Well here we go, on our way home. Wow this run felt long, even though we only had 7 nights. The first group of us got here 10 days early, though as is typical we mostly sat around waiting for a shipment to arrive.
This captures how it always feels when we careen back down the mountain, hoping to find a sign of our old civilization somewhere ahead.
In truth we did an unreal amount of work. From overhauling our instrument’s glycol cooling to fixing all the vibrations to installing a new infrared camera, this has been action packed. And it all works!
A big accomplishment was all the people who got their driver’s license on this run.
Our last day/night was not without excitement. Over the last two nights our AO Operators Computer (AOC) has been randomly freezing up. My little buddy (read as either GPT-5 or Joesph, your choice) had lots of ideas. After a dawn reboot it was still spewing disk errors when I woke up this afernoon, so we decided to do some troubleshooting.
I feel like there is always a wrong choice made about “do it right, move it and have full access” vs. “touch as little as possible so you don’t break it more”. You never know until you’re done.
In the end we didn’t actually learn anything. We did stop the freezes, but not the disk errors, so we have fewer ideas than when we started.
At least the computer came back up and is operational except for a [_UUU] we have to fix before we leave.
The official group photo. We’re missing Miles (who left a few days before) and Laird (who I left a few minutes before).MagAO-X will be here for you even after we’re gone.
Here’s the craziest part: this isn’t even the end of the run. We have 13 more nights coming up, but we’ll be driving MagAO-X from the friendly confines of Steward Observatory. Another adventure begins.
The color of day is a moonlit-sky-blue
The song of the day is Nothing Else Matters by Metallica
This makes a good lullaby (except for the yeah-yeah! part)
Multi-threaded software is hard. You get all these different processes trying to access the same place in memory, and if they do it at the same time weird things happen. We have ways to stop these “data races” with tools like “atomics” and “mutexes” (mutices? plural of mutex for mutual exclusion) — but these add a new fun bug called “deadlock” when different threads try to lock the same mutex. So I’ve been spending lots of quality time with my new third best friend GPT-Codex. We make about 20 steps forward for every step back, but it’s in the time it used to take me to take about 1 step forward. Winning.
Miles has been hard at work getting his new polarization components installed. Here we’re using a bright red laser to chase the beam path through the instrument.
Sebastiaan and Adam arrived from Leiden today. Sebastiaan is already complaining about having to do EFC.
The door to the lodge was being guarded this afternoon. In a very friendly fashion.A nice sunset from my room tonight.
The color of the day is HeNe laser red.
The song of the day is The Emptiness Machine by Linkin Park:
Phil: Do you know what day it is? Rita: No, what? Phil: Today is tomorrow. It happened.
— Groundhog Day (1993)
This will be my 571st night at LCO (and this is my 270th blog post).
I feel like one always gets into a rhythm on a long observing run. It might take a while — with MagAO-X we always start with a frantic lab period, installing the latest crazy upgrades and tuning the instrument up. Then there’s “the day”, where we go 24 hours all at once to move up to the telescope. That helps with the transition, since you’re so tired after that you can’t help but sleep at 8 am. Then after about a week your body starts to adjust, and you can sleep a little later into the afternoon. One night turns into another, and you start to wonder if you’ve ever had a different day. But now we get to go find out what those different days are like.
Part of the crew departed this morning. The rest of us tomorrow.
MagAO-X works because of our great team. Thanks everybody for the hard work. And thanks to our great observers who bring us such interesting projects and challenging observations. See you next time.
As has become our normal practice, we have left MagAO-X set up for remote operations in the LCO cleanroom. This time it’s a little different, since we put it in the corner to keep the tent clear for another instrument. Fits just fine over there.
Of course we couldn’t just leave. There’s always something to work on.
We have exciting new things planned for next semester, so exciting we may have to change the way the blog works!
The bird-poop selfie is an ancient tradition, harkening back to the age of legends. The sky looks clear — but those clouds are closer than they appear.
Fun Fact: Imbolc is the old Gaelic name for what became Saint Bridget’s day, and is a seasonal festival marking the turning of Winter into Spring. The ancient goddess Brigid was welcomed into homes at Imbolc with hopes for a quick end to Winter and a warm Spring. Part of this festival included watching for animals to emerge, and to see if the hag Cailleach arranges for good weather so she can gather lots of firewood for the long remaining winter ahead. Does that sound familiar? Well, that just might be where modern Groundhog Day comes from.
And here’s a song about Bridget.
This is a good lullaby
This song has been on a MAPS run before. The artist, Celia Farran, was just in Tucson for the Celtic Festival — but we didn’t find out about it until it was too late.
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.
The Fox and Magellan
Cleanroom Vizzies were hit or miss this run, but on our last work day one made an appearance.
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.
It looked like she was headed towards the Bodega.
These aren’t condors, they’re people.
Look what I found at the summit. #10-32 rack screws.
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.
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.
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.
The NAS was never uselessSome mechanico humor
A See You Later
Been seeing this flashback inducing metro-blue forecast for a couple days:
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.
See you later
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.
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
yes, that’s someone’s room.
So either the goats have a dog, or this dog has goats.
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.
The dog was always with the goatsAnd if you got too close would come over to let you know that the goats are off limitsNot unfriendly, tail wagging and a good-natured ears-up lookuntil 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.
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.
