Author: Jared Males

2016B Day 11: I’ve had it with this monkey fighting Viscacha in this Monday to Friday pupil!

Do you remember the Viscacha that sometimes sneaks into our pupils? This is a problem when our mirror is uncalibrated, and the signal it sends to the pyramid wavefront sensor confuses our software. We get dark spots in the pupil (images of the secondary) that often look like our Viscacha friends. They got in back in our first commissioning run (see here and here), and took some Italian magic to deal with.

So today, after a long and frustrating alignment, we got started closing the loop on our calibration source and immediately went to war with the pupil viscachas. Simone was even calling for Truly Nolen at one point.

A brand new set of system modes.
After long discussion, it was conluded that it is a viscacha!
By the end of the night we have successfully closed the loop on 400 modes. Still subtle issues to sort out, but 2000 Hz is just around the corner. Going clockwise from left, we have Fernando, Alfio, Laird, Kelsey, Lauren, Jared, Armando, Simone, and Enrico.
Kelsey and Lauren have been spending some quality time with their Grand-Advisor.
Gary Galileo Guanaco is almost tame now. He let us get this close at lunch today. We’ll be riding him soon.
Paparazzi
Gary can’t get away.

2016B Day 6: Low Latency Guanaco

Another busy day on Cerro Manqui.

Clio came up to start getting ready. Katie will begin drawing a vacuum and start the cool down process tomorrow.

Clio made its first appearance this run.

Most of today was spent shaking out our new 2000 Hz capability. As of tonight, thanks to Mario and Alfio, we have successfully closed the loop (with 0 gain) at 2000 Hz! It’s on.

Mario working hard on the switch BCU
Alfio supervising a test at 1800 Hz. Later in the day we got all the way to 2000 Hz!

To do the zero-gain closed-loop testing we had to string a temporary network fiber between buildings, since sine parts of MagAO are not yet on the telescope. This necessitated some improvised safety management (fibers are delicate).

Safety never takes a vacation.

Vizzy spent the day doing Vizcacha things.

Vizzy was just hanging out this afternoon.

Kelsey saw a Guanaco up close and took these great pics.

The majestic Guanaco.
I feel like he’s talking with his mouth full.

2016B Day 4: Tipping 2000 Hz

After the secondary was installed yesterday, we ended up going to bed with a bad fiber running to the secondary. So the first order of business was to fix that this morning. All Done.

Katie pulls the ASM cover before installation yesterday.
Laird and Pato installing the calibration return optic (CRO)
Runa and Marco installed the interferometer we will use to calibrate the ASM.
Meanwhile, Enrico installed our new tip-tilt stage, which can go 2000 Hz.
A wild vizcacha came out to watch the sunset.
This is what we watched. No flash.

Take it away Otis:

2016B Day 2: The Arrival

Our friends from Italy started arriving today. We welcomed Alfio, Enrico, Runa, Mario, and Marco, who are all here to help us with our upgrades and re-calibration. Much work was done!

The ASM was moved to the top — a big moment again.
Enrico, Alfio, Mario and Laird discuss.
Our friend the friendly Guanaco was running away from us as we walked down to dinner

MagAO’s Newest Sagan Fellow

MagAO’s Own.

We are very excited to announce that MagAO’s very own Kate Follette has been awarded a NASA Sagan Fellowship. Her proposal, “Finding and Characterizing Forming Protoplanets with Next-Generation Adaptive Optics Systems”, was one of just 6 selected this year. You’ll probably have guessed that “Next-Generation” AO systems includes our very own MagAO.

Kate’s Sagan project involves imaging baby planets with MagAO+VisAO’s H-alpha capability, and following up with the amazing Gemini Planet Imager (GPI). You can read all about Kate’s project in this pdf.
Here’s Kate on her way up to the telescopes at LCO. Way to go Kate!
Dr Follette hard at work driving VisAO.

Congratulations Kate, and welcome to the Sagan Fellows family!