Jared Males – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

MagAO-X 2025A Day 22: I am a Meat Popsicle

Another MagAO-X run in the books. Overall a successful one too. We got lots of new stuff working, and had several very good nights with some exciting discoveries. Great work folks. Now get to work on your data and maybe you’ll get a PhD.

This was one of the few times, however, that I’m feeling personally let down by Cerro Manqui. Our mountain usually comes through for me, just when it’s time to do my observations the skies clear and the stars still. But this time I only got one really good shot at my target (out of four planned observations), and the infamous last night included my time. I guess this is the problem with doing the things that require everything to be perfect — that’s hard to do.

As has been noted, the animals were pretty entertaining the last few weeks.

I think his name is Manqui — The Fox and Magellan

it was a nervous start to the run when I couldn't find them — Cleanroom Vizzies were hit or miss this run, but on our last work day one made an appearance.

these guys did not want pets — Burrows up to no good.

The addition of a cat is a major development. I really want to know the story — I assume it involves an epic journey.

If you meet a friendly cat, will you communicate by mo-o-o-orse? — It looked like she was headed towards the Bodega.

we still don't know what shit on our monitors — These aren’t condors, they’re people.

IYKUK — Look what I found at the summit. #10-32 rack screws.

from one last several days ago — One last sunset.

Now that we routinely leave MagAO-X here and set up for remote experiments, it has become traditional for me to put in a goodbye photo so we can remember how we left it.

This time there’s a twist. I set up a webcam on our workstation pointed at MagAO-X. At least when the lights are on it will give us a little view of home away from home.

Don't get distracted by the cat. It's time for the G. — Time to start working on the next sticker

I watched Fifth Element on the plane ride down. It contains a great way to describe an Empanada.

MagAO-X Engineering Run 2024B Day 7: a goodbye and a see you later

We’re on our way home, leaving behind a fixed, upgraded, and working MagAO-X. Ready to go for 2024B.

A Goodbye

While we were there they had just finished stripping parts from the famous “NAS” from the venerable MagAO. They loaded it up to take it down the hill to the bodega, where it will be taken apart and scrapped.

Thanks for all the memories.

and still driven carefully — The NAS was never useless

would love to hear the story on this one! — Some mechanico humor

A See You Later

Been seeing this flashback inducing metro-blue forecast for a couple days:

Flashbacks, such as waking up to messages that they were about to close down the summit, and a slack channel full of grads and postdocs confirming that they got the video games and other assorted necessities down to the lodge, then going up to find fucking water on the actual fucking instrument. But the video games.

And it was rolling in as we loaded up the van:

But MagAO-X is safe in the cleanroom, waiting its next shot at the telescope.

Mysteries For Next Time

The current drama (for us, anyway) is that they have (again) done away with the agua con gas. It does produce a lot of plastic waste, but it was maybe the most discussed amenity by members of the MagAO-X traveling circus.

It appears that the solution is these “soda guns”. But none of use were brave enough to try them out. So next time then.

is it just a bottle of fizzy water, or do you use it to enfizzen? — What will happen next?

The other mystery involves the goat herd that was roaming, and shitting, all over the mountain. First, a reminder that goats are cute

cute morons — yes, that’s someone’s room.

So either the goats have a dog, or this dog has goats.

took me a minute to figure out it was a dog! — Walking up the dog gave me a good barking, and then herded the goats away from me.

Now we have questions about this dog’s life.

center of a goat's life — The dog was always with the goats

peak a boo — And if you got too close would come over to let you know that the goats are off limits

I thought we'd get a pet — Not unfriendly, tail wagging and a good-natured ears-up look

stay back fren — until you made the wrong move

So here’s the question: how does the dog stay alive? We hear that maybe there is a camp nearby. But how does it work? Does the dog herd the goats there once a day? Or does the dog have to wait until the goats decide to go back? Is there a signal?

Walk, not Run

It was a gorgeous day in Santiago. Jay and I took our time and just walked from place to place. It’s the little things.

it's hard to get so far away at walking pace

The succulent wall was as stunning as ever — it always looks extra special when the sun is out.

Lab Rules

For the last god damn time, bring a god damn flashlight when you go to an observatory. We work in the dark. It’s what we do. Your cell phone does not count. When everyone has to share the PI’s flashlight . . .

And a new one. And it’s kind of a big deal, because in over a decade we’ve never had a rule about the blog rules other than whoever posts the first post of a run gets to set them. But from now on, your rules must not set a limit on the number of days in the run. In hind sight it’s just a classic Murphy’s Law blunder. (TBC, I liked these rules, it was fun to look up songs by decades — I was surprised by where a few landed. I just didn’t think about the ramifications until the day we started rescheduling flights and I remembered the ? in the rules . . .)

So here’s a song from the 2020’s. Hoping our last flight to Tuscon goes through because if it doesn’t I don’t know what we’ll do — other than blame the blog rules.

MagAO-X Engineering Run 2024B Day 1: No Longer A Couple

One of the big goals for this visit to LCO was to troubleshoot a coupled pair of actuators on our precious 2040 actuator “tweeter” deformable mirror (DM). Being coupled meant that when we poked actuator 498, actuator 650 moved (not 498). Actuator 650 also moved when we poked 650. We first noticed this problem after shipping MagAO-X in March, when we ran a post-cabling function test. However, digging through our archives we found that it showed up back in November, 2023, but we just didn’t notice.

Now our tweeter is expensive. So we don’t like it when things go wrong, and it makes messing with it really stressful. But having those two actuators acting up means MagAO-X didn’t work perfectly, so we had to do what we can to fix it. We deferred it until after our March and April runs to give us time to plan and do it right.

We can all breathe a sigh of relief: with only minimal shenanigans we got it fixed. After testing various potential cabling problems, we found that a circuit board just needed to be replaced. We had a spare, popped it in, and the couple had split up and gone back to behaving normally.

And we got that done in time for Empanada Sunday:

They plateau though, so day 6 is about as good as day 2. — Empanadas are just a little bit better fresh, compared to at midnight.

After lunch we got onto the next set of tasks, which included disassembling a rack shelf so we can get better airflow.

we probably didn't break anything — The shelf in question is actually Jay’s baby. He designed the hold-down system for the components on it. That also means he had to take it apart and put it back together.

We’re also upgrading the Instrument Control Computer (ICC) to go faster and do more stuff. We like to liquid cool our CPUs and GPUs. Normally we rig that up in Tucson, but we couldn’t get all of the components from our usual supplier in time, so we shipped what we had (and found some substitutes on Amazon!) and are doing some clean room plumbing.

If you ain't first, your last — An NVIDIA RTX 4090 in the middle of having a water cooling block attached to it. The shiny square in the middle is the business end.

Jay has also been leading the assembly and testing of new ICC. Other than the liquid cooling parts, it was fully working in Tucson before we took it apart to ship it down here. We’re getting it all back together.

Mysterious loose screws to be explained. — Jay hard at work screwing ICC components to the custom rack mount.

Even after our delayed departure, we are making good time thanks to the relatively easy fix to the tweeter. I haven’t had enough running on this trip yet, so I took some time before dinner to go circle around the 100″.

Just a light breeze at the lodge. — Start of run, heading to the 100″ telescope which is down and left from Magellan.

The wind tripped me twice in the 100" parking lot. — The view back from the 100″. I’m surprised this came out, it was so windy I couldn’t hold my phone still.

From 1966.

MagAO-X Maintenance 2024-1 Day 2: In-N-Out

Caught the 0830 transport down this morning. Irony of ironies, this may have been the most stunningly clear blue Chile-wide sky I’ve ever seen. Caveat: I’m usually coming off a weeks-long night-schedule average 4 or 5 hrs of sleep, so not usually awake for any of this trip.