Author: Jared Males

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!

2016B Engineering Only

Just a quick reminder for MagAO users who may be considering submitting a telescope proposal in the near future: MagAO will not be available for general use in the 2016B semester. The system will be on the telescope during the semester, but for engineering work only. This work includes recalibration, and installation of the MagAO-2K upgrades: more modes controlled, faster speed (up to 2000 Hz), and installation and commissioning of a new detector for Clio.

2016A Day 22: Keep On Turning

Our last day at LCO (this time) was a critter filled day.

A Chilean rose tarantula was trying to snuggle with Laird in his bed. Laird said no. When last seen, the spider was headed towards Katie’s room, but then it disappeared.
A culebra de cola larga crossing the road. Don’t worry, they’re only moderately venomous.
On our last day we saw our first clean room vizzy. It’s not like we haven’t spent any time there.

The Guanaco herd, complete with youngun, made an appearance. The pictures didn’t turn out though.

Today we packed up a lot of stuff.

After all these years and stressful times, my advisor and I still enjoy bonding over packing and sorting.

Some things were more carefully packed than others.

I hope everybody reads the sign.

So long LCO. See you next time.

Don’t worry vizzy. This isn’t our last sunset at LCO. I promise.

Made of Silver. Once.