This evening Dr. Matías Díaz, a support astronomer here at Las Campanas Observatory, helped us take a next-level team photo.
Thanks for taking the video with your drone, Matías!
Of course, we have more people in our group than pictured, and by the time we visit again in 2024A (!) we’ll probably have even more new members. By then I will have decamped for the Flatiron Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York, but it’s famously hard to see stars there. Maybe they’ll invite me back.
It’s our last night on sky, which is always bittersweet. Tomorrow’s a long day of removing from the telescope. So, what have we got to show for the past 22 days?
14 terabytes of high-contrast astronomical data (and counting)
a new observing mode that keeps light where it should be, allowing us to pass these savings on to the consumer (shout-out to Ms. Lowfs)
a handle on our induced DM ✨sparkles✨, which will let us unravel the profound mysteries of pyramids (thanks Eden McSparkles)
a lot of improvements to VIS-X (gaan met de banaan, Dr. Haffert)
We’re about to commission our knife-edge coronagraph, but this blog post can’t wait. It’s time for the prospective students to choose their Ph.D. institutions, and we must put our best foot (feet?) forward.
Song of the Day
“Anemone” by Brian Jonestown Massacre
I went to a liberal arts college, which makes some people assume I didn’t study physics or something. In fact, astronomy is one of the quadrivium of artes liberales, and my college had a Department of Mathematics and Astronomy before it had a physics one. It’s physics now, though. So there.
Still, a smaller student body and more flexibility in courses of study meant some interesting cross-pollination between departments. One of my classmates in Advanced Intro Astronomy was named Maurissa, and she was actually a music major. She took astronomy with us, but she also had a band, did stuff with electronics, and was in a Balinese gamelan ensemble. Anyway, she was the one who introduced me to Brian Jonestown Massacre, the above psych-rock band with good vibes.
Bonus Song of the Evening
Sometimes you don’t need something musically interesting, and swoopy synths suffice. Anyway, the blog title reminded me, and after all—we are almost home.
“Almost Home” by Above & Beyond and Justine Suissa
MagAO-X threw a bit of a tantrum today, but Jared got it calmed down before sunset. Ever since Eden gave it a swift zapatazo, the operator workstation has been moody and fractious. Compounding our difficulties, one of the rack computers was on the fritz at the same time.
Jared says that in the world of Navy nuclear power, you don’t conduct drills for two simultaneous faults. That means what happened today is simply not allowed in the Navy, which should reassure us all. (I have informed our instrument computers that we will be adopting this same policy going forward.)
Tonight Alycia Weinberger, the forever young Las Campanas Frequent Flyer, is obtaining more disk imagery. Conditions have been passable, though I hear past midnight things started getting good. Stay tuned.
Sparkles vs. speckles cage match tonight on pay-per-view
At this point even the newest graduate students have become adept at driving the AO system. Still, they mustn’t get complacent, because we continue to add more complexity in order that more things may go right.
Hi Jialin!
For example, I am hiding in the rec room trying to refactor Lookyloo, the “quicklook” script that has grown additional responsibilities. Not coincidentally, I’m going through my headache meds faster than the chocolate-covered espresso beans. (Does anyone know what Excedrin is sold as in Chile?)
The goal is to bundle up the relevant image archives and system telemetry files that encompass an ‘observation’ and stuff them into a single unit for uploading to the CyVerse Data Store back in North America. CyVerse operates scientific computing infrastructure in connection with the University of Arizona, meaning we have a hotline to their head honcho for our data hoarding. The idea here is that our highly compressed data formats will use the limited bandwidth between continents more efficiently, allowing us to “rehydrate” the observations into more conventional formats upon demand.
Fortunately, CyVerse has no relation to Facebook’s Metaverse, and we will not be issuing NFTs of our observations. (For archive-browsing readers of the future: NFTs were a bubble/pump-and-dump scam of the early 2020s, with JPEGs taking the role of tulips.)
In further news from the software side, we ran our first all-Python MagAO-X device last night! My PurePyINDI2 library successfully allowed us to command Sebastiaan’s VIS-X camera from the same interfaces we use for scripting and interacting with the rest of MagAO-X.
Of course, that doesn’t look like anything, so here is a picture of a guanaco:
Photo credit: Alycia Weinberger
Technically, it was our second PurePyINDI2 device, as Maggie-o-X had already been taunting the observers through Jared’s add-on speaker for the operator workstation. Its repertoire includes:
“Beep boop bop” when activating Low Order Wavefront Sensing, with or without Ms. Lowfs in attendance.
“Gaan met die banaan” when taking exposures with VIS-X, our most Dutch camera.
“P.I. is asleep. I am the P.I. now.” (among other choices) when nothing alert-worthy happens for 15 minutes.
It alerts on more useful criteria, as well, like changing targets and AO loop events. But those messages are strictly business.
Being out of the critical path for operations tonight means I have taken the chance to do some (lower-tech) astrophotography. It turns out that the image processing on an iPhone can wring detail out of moonless nights, as long as you have a tripod and some patience.
The camera app captures some more diffuse detail than my eye does, but I can see way more stars.
I have speculated that “computational photography” boffins will eventually forward-model the whole sky and paint the stars in after the fact. Recently, it was revealed that Samsung has taken this conspiracy theory as a product suggestion for their latest phones.
Once our image processing is allowed to make up details that aren’t there, I predict we’re going to find loads of planets.
Song of the Day
There were never any ‘good old days’. They are today, they are tomorrow! It’s a stupid thing we say, cursing tomorrow with sorrow.
“Ultimate” by Gogol Bordello
The world’s foremost Gypsy Punks were also my first ever show as a wee teenager in Atlanta, Georgia. I didn’t know much about live music, but a Ukrainian dude capering around the stage and emptying a bottle of red wine on the pit seemed pretty punk rock to me.
Lead singer Eugene Hütz also had a starring role as Alex in the movie adaptation of Everything is Illuminated. They even worked the band in in this one scene:
Day 8 saw the arrival of two colleagues and one hefty tarantula.
Despite having to negotiate the Atlanta airport with speed, they made their connection to Santiago, where they obtained their Mountain Names: Iden and Jackke.
Nobody captured the exact moment they alighted from their servicio especial van, and they’re extremely asleep right now, so you’ll have to trust us: they’re here.
Today we crammed in quite a lot of science and engineering before shutting the instrument down for the night before its Friday morning trip up to the telescope platform. We also wrap it up to prevent heating and intrusion by dust.
Anyway, all that means: tomorrow we’re doing the thing! This means we wake up for breakfast, make approximately 100 trips back and forth between the summit and the almost-summit where the cleanroom is, plug a lot of things into other things, and then do astronomy until it’s time for breakfast again.
As the only graduate student present who has been on a MagAO Classic run, it fell to me to implement the speech-synthesis ops concept that Jared has long coveted for MagAO-X. (Only so many people can crowd around MegaDesk, but everyone in the control room can hear “loop is closed.”)
Speech synthesis has changed a lot since Jared was a grad student, and professional-grade deep-learning models are surprisingly good these days. Of course, the budget for this was $0.00, so I used OpenTTS. OpenTTS lets you sample a wide variety of synthesis packages with a common API, and I had the container running on AOC (that’s our Adaptive optics Operator Computer) in a few minutes.
The next challenge was to hold auditions. For my auditions I imagined some things MagAO-X might want to say, and gave them to the various models: “Target changed. High-order loop closed. Data saving started. Loop is open. Smoke ’em if you got ’em.”
The previous-generation models were there for comparison, and sounded like absolute butt:
On the plus side, espeak was one of the only included engines with a non-US/non-UK English voice:
Island vibes aside, the synthesis was just not that good. I kept looking. This MaryTTS voice seemed all right:
Just one small problem: Maggieo-X is clearly not male. This voice clearly is. That simply won’t do. How about this from Larynx?
Not bad. But are we sure Maggieo speaks English?
I also ran the Dutch voices past Sebastiaan Haffert, local Dutchman:
Verdict? “They’re all… very Flemish.” “Is that bad?” “No, they’re just very… soft.”
It’s true. The characteristic throaty “g” of the true Dutchman was let down by these synthetic voices. Just click the speaker icon on here to have Google’s model read the same to you. See?
Anyway, auditions continue, but I have a pretty good idea of who will be narrating our ops tomorrow night. Until then,
“Good night. We’ll see each other tomorrow.”
Song of the Day
Okay, maybe when I posted Bring Me To Life and then Jared had Korn it started a bit of a nu metal trend, but in the end it doesn’t really matter.
I don’t play many video games, mainly because I am usually in the business of telling computers what to do, and therefore really resent them telling me what to do. One recent exception was Sayonara Wild Hearts, which is incredible. More of an album-length interactive music video than a “game,” I guess, but anything that includes:
firing heart-shaped projectiles
from your motorcycle
at a three-headed robot dog
as a metaphor for overcoming heartbreak
(narrated by Queen Latifah)
has to be good. And, of course, the music complements the v i b e s perfectly. (And is strongly inspired by CHVRCHES, no doubt.)
“Dead of Night” by Daniel Olsén, Jonathan Eng, and Linnea Olsson
For some reason, nobody’s taken the unadulterated audio and overlaid it on gameplay for a ready-made music video, but if you can ignore the dings and bleeps this should give you some of the flavor.
Bonus Tarantula
Content warning: incredible arachnid. Click to tarantulate.
This little guy took up residence on Avalon’s door this evening, requiring XKID xpert Noah Swimmer to remove him.
This blog post was titled—somewhat optimistically—earlier today, but rest assured, dear reader: MagAO-X is even more alive now than when I wrote that. There is a polemic I could write about the Linux kernel’s casual attitude toward hardware support, but the short version is: we got everything reinstalled and connected and closed the loop in lab this evening on 1,564 modes.
As you may have heard, our Instrument Control Computer was supposed to get a software remodel, but instead ended up with the equivalent of a spit-shine and a new coat of paint. (One can imagine worse outcomes.) The best efforts of our hardware partners to provide Linux support were no match for Linux itself, which continues to defeat all comers in its ability to break software that once worked.
On the plus side, I hear the new way to write drivers is, like, super convenient. Shame about all those old drivers y’all have.
The highlight of the day (other than the loop closing thing) was the arrival of Eva and Lardy:
This afternoon a van disgorged a Professor Lardy Clos (optomechanics lead, natty dresser) and Eva Maklaod, soon-to-be-Ph.D. student in the XWCL.
It was a bit disappointing to spend all that effort on the computer upgrade and then roll it all back, but getting here early means I’ve run out my quarantine days already. And that means I’m allowed in to the dining room to dispense cappuccinos from the fancy machine, and that is an outcome worth celebrating on its own.
The third most exciting thing to happen today was spotting this neat bug:
Song of the Day
A review of the blog archives (blargchives?) revealed that nobody had ever used 2000s classic “Bring Me To Life” by Evanescence as a blog post Song of the Day before. (Jared didn’t believe me.)
“Bring Me To Life” by Evanescence
Required Song Context Per Rule 2023A§5(c): It is hard to pinpoint when I became aware of this masterpiece. To date myself (and/or upset my elders) I was a melodramatic 13 year old when it came out. That alone is reason enough to resonate with the subject matter. (Wikipedia research reveals the songwriter was 19 when it was written, which tracks.)
Per the blog rules I should explain a memorable occasion when the song was played, but “being 13” might not cut it. Instead, I offer the following important facts:
“Bring Me To Life” reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, but #1 on the US Alternative chart. (And was the number one song of the year in the Australian Rock charts, what the heck.)
The sudden dude energy that kicks in at 2:50 in the song was apparently due to record executives being too chicken to release a song with female lead vocals and heavy guitars. I always thought it was incongruous and now that all makes sense.
I have just learned that it served as the official theme song for WWE’s 2003 No Way Out event, a totally normal stop on the route to international fame.
Jared and I traveled to Las Campanas Observatory over the last 24 hours, and we’re finally ready to relax get things ready before the rest of the team rolls up. Also, the travel day blog has unofficially served as the repository for surprises, changed policies, and caveats for travelers in These Unprecedented Times—so I better get them written down before I forget.
Most of the tips from the previous Day 0 post remain valid. We did, however, see some people randomly selected for post-arrival COVID-19 tests this time.
Tucson
Documentation exigencies were the lowest since the beginning of the pandemic, with only the usual passport check required. (I did hand over my vaccine cards in my passport, so I guess the agent knew I had them if needed, but no online pre-approval is required any more.)
The TUS-ATL leg was uneventful, aside from some drama wherein the Delta reservation system informed Jared that, not only was he being “upgraded” to a middle seat, but it was because his profile in the system indicated an expressed preference for middle seats. (“Said no one ever,” as the saying goes.)
I also got “upgraded” the night before and was able to switch it back quickly, but something’s clearly awry in the Delta system. Double-check your seats before you show up!
Atlanta
The Atlanta layover was uneventful, but we did notice another system malfunction: The Plane Train between terminals at ATL was in a reboot loop. We lacked the foresight to capture it for the #blog-ops channel, but apparently it does this a lot and Reddit had evidence.
Don’t worry: it was only the informational displays that were on the fritz. We did not end up stuck on a ghost train.
Also, the Atlanta gate agents were the ones who could get Jared his preferred seat back. Hooray for solving problems (of their own creation)!
In the air between Atlanta and Santiago
The new Airbus Whatever that we flew on for the long haul Delta flight from ATL to SCL was pretty dang nice. By making the seat backs paper thin and rigid they somehow seem to have increased legroom in main cabin. And I didn’t notice the chairs being less comfortable—notably, they’re more comfortable than the LATAM flight I took from LAX to SCL for 2022B.
Also, I recommend flying on a Tuesday; it seems to maximize your chance for an empty middle seat in your row. The aisle seat was occupied by a Brazilian dude named Victor who had relocated to Chile by going on vacation and never returning, then gotten a job in the Chilean embassy in DC, and now lived in Arlington, Virginia. If he is to be believed, he had previously worked not only as an embassy staffer but also as a crane operator at a mining camp in Chile and as a LATAM flight attendant, and he had quit the embassy gig to pursue some self-employment hustle.
He also said Chilean food was amazing and his favorite thing about the country. No lies detected.
Santiago
Clearing customs was uneventful. After customs, if you head left down the hall with the taxi stands, there is a LATAM recheck counter. We usually ignore this and take our bags across the way, but today we had a minor surprise: they would not accept Jared’s bag for check-in at 8:30 AM for a 1:00 PM flight. They relented after some convincing, fortunately. I, on the other hand, had re-checked my bag with the LATAM agent after customs—sparing me both the schlep and the kvetch.
Note that without LATAM “priority” (i.e. Delta loyalty status) there could be a long line to re-check bags after taking them across to the domestic terminal, which is another argument in favor of re-checking after customs. (An argument against is that the bag re-check agent in the basement is always the slowest person LATAM has working on any given day.)
The Santiago airport layover otherwise provided its usual limited selection of amusements: McDonalds and Starbucks. The McTrashcan was out of order, however.
There was also some more software gore in the ordering kiosk. Surely nobody would want to use the English interface and pay with a card, right?
After several tests, exactly one pair of working outlets was identified at the corner of the Starbucks seating area against the window, near the boarding door for the adjacent gate. (We wish you luck in securing them.)
La Serena
The flight to La Serena got a little loopy. Nothing to worry about, unless you’re operating on few hours of sleep and wondering if you got stuck in a time loop.
Once we got out of the holding pattern, we were on the hardstand in minutes.
[I had a selfie to include here but upon review I look way too tired.]
After retrieving our bags from the (only) baggage carousel, we were whisked away by Sol del Valle Transportation in a well-appointed minivan. La Serena delivered street art as usual:
The transport from La Serena to Las Campanas got us in around 5:30—to the paramedic station, to get our nostrils swabbed. They appear to have shortened the swabs themselves, effectively discouraging the nasopharyngeal gouging ritual that had been the standard in the past.
This paramedico is my new favorite!
Jared R. Males, Ph.D.
We aren’t nearly as well supplied for our three-day bubble-mode this time. I didn’t even have a mug provided to use with my coffee pot! Fortunately, I brought my own:
So, there you have it. Tucson to Las Campanas in 24 easy hours. Time to collapse.
Song of the Day
There is no rule this time that the Song of the Day must be thematically appropriate, but we did just Get Out of Tucson…
Song of the day provenance and context: I’ve long been a fan of CHVRCHES, and I saw CHVRCHES perform this in concert in Tucson with lab alumna Dr. Lauren H. Schatz, Ph.D. back in 2019.
