Author: Jay Kueny

MagAO-X 2024B Day 2: Smooth Sailing

So far, Laird and Sebastiaan have been doing an excellent job directing the in-person crew and we’ve made great progress towards the many tasks that needed to be done before the start of the big move on Wednesday.

Here, we see a lot of the team watching and learning during Tuesday morning’s initial alignment procedures as we prepare to install all the fancy new Lyot and focal plane masks brought down from Tucson.

The first optomechanical task of the day was to install the special masks for the new self-coherent camera. Check out the pinhole on the very upper edge of the mask when held up to Eden’s computer screen! That little pinhole, we’ve since learned, is the key for fancy new speckle-nulling strategies, like Coherent Differential Imaging. Sebastiaan’s and Parker’s faces says it all

… and after a bit of alignment work from the team, the mask is aligned!

Here is the result: there are fringes on the camsci images indicating that light from the pinhole is interfering with the light that transmits through the Lyot stop. Neat! If I were a quasistatic speckle I’d sure be sweating right now.

We broke for lunch and afterwards, it was time to finish up other miscellaneous tasks such as some interior cable organization, reconfiguring the power pathways for the Zaber stages, and squashing some LED lights inside the instrument.

We were initially just assigned the Suzuki for Clay observers “Lil Red” for our daily needs but we quickly realized that our transportation needs weren’t being met. After an email or two, we got permission to use one of the Suzuki Jimnys a.k.a. one of the super cool, white Jurassic Park-looking cars. Score!

One of the smaller tasks of the day was installing a small cable tray inside MagAO-X to help tidy up some of the pico motor cabling we had installed last month during the engineering run. These plastic trays required some slight modifications, which required a trip to the machine shop in the ASB. It’s not often any of us find our way in here, so it was cool to see…!

We had some time after dinner to enjoy the fading of the evening sunlight. some of us drove, some walked, and one of us ran.

From the Rocky Theme Song. We were attempting to do some vizzy spotting on the north slope of the telescope summit with P. Johnson who suddenly looked like he saw a ghost after looking at his phone. We asked what was wrong since this caught all of our attention and he, with a slight mumble of “Jared wants me…!”, ran off into the setting sun. So, when you’re checking out the telescope summit and you get a Slack message from Jared saying it’s time to Zoom, you best start zooming son.

“
Trying hard now
It’s so hard now
Trying hard now

Getting strong now
Won’t be long now
Getting strong now

Gonna fly now
Flying high now
Gonna fly, fly, fly…
“

I think we spent at least a couple of minutes talking to a Parker-shaped cloud before we realized what happened. Dude is fast, man.

These summer sunsets are great. Hasta mañana.

Song of the Day

MagAO-X Engineering Run 2024B Day 4: Well, it wasn’t lupus

Today is still ongoing, as I write this blog post at 1 am. I’m currently holed up in the library at the ASB writing my butt off for this 51 Peg proposal. It’s basically like 12-16 pages of highly polished material that they’re requesting for the application, so it’s a lot of work. To keep my morale up, Warren made sure I could read all about our avian brethren that live in the Argentinian region of South America by finding this in one of the many bookcases.

Lunch today consisted of some interesting Chilean-Japanese fusion. I grabbed the “pastel de choclo” which is like a shepherd’s pie, but with a corn topping instead of mashed potatoes. They also had vegetable tempura. This tourno of chefs is killing it, man.

After lunch we returned to our regular duties. However, before dinner we stumbled on an annular eclipse, so we had to go out and check it out. Apparently totality is happening directly over Easter Island, which honestly sounds like a religious experience. Well we here at LCO we ended up getting something like a 30% eclipse. Better than nothing…!

In MagAO-X engineering news…

We got a chance to admire the fruits of our alignment labors last night. A PSF comparison between camsci1 and camllowfs. We want these to look similar, indicating good alignment. So it’s looking good!

Stay hydrated, eat your green vegetables, and align optics. Do those everyday, and you’ll be alright.

We had trouble measuring some optics. Inches were too fractional we couldn’t find any metric calipers. We present a new unit of measurement for the lab: a micromaggie, which is 6.75e-7 inches or like 2 microns or something. Much more useful and reliable.

ICC2 has been sick. In fact, this morning we awoke to it looking almost terminally ill. It wouldn’t boot to the OS and just kept getting stuck at the BIOS, despite working relatively fine the day before. Although it was having trouble recognizing hard drives before it got super sick, usually a reset was enough to fix everything.

Luckily, we got our best doctors on the case (Jared and Joseph). Despite the confusing symptoms and near-death experience, ICC2 managed to make a full recovery once Jared and Joseph found the right treatment for the ailment. I’ve been watching old episodes on House M.D. lately, so I’ve almost been picturing the legendary Dr. House and Wilson themselves working on ICC2.

I think it would’ve made for a great episode! Maybe you’d all like to know- it wasn’t lupus that was making ICC2 sick. Although, it’s *never* lupus…

Song of the Day

I was going to pick Massive Attack’s “Teardrop”, initially released in 1998 because of the House M.D. analogy. But I’m pretty tired. And I think everyone else is too especially after a couple back-to-back 16 hour shifts. So maybe Brain Stew by Green Day better captures the mood here.

Initially released in 1995.

MagAO-X Engineering Run 2024B Day 0: A Hero’s Journey to LCO

Let me tell you about our trip.

Jared and I were scheduled to leave on Thurs. 09/27, however our Tucson flight was delayed to the point where we would have missed our ATL-SCL connection, so we got the opportunity to rebook. Whether or not this was due to Hurricane Helene, we’re not sure. Because ATL-SCL on 09/27 left on time, more or less, despite being closer in time to peak hurricane’ing. Our original TUS-ATL flight arrived about 3 minutes before the plane to Santiago left the runway, so all in all, it was the right move to rebook.

Because we rebooked, the revised departure date was the next day, Friday 09/28. By about 9a on Friday, the flight was already delayed by 20 minutes (we thought: “here we go again”), but thankfully the delayed departure time didn’t change again…. all the way until the VP landed in TUS which (we painfully learned) shuts down the whole airport for half an hour. This new delay was coupled by the plane being overweight as well because of the unseasonably hot tarmac temperatures this late into September. So, the poor souls on standby who got onto the plane had to be escorted right back off to bring the curb weight of the plane down. After all that, we departed TUS *finally* at around 2:10p, a final delay of about 1hr 20mins. We were set to arrive at ATL by 8:15p EST at Terminal B. Our ATL–SCL flight was set to depart right at 8:55p, from Terminal… E….

This is NOT Air Force Two, but it was close to the airport, so, possibly related.
Cue the Mario star powerup music
Y’all ever see “Yes Man” with Jim Carrey? Maybe the group that practices running photography was onto something, this is pretty fun.

We ended up making it with mere seconds to Gate E14, but Delta misjudged our dedication (and ability to sprint) and automatically rebooked us to fly to Santiago the next day while we were still en route to ATL. After a few tense minutes, however, the gate agents were able to get us back on our original flight and thankfully they didn’t close the door on us as it was definitely after 8:40p by this point. After taking our seat, we left the ground a few minutes after 8:55p.

We landed at SCL without incident but about ten minutes past 7a local time. Normally not such a big deal, but because we had gotten rebooked initially, our new flight out SCL–LSC was at 9a on the dot. The line to get through customs was, of course, super long. We finally got through at 7:55a. Boarding began at 8a, so, more running…!

SCL has also moved the security checkpoint to near the LATAM check-in desks. Again, normally not such a big deal, but Jared was never given a boarding pass when we deplaned out flight from ATL, so he had to get one reprinted before we could get through security. It was 8:34a.

Boarding doors close at 8:45! and the B gates were, no joke, like a third of a mile from the security check point.

We. Just. Made it…!

After taking the transport up from La Serena (and sleeping for most of it), we were just in time for lunch and were greeted by some familiar views.

Truth be told, after all the delays and setbacks and just plain bad luck, I never thought we’d make it this far.

Remember Inglorious Basterds? The apfelstrudel scene is a certified classic.

Bonus Content

For today’s Bonus Content we were greeted by a ravenous goaty parade at sunset…! This made for many, many small “landmines” when walking down later that evening in the dark. Make sure you wipe your shoes extra good before entering your room during goat season.

Blog Rule

Short trip, simple rule. The blog writer must pick the Song of the Day from the assigned decade below:

Day 0: 1950s
Day 1: 1960s
Day 2: 1970s
Day 3: 1980s
Day 4: 1990s
Day 5: 2000s
Day 6: 2010s
Day 7(?): 2020s

Song of the Day

The song of the day is Frank Sinatra’s “Come Fly with Me”, originally released in 1958.

Level up! Congratulations to Dr. Maggie Kautz

Photo by Eden McEwan. Actually, pretty much ALL photos below are by Eden McEwen. We’re all thankful that Eden tends to go into journalist mode during these types of events!

On Friday last week (07/19), Maggie of House XWCL, first of her name, phaser of segmented apertures, protector of 1/4-20 drivers and the first piezoelectric motors, breaker of drywall barriers, the aligned, enthusiast of The Expanse and master of optical waterwheels made Tucson a little brighter that day with the successful defense of her dissertation!

Maggie’s talk took us on a journey through the world of extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) instrumentation and revealed what is coming next for the development of the MagAO-X successor, GMagAO-X, slated to be installed on the upcoming Giant Magellan telescope. If you’re like me, you were mesmerized by the complexities of GMagAO-X’s parallel deformable mirror design and learned a lot about the optomechanical specifics of MagAO-X and the HCAT testbed.

A great introduction by Laird detailing Maggie’s history as a student at the UofA.

Maggie making short work of explaining complicated concepts surrounding phasing of segmented apertures.

It came to the surprise of no one that Maggie emerged from the closed-door session of the defense victorious and ready to take on the post-student world like an absolute boss. To celebrate, we all convened in the Steward Observatory 3rd floor Interaction Area to sample some celebratory bubbly and treats. Thanks to Jialin, Eden, and Josh for helping me supply some Maggie-approved sweets including coffee cake, jelly empanadas, cookies, and peach melba-flavored macarons (a reference to the sci-fi show ‘The Expanse’).

If you have a spare moment and you’re in the Steward Observatory building gaze upon the new the cork-shaped hole in the ceiling at the 3rd floor Interaction Area [edit: kidding].

The gang’s all here ;’)

Maggie has accepted a job offer to work as an optomechanical engineer as part of the staff at the Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics here at Steward Observatory where she will put her talents towards the latest space-based telescope projects. Though she is moving to a different office space, we’re all super thankful she will stay close to the group both professionally and physically.

First slice; photo by Melanie.

We capped the day off with a fun celebration comprised of family and friends. Congrats again, Maggie!

Miss OpSci rocking the sash expertly crafted by our own (wickedly talented) Eden McEwen!

Song of the Day

The song of the day is Death Cab for Cutie’s “Transatlanticism” which is also the title to the album which Maggie, Eden, and I saw them play live, in its entirety, last September in D.C. completely serendipitously. This also just happened to be the first show of the nationwide tour…!

It’s a long track with a dramatic build-up, but think I speak for Eden and Maggie as well when I say that this song captures very fond memories that we share together.

MagAO-X 2024Ab Day 2: Settling Into Winter

It’s cold. But, at least it isn’t windy anymore. A good omen has revealed itself this night and it’s that the domes are actually open at sunset.

Good night, sunshine. Orion says hello!

In terms of flashy #blontent, today was pretty sparse. But this is perhaps ideal for lab calibration days! For instance, yesterday was ripe with #blontent in comparison which meant we were tearing apart cabinets, peeling out of parking lots, searching the trunks of random cars all over the observatory to try and find our ESD kit for the DM cabling. It actually ended up being in one of our shipping crates in the clean room receiving area all along. So, it’s good that Jared has been able to focus on getting good calibrations and figuring out new ways to align our most critical components for the run, which is approaching at the speed of light seemingly.

Jared hard at work working on better alignment procedures and quality of life improvements for all the future AO operators.

I got a chance to briefly work on giving old ICC new life using some new computer parts Jared ordered. However we ran into a compatibility issue with the CPU cooler and it won’t fasten to the mobo without special adapters. Apparently this company quietly deemed these to be special order items sometime in last September instead of including them in the box like they have been doing. What the hay…!

Thankfully Eden was able to make an emergency stop at the lab back in Tucson to grab said adapters. Thanks Eden!

Old ICC is getting resurrected! It just requires some parts that are undergoing overnight international shipping from Tucson.

This past afternoon we were delighted to officially welcome UASAL’s Kian M. to the 2024Ab run.

Sorry, I forgot to get photographic evidence of Kian’s arrival.

The best 15 minutes of today was welcoming Kian to LCO and giving him a brief tour of MagAO-X in lab state, the ASB, and the lodge. Also stating the do’s and don’ts for the experience here. Like, DO max out your empanada order on Sundays. And DON’T desecrate the public cheese. Tomorrow we will probably get a chance to hike up to the telescopes and go swashbuckling or something. Anyone else remember their first time on the mountain?

We’re eager to meet most of the rest of the team tomorrow afternoon, safe travels!!!!

Song of the Day