The ASM and NAS are on the telescope, but, alas, we aren’t quite ready to go on sky. The big news is that, with our usual indispensable help from Alfio Puglisi, we managed to turn on and control the adaptive secondary mirror using our brand new 64 bit computers. Welcome to 2003 or so MagAO! For those of you that didn’t stay up all night, Alfio fixed the Housekeeper_gui bug, and we closed the loop on read-noise with 1e-4 gains. Everything appears to be working.
Here’s the ASM being installed:
Laird and Andrew cabled the ASM today.
The theme of this run is modernization. The work on Clio continues:
Phil and Katie hard at work on the Clio modernization.
Last time we were here, it was very green, almost lush. Not so much now.
LCO has returned to its brown and dry self.
But there’s still plenty of life around the mountain.
A tree at the Babcock Lounge.A tree and century plant at the Babcock Lounge.There are still flowers making a living here.A different yellow flower coming through this brushy thingy.We’ve seen these guys before.These purplely pods look like they were once pretty too.Flowers past their prime, but they must have been gorgeous.No actual animal pictures today, but here is evidence that the Zorros are about.Life, and flowers, grow wherever they can and everyone just lets them.Tonight’s sunset.
Since I started my changeover to the night schedule, I went to bed and didn’t get up until lunch. I slept for more than 13 hours.
LATAM airline employees are striking. Luckily it didn’t affect my flight, but Katie had to take a different one (that wasn’t why she was late to dinner, that was an unrelated bus problem). Laird is now on a completely different airline, probably will get lost at sea. And our surprise mystery guest is completely hosed. So you’ll have to wait to find out who that is after he finishes the hike from Santiago.
MagAO’s own Ya-Lin Wu defended his Ph.D. dissertation and is now Dr. Wu! Congrats Ya-Lin!
Dr. Wu and his happy advisor.
Ya-Lin has used MagAO to study planet formation in many ways, most recently combining VisAO data with ALMA data to study circum-planetary disks. Check out all of his papers on our Publications page.
Ya-Lin is now on his way to the University of Texas at Austin as a 51 Peg b fellow. Way to go.
Well that’s it. The system is completely off the telescope. The NAS with the WFS and VisAO is safely packed away in the Aux, as is our intrepid Clio. The ASM is all wrapped up on the floor of the Clay dome, ready to be trucked down the the cleanroom tomorrow.
If you’ve seen the last several night’s posts, you’ll be up to speed on the comings and goings of our new friend Hedwig, a Magellanic Horned Owl that has been using the all-sky camera as a night time perch. To try to make sense of the somewhat distorted perspective the all-sky gives us of our friend, Katie and I headed down to the area near the Swope telescope where the camera lives to check it out.
The home of the all-sky owl perch. Astronomer for scale.
The all-sky camera sits on top of the pole you see above the building.
Seeing it up close puts the size of the owl talons in perspective.
Hedwig has a nice view of the Magellan telescopes from that perch.
Magellan lit by the setting sun.The all-sky camera is near a bunch of robotic telescopes. We watched these two open for the night.
Jhen posted some pics from our GMT tour. Here’s another one, which captures the almost lush look of the place after this winter’s precipitation. Povilas is insisting that it’s just like Ireland.
LCO proper as viewed from the GMT site. Click to enbiggen.A panorama of last night’s sunset sky as I walked up the hill. Click to magellanate.Katie watches the sun set over Hedwig’s domain.
Over the latitude > 0 summer, I’ve been listening to a band called “The Dead South” quite a bit. With a little editorial license, I think their eponymous song is a perfect summary of the run:
Oh pass the rum [ed: Pisco please] on down the line it’s getting pretty cold
It’s been nine [ed: 13] straight days of hell and burning fires in the snow
And I haven’t seen my baby since that old black ship [ed: the NAS]set sail
Still we’re holding out ’till winter dies and hoping our strength prevails
The full moon peaks around the clouds [ed: every night] as the grey wolves [ed: owls] cry
The hour’s getting late and we’ve drunk every bottle dry [ed: ummm….]
Just one more march [ed: flight] from dusk ’till dawn ’till we finally arrive
At the gates of those who long ago burned our houses and took our lives
And we’ll sing
“We are the Dead South who came across the sea
To take back our lives and leave this land of misery
Our will is our weapon our hearts forever bound
Come on now tilt your bottle back and let’s go grab another round”
The wind is at our back [ed: literally] the ground is shaking at our feet [ed: literally]
Marching for the gates we pray our lord my soul to keep
For if we ever get ourselves out from this mess alive
I’ll be singing this song for years to say I’m happy we survived
We’re now starting the long slog back to a day schedule. So here’s an encore from them, called “Delirium”:
