It’s been a while since we’ve had a results post, but it is returning after almost 10 years.
Abstract: 2MASS J16120668-3010270 (hereafter 2MJ1612) is a young M0 star that hosts a protoplanetary disk in the Upper Scorpious star-forming region. Recent ALMA observations of 2MJ1612 show a mildly inclined disk (i=37∘) with a large dust-depleted gap (Rcav≈0.4″ or 53 au). We present high-contrast Hα observations from MagAO-X on the 6.5m Magellan Telescope and new high resolution sub-mm dust continuum observations with ALMA of 2MJ1612. On both 2025 April 13 and 16, we recovered a point source with Hα excess with SNR ≳5 within the disk gap in our MagAO-X Angular and Spectral Differential (ASDI) images at a separation of 141.96±2.10 mas (23.45±0.29 au deprojected) from the star and position angle (PA)= 159.00±0.55∘. Furthermore, this Hα source is within close proximity to a K band point source in SPHERE/IRDIS observation taken on 2023 July 21 (Ginski et al. 2025). The astrometric offset between the K band and Hα source can be explained by orbital motion of a bound companion. Thus our observations can be best explained by the discovery of an accreting protoplanet, 2MJ1612 b, with an estimated mass of 4MJup and Hα line flux ranging from (29.7 ±7.5)×10−16 ergs/s/cm2 to (8.2±3.4)×10−16 ergs/s/cm2. 2MJ1612 b is likely the third example of an accreting Hα protoplanet responsible for carving the gap in its host disk, joining PDS 70b and c. Further study is necessary to confirm and characterize this protoplanet candidate and to identify any additional protoplanets that may also play a role in shaping the gap.
Li, J., Close, L., and Long, F., et al. “Discovery of Hα Emission from a Protoplanet Candidate Around the Young Star 2MASS J16120668-3010270 with MagAO-X”
Majority of the MagAO-X team traveled to DC in 2023 for the GMT community science meeting , so this is the second time the (partial) MagAO-X team has assembled in Washington. But this time, it’s focus on all sciences done with the not-so-giant Magellan Baade and Clay telescopes.
David Osip, the LCO Associate Director, gave the first talk of the day, which was an overview on the state of the observatory. As someone who miss out on the 2025A observing run, I got a bit emotional (just a very…small…bit), when some familiar faces showed up on the screen.
Max, I have paid for my stay… Lots of our guest blogger!
Of source, MagAO-X has made an appearance within the overview talk despite not being included in the Magellan instruments FOV slide. And the rest of the morning was filled with IFU instrument talks.
Yay! MagAO-X“Apologies to to MagAO-X team but putting the tiny dot for the FoV was not practical”
During luncheon social, Jay has found a familiar face here at the conference, Marcelo. To us who attended this conference in person, Marcelo is the one who gave a non-IFU talk earlier this morning. To those who are back home in Tucson, you may know him as the person-Jay-ran-to-for-coffee-machine-support-in-Baade-during-2025A-run. Marcelo showed us the face of Magellan, which now none of us can unsee.
Marcelo and the cute figure of the Magellan face 😉
All the major events happen after lunch. Logan was the first to be behind the podium and she took it away with the results of her Pup Search. Soon after her talk, Logan also presented a poster on her work on imaging planet with reflected light.
Showing off her survey yieldsLogan and her poster that doesn’t have the right color pallete
Oh, Logan didn’t just stop here. She also was the chair of third (!!!) spectroscopy session of the day and the second half of the imaging session, where Jay and I presented our work.
I started the second half of the imaging session with some protoplanets.
Sorry Sebastiaan… (for not explictly citing Haffert+2019)
And the microphone was immediately handed off to Jay for some debris disks.
Slide with all the appropriate and proper acknowledgments, along with a Jay
The rest of the afternoon was filled with talks on objects with non-negligible redshift (what even is that???).
After all the talks, we snap a quick group selfie before attending Alycia’s tour of the EPL campus.
Did you spot Alycia in the background?
We started the tour off in the Greenewalt building where the conference took place and got a introduction of the history of research done at Carnegie. The research span from project like The Carnegie, a ship that traveled the world to map the earth’s magnetism in the 1920s, to using radio telescopes to prove the prescence of the Earth’s iononsphere. Perhaps the one project that none of the conference attendees can ignore is the Atomic Physics Observatory (APO) located right outside the Greenewalt building. This “observatory” does not house any telescopes, but rather a Van de Graaff generator (designed by Van de Graaff himself) used for splitting the Uranium atom. And it is carefully disguised as an observatory to please the neighbors.
Alycia beginning the tourIs it really a dome of a telescope?globe with all the point the Carnegie has traveled toA cool library in the Abelson buildingVera Rubin used this exact instrument!Sketch of the southern sky from 400 years ago
Jay and I got an additional tour of the research building, where Alycia’s office is located. We got to see a lot of the items used by Vera Rubin herself and visited one of Alycia’s colleague, Paul Butler, who was observing at Clay tonight. While crashing Paul’s observing run party, we “ran” into our guest blogger and TO, Carla!
Low resolution Carla! Hi Carla!
The (partial) MagAO-X team and Dr. Daniel Lin, who is a collaborator of Alycia here at Carnegie, ended the night with some amazing greek food. Unfortunately, I do not have any photos during this social gathering as my phone battery was drained throughout the day for the creation and documentation of blog-tent.
Song of the Day
Already, thanks for reading my full documentation of Day 1 of the MSM, which is full of action. Now, I am ready to goodbye to editing this post and head straight to bed. So please enjoy this fantastic Good Bye.
This Sunday, we celebrate the triumphant return of the penguin seeker, Dr. Joseph Long, along with his bonus blog detailing his short weekend journey. On top of the cute penguin pictures, Joseph brought back lots of local chilean snacks that he sourced in supermarkets during his trip.
As always, before the sunset viewing session, a few of us went out for a vizzy spotting session. We only spotted a little baby vizzy and we were unable to find the parents. I suspect that we have been coming to this spotting location too often and have scared some of them away. As requested by a follower of Jay, we recreated the famous “crawling Jay, searching for vizzy” moment.
A baby vizzy 🙂A JayBringing dad energy to vizzy spotting (picture by E. McEwen)
Roger, our T.O. for this turno, marched towards the dome with another basket full of empanadas in the glow of the setting sun as we gathered outside the control room for another sunset viewing. Although not captured by a phone, we were fortunate enough to witness another green flash on a Sunday this run. “Do you get deja vu” feeling that I am getting?
Shot of Roger doing his curl workout by E. McEwen.
Tonight on the observation schedule, we have Sebastiaan and Alycia. Some errors popped on CACAO, but were “successfully ignored” and we went to observe giant stars with low resolution mode on VIS-X and regular imaging mode on MagAO-X.
As the time for midnight lunch approaches, Joseph cracked opened some of the snack that have arrived on the mountain today. Katie, our resident Canadian snack tester, had particularly strong feelings about the ketchup flavored cheetos. As a big fan of the Canadian ketchup chips myself, I would have to agree with Katie on this one. Unfortunately, I have another disappointing news to deliver: the empanadas today contained 300% more olives than previous Sunday.
Katie expressing her feelings with her facial features. Chop up this disappointing olive empanda, Johnson!
With the successful engineering blocks in the past few days, Sebastiaan implemented partial EFC on sky for Alycia and Jay’s debris disk observations, which dug a dark hole for seeing fainter objects like disks.
“Three Magellans” by Alycia
Song of the Day
Per the 24B blog rules, the song I have chosen for the day is “déjà vu.” We are constantly doing new. and exciting science on the mountain, so I “think everything is special”.
With our third car stolen by an unknown observer/animal on the mountain/crew a few days ago, the uber arrangement for our 9 people crew has been a bit tricky. Two brave and kind souls volunteered themselves for a hike up to the telescope, Eden and Katie. They were soon rewarded with spotting of the cutest clean room vizzy on this run (thus far).
What a good clean room vizzy! Look at those bunny like ears!(pc: Katie)
Before the dome opening, the crew added the 24B sticker onto the instrument. (Yeah, we are a lil’ late this run).
The sunset viewing session proceeded after the “ensticken” ceremony. Parker’s head acted as the coronagraph for the group photo. Please try to call him by his new middle name, “The Vortex”, from now on. The long anticipated green flash was finally captured by human eyes. On video, which was taken by our one and only Professor Close, the flash doesn’t seem to be so green.
“The Vortex” JohnsonFor the “best part of this video”, watch till the end!
Along with our T.O.’s arrival, a basket full of empanadas entered the kitchen. Whether if the cheese empanadas were deep fried this time around remains a mystery, but they were a lot less greasy, which made it a lot more enjoyable for the meat and non-meat eaters.
Another Sunday and another basket full of empanadas (pc Jaylycious)
On the science end, the first half of the night was VIS-X time, and Sebastiaan observed quite a few targets in high resolution mode during this time. These data will probably be reduced by one of his current or future grad students, so look out for more MagAO-X papers? The good seeing persisted through the second half of the night, which was an joint collaboration between Jensen (graduate student from MIT) , Gabrielle, and us. We spent the rest of the night observing a protoplantary disk in Halpha.
Beautiful picture of the MW and Baade along with the LMC.
Song of the Day
Since we are now in South America, I have been trying to listen to more music from this continent, particularly pieces by Astor Piazzolla. Per the 24B blog rules, I must include two sentences from the song in the blog post. So here are the lyrics that I like the most:
“Y canto un tango que nadie jamás cantó y sueño un sueño que nadie jamás soñó, porque el mañana es hoy con el ayer después, che!”
As a non-Spanish speaker, I won’t attempt to translate for you. I would suggest a google search instead.
Around sunset, two of our finest graduate student AO operators took time lapses of the dome opening. Jay covered the inside of the dome, providing us with a view of the primary mirror cover opening. Eden on the other hand, set her phone on the tripod outside the dome and managed to get a video of the telescope turning, louvers opening, and also DIMM opening. If you spotted the abnormal blockage of the telescope view in the beginning of the video, you have witnessed the little bird that delivered a surprised gift for Eden – its guano. Thank you for your sacrifice, Eden’s phone.
Little bird also enjoying the sunset… and we mourn the lost of the cleanliness of Eden’s phone.
And of course, the blog doesn’t quite feel complete without photos of viscachas.
vizzy 1vizzy 2
The night started off with 3 hours of engineering lead by Sebastiaan and Jared, and there are no photo evidence of such event because a majority of us were too amused by the newest entertainment channel at Clay: the window into the supporting astronomer room. As the engineering block ends, the telescope is then handed over to the observers of the night, Logan and Jay. The seeing conditions were non-ideal, but they are still hopeful of their data.
Logan and Jay sharing their work and experiences on an outreach program remotely with Steward grad student.
The rest of us spent the night reducing some of the data we have obtained from the past few nights. We are all excited about the science yield in disk and substellar companion imaging. So keep your eye out for our papers on astro-ph and/or ADS!
Jared sharing his reduction of disk observations. Laird sharing his reduction and results on a super secret project. Logan and Sebastiaan overjoyed with their discovery of the Xoomies 1B!
And I am bring back a segment of the blog that I enjoy every much: quotes of the day! Enjoy the selected anonymous quotes.
“Oh, its so good to have Maggie back”
“Sebastiaan likes his cars like he likes his AO loop closing: operated at unsafe speeds”
“No. It’s not yellow. It’s just a golden hour butt.”
Song of the Day
For the song of the day, I, with the assistance of Eden, have selected a song that well fits with the weather of the night: wispy clouds.
