Greetings again from MagAO-X-ville! Us astronomers are equal parts wildlife and planet photographers, although today involved a strong emphasis on the former. Enjoying the beautiful sun over the Atacama and the lack of 2-legged individuals, the burros seized their opportunity to reclaim the mountain (one might call it a burrocracy).
Many a burro photo was captured today by our professional shutterbugs (yes, this is actually a word) so I have included a brief compilation below:
BURROAn on-axis burronagraphAn off-axis burronagraph (deserving of its own half blog page)
Our professionals also identified an assortment of smaller creatures including (but not limited to):
Birds:
A frequent flyer looking rather suspicious.Jared had 2 unexpected roommates in his dorm.
Carloses:
Miles setting up the perfect shot of our fox friend.Someone captured a photo of me writing this blog post.
Vizzies (vizzibility was high during both the day and the night):
VIZZY
And Hoomans:
An angry ParkerA wild Josh sabotaging a perfectly nice dark hole. Observers milling about.A Dutch delicacy.Please don’t feed the astronomers. They will fall asleep next to the furniture.A gathering of wildlife photographers (who also do some astronomy).
After a busy day at LCO, both the hoomans and the animals must go to bed, assuming they have not already done so.
Song of the Day:
Fun Fact:
I once got attacked by a goose after feeding it a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
We have reached the epic conclusion of yet another AO summer school. Stay with me, dear reader, as we have much to cover:
Day 4: The Penultimate Chapter
After 4 days in Santa Cruz, I was itching to see a patented yellow slime ball, affectionately known as the “Banana Slug.” In a sort-of slug summoning ceremony, I slipped on my slug stompers at sunrise.
The slug stompers (or slippers) in question.
The morning session began with a great controls theory talk given by Dr. Nour Skaf. Sadly, Nour did not stay at the workshop for very long, as she left to begin her new faculty position at UH IFA!!! š *catjam* *catjam intensifies*
All suffering stems from the mind.
We then heard from UCO director and GPI extraordinaire, Bruce Macintosh, about error budgets within AO systems.
Bruce and I harbor a common fear of NCPAs.
After a long morning’s work AO-ing, it was time to take a brief nap:
This photo is sponsored by UVic’s New Earth Laboratory.
Following a quick nap, we worked on an AO simulation workshop led by UC Santa Cruz post doc and HCIPy conspirator, Emiel Por. There are no photos from this activity so I will leave the visuals to the reader’s imagination.
After dinner, Parker went on a hike while others studied for quals or worked on grant applications:
Parker lichen what he’s seeing.UA+Uvic+Gemini crossover episode!
After an unsuccessful attempt to observe some stars, we gathered outside the dorms to sit on tree stumps:
No injuries occurred during the scaling of this tree stump.
We were kind enough to include this green table in our group selfie:
Selfie with a green table
Day 5: No Fish in the Microwave
The fifth and final day of the AO summer school began with an important reminder:
The banana slugs enforce a strict no fish in microwave policy.
The final day also included talks on astrophotonics, AO in space, and AO for microscopy!
As this blog post is biased towards my areas of research interests, I included a photo from Rus Belikov’s talk of EFC being done before it was cool:
Call this OG(FC).
Finally, it was time for the moment that we have all been waiting for–the AO Summer School Vision Awards 2025!
I won the award for Worst Optics (I thought about contesting but I was bribed with banana slug stickers)! And Parker won the adaptive pupil award!
Everyone wants to know what would I do if I didn’t win…Parker with the shape-shifting pupils
We then went on a social excursion to the Santa Cruz boardwalk/arcade/karaoke facility/casino/bowling alley/laser tag room!
Parker thinking about going for a swimEmmanuel and Parker locked in an epic air hockey duel.Parker and I enjoying a roller coaster.
Here’s to a successful AO summer school!
Our wild turkey participants forgot to join us for the group photo.
Just before leaving, we finally got some slug-tent:
Ring, ring, ring, ring, ring, banana slug.
I would like to dedicate this blog post to Keck’s broken dome shutter.
Welcome to SPIE 2025: The Optics and Photonics version (not to be confused with the astronomical instrumentation version which happens every other year)!
We welcome you back to sunny San Diego, where I spent my first day in the airport because I initially thought that the conference began on a Monday. Instead, I was running circles around the San Diego airport (quite literally because the San Diego airport is a circle).
Following this adventure, I delivered a very special package to one Sebastiaan Haffert containing multiple MagAO-X masks.
An artistic rendering of the MagAO-X mask exchange.
And thus dear reader, this brings us to Day 1 (2) of the conference.
SPIE Day 1 2: Makes Sense
Today’s talks were of a sensitive nature…the wavefront sensing variety, that is. Kevin Derby of the famed University of Arizona Space Astrophysics Lab gave a talk on full-field phase retrieval (say that 3 times fast) for a space telescope.
š š® :/
Rico then made waves (or reconstructed wavefronts) with the one and only MagAO-X talk of SPIE 2025.
Perfectly reconstructed as all wavefronts should be.We will all one day be replaced by neural nets.
I did my best to spread the gospel of the spatially-clipped self coherent camera:
I am not giving away my (single) shot.
In the evening poster session, Rodrigo did a masterful job presenting MagAO-X’s latest and greatest addition:
The dawn of the polarimeter poster.
After all of this presenting, it was time for a noteworthy celebration which involved dancing inflatable sharks, a blow-up igloo, penguin cupcakes, and steel pan covers of classic pop songs. Before you ask, this was not Katy Perry’s 2015 Super Bowl Halftime Show.
It was the iconic SPIE Welcome Reception!
Rico chomping down on a plastic penguin. The flightless bird toys adorning the cupcakes were not in fact edible.
SPIE Day 2 3: Cats + Dogs + Pi
We may not be in Antofagasta but this conference has gone to the dogs (or rather, the cats). The second not Sunday of SPIE featured a talk on the MEOW survey of directly imaged white dwarfs. Naturally, if the survey is named after an animal and concerns white dwarfs, Logan is involved.
This survey is the cat’s meow.
Elisabeth Arcadi from Macquarie University then gave us a lesson on photonic nulling interferometry using tasty baked goods:
A pie phase shift…
SPIE Day 3 4: ExAO at the Plenary + PDS 70 + Aliens + Telescopes in Space + Dune:
The third not Sunday began with Arizona astronomy being featured front and center in the plenary session courtesy of Buell:
PDS 70 made the big time!
Buell then showcased everyone’s favorite instrument:
GMagAO, GMTAO-X, GMagAO-X, MagAO, VisAO, MagAO-X (formerly known as MagAO), Not SceXAO, That Box With a lot of Stickers, MagAO-X!
Buell gave the audience an overview of all the cool work being done at Steward both on the ground and in space!
SPACE.
We then heard from Dr. Sug-Whan Kim who gave us a fascinating overview of Korea’s history in astronomical optics. Dr. Kim ended his plenary in the way that every talk should end: with a Dune reference.
There is no call we do not answer…
Ramya then gave a great talk on PUFFINS (not the critically acclaimed cereal but the future UV polarimetry mission)!
Birds + polarimetry = highly succesful space mission
SPIE Day 4 5: Dark Hole Day
The fourth not Sunday was International Dark Hole Day (I declared it so), featuring some pretty far out dark holes from Rus Belikov:
I spent a good portion of this day on the beach.
The beach in question:
SPIE-themed cornhole, anyone?
SPIE Day 5 6: Need a vortex coronagraph?
On the fifth not-Sunday of SPIE, the conference gave to me…multiple vortex coronagraph talks! Unrelated, but I also bought 2 shirts this morning because I started running low.
Tonight was another Laird night which means more of our favorite target, PDS 70!
Could PDS 70 have alien life? Will we find a new planet? Are the answers to these questions always ‘no’?
Who’s to say.
We will get back to the PDS 70 excitement shortly, but first, a recap of the day’s festivities:
Team Leiden is ready for battle.
Sebastiaan and Elena got the FAST-SCC (self-coherent camera) working in lab! In the FAST-SCC, a coronagraph yeets light through a pinhole in the Lyot stop. This spatially filtered light interferes with residual stellar speckles, creating a fringe pattern in the focal plane from which the wavefront can be recovered. With our wavefront measurement, we can diggy diggy a dark hole.
I am a dwarf and I’m digging a hole…
Meanwhile, Katie and I hiked out to the solar telescope, and we also saw a burro.
This burro may be expecting a burrito!
The solar telescope has truly cemented its legacy (get it, cuz the enclosure is made of cement).
Following a brief interlude, we have returned to the scene of PDS 70. While Logan may have left us, the good seeing that typically follows her decided to stick around.
“How could this be?” You ask.
Enter…Stewart.
A portrait of Stewart E. Stewartson (colorized, date unknown).
With Stewart’s steady hand, we got some of the best seeing of our entire run!
Nooice.Stewart operates the AO system as Sebastiaan and Matthijs look on.
Our night also featured a beautiful moon.
Good night moon.
Good day, moon.
Having reached the epic conclusion of this blog post, I am ready to go to bed. “The midnight hour is passed and my attendants have all retired.” I recently watched the 2024 remake of Nosferatu, and it was difficult to find an appropriate quote for this blog post.
…to defeat…chronic back pain. Or something like that. Yesterday, the MagAO-X team partook in rigging and crane safety training (or craining for short).
“Why do we need a blog post about rigging? I just don’t get it!” ~ Anonymous MagAO-X Team Member
Fair point, anonymous group member. However, plenty of excitement occurs during crainings.
I have included a list of famous crane operators below:
Katie Kelleher (top 100 women in construction and owner of katiecranes.com)
Tom Gordon (former crane operator at 1 World Trade Center)
Jared Males
Our craining day began with Maggie modeling the iconic Sketcher’s work boot.
What are thooose?They are Maggie’s Skechers’s!
We then embarked on a drive up to Mt. Hopkins where a few of us had an in-depth discussion on life, interpersonal relationships, and the critically acclaimed film Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.
I forgot to take a picture depicting the conversations in question, so here’s an image of the observatory sign that I took.
I saw the sign. And it opened up my eyes, and I am happy now.
Our craining got off to an exhilarating start. Below, Katie and Eden can be seen reacting to a sling failure compilation.
Wire we watching this? Because safety is no accident.
Our craining also featured a GMT cameo and a thorough sling inspection.
Wire sling cores or ELT pupils? You decide!How to Train Your Astronomer.
Following our craining, we got an MMT(our) of the facilities!
Kids’ first MMT (except for Parker)!Mirror mirror in the cradle, how do we inspect a rigging cable?Eyeing the mirror from the telescope platform.
Finally, we engaged in some hands-on rigging training…
That’s an instrument mini fridge.Dan is preparing to lift the instrument by hand–a noble endeavor.
…and inspected the adaptive secondary mirror.
The ASM is looking mighty fine!
Thus concludes the first ever MagAO-X craining session!
