Infrared science. Hope to see you soon MMT!

The clouds were this gross all night. — The last sunrise.

Song of the Day

Sleepy Eyes – Eerie Wanda

MAPS 2023A Day 2: “Now we’re starting to look like an AO system!”

Hello. It is your local CACAO expert here, beaming to you directly from the beautiful peaks of the Santa Rita mountains. I am currently being not-paid to convince a wiggly mirror to un-twinkle stars from a four story building that rotates all night long. The whole experience feels like an internship at something between a castle fort and sea-bound vessel. For the record, I do not think that buildings this big should merry-go-round. However, I will admit that this one is impressive.

We continue to be supported from CACAO sages across the globe. Olivier called in last night about to board a Hawaii-bound plane, and Jared logged on from one of the fastest trains in the world. (Thank you wise ones, for being so generous with your travel time.)

The 10th fastest in Japan!! — Kagayaki 533 for Kanazawa

Hope he enjoyed his bento box. — MAPS at 160 mph

Tonight Olivier split his time between the Subaru team and ours, remotely helping us tie off some CACAO loose ends. Finally, after the trials and tribulations of last night’s clouds and cranky mirrors, we finally have a happily closed loop! Early tonight we had the DoCrimes response matrices loaded up and performing corrections. We’re still working on some other orthogonal control algorithms with CACAO, but for now, enjoy the success of the day, from two different perspectives:

First, mine, as the AO operator:

Here we turn on the Crimes, and see the WFS pupils (top left) flatten, acquisition source (middle) shape up. You can see on the bottom the ASM’s positon, current, and temperature per each actuator.

Second, Jorge’s as the observer (video by Joseph):

AO off, tip tilt on, full AO loop on.

“Now that’s what I call an AO System!” Manny.

"The pupils are so well illuminated!" — The team was still taking data when this photo was taken.

Summer runs are funny in that you seem to always be running out of time. Sun-down at 8pm to sun-up at 4am isn’t as long as you’d think. We’ve been running our observations into sunrise more often than not.

Moonset was so beautiful my phone refused to capture it. — A wave from the light of the full moon!

That said, we still have a few more days to get our loops more stable, but what we’ve accomplished so far has made me proud of my small, button-pushing part of the MAPS team. I have had such a great time working with the crew, have been charmed by MMT, and despite all worries I do believe Joseph and I have proven ourselves helpful.

Song of the Day

TURN THE LIGHT by Danger Mouse

Congratulations M.Sc. Avalon !

aka Miss LOWFS aka Optics Master — Advisor Jared R. Males and Avalon McLeod

Today another shining star of the MagAO-X team has defended! We all are so happy to announce that Avalon McLeod, after powering through a triumph of a thesis and defense, now has her Masters degree in Optical science!

We thank Jialin for her portrait mode iPhone skills. — Ready? Set. GO!

The story of Low Order Wavefront Sensing (LOWFS) was everything a AO control theorist could ask for. We got motivation from the 2020 Decadal Survey, multiple novel acronyms, AO diagrams old and new, PSF cleanup simulations, and stunning comparisons between lab and on sky results. Even those of us who saw the on-sky prowess of the LOWFS loop our own eyes were on the edge of our seats as she revealed how quantitatively well it performed our last run.

After the public portion of the talk, everyone but the defendee and the committee were asked politely to “Get out!” We all waited patiently for the committee to decide what we’ve felt for a while, that Avalon has earned the title of a Masters Degree.

(Well, we actually didn’t wait so patiently that we could help ourselves from sneaking a peak to see if they were done yet…)

This was after the congrats announement, no secrets exposed — The Optical Science’s building has glass in unexpected places, which mayhaps should be expected of an optics building

Among Avalon’s many skills is ceremonial un-corking (along with LOWFS-ing, nano-fabrication, hoodie fabrication, cameo printing, and a ccapella do-whops) and we celebrated!

Joseph and Sebastiaan staying stafe — Cheers to Avalon!

This one's for Avalon's parents — Now that’s a grad!

Congratulations Avalon from your MagAO-X family, observing runs and lab time won’t be the same without you. We wish you the best of luck as you go on to be an Astronomer for Draper in Boston! They’re lucky to have you.

Song of the Day

“Shining Star” by Earth, Wind & Fire