Home of MagAO and MagAO-X.
The internet went down in the middle of the night last night, and just came back.
Two nights ago we used a high speed camera, an Andor iXON 897 EMCCD, to measure the vibrations of our system at 2500 Hz (that means we were taking images at 5000 Hz). The camera was mounted where Clio normally goes
Then yesterday, Katie rousted the crew to finally install Clio.
We started tonight off with some eyepiece observing. Of course, since we had visitors, the ASM decided to act up. It seems to be the same problem we had in 2015A — and I hope it will go away by itself just like it did then. In the brief moments we had a working AO system, we managed to induct 9 new members in L’Ordine .
It’s Valentine’s Day!
Keep it funky.
Katie arrived safe and sound, just in time for dinner. During the day: more preparations, mostly working on our new toys. We installed the new field stop, but only after Laird drew all over it with a Sharpie.
Oscar helped us countersink some bolts, and Laird tested out the mount for our new camera.
I’ve been obsessing about read noise in our wavefront sensor camera. This isn’t a new thing, some of our most epic “sea stories” revolve around troubleshooting this camera. That was all solved a while ago, but now we are trying to get it running at 2000 Hz. So this song is about noise.
The fact that I can’t find a youtube entry of the album version of this song makes me feel “not fresh”.
Mark Phillips commented, upon seeing me at lunch, that us AOistas always look “so fresh when you get here.” That implies that he has seen me look “not fresh”. It’s fair.
Laird made it today, and Katie is in the air.
We’re hard at work getting ready. This time, we have also begun preparing for “MagAO-2K”. This is an NSF funded project which will improve performance of MagAO. You’ll be hearing lots more about it in the coming days, weeks, and months. For now, I’m working on getting our wavefront sensor camera tuned for running at 2000 frames per second. We’re also installing a new field stop stage for VisAO, and we have a new very high speed camera that we are going to use on this run to measure vibrations.
Here’s my first sunset picture of 2016A:
Today’s video is very astronomical, and even looks like it was filmed at a digital LCO. The coolest part, however, is the exploding GMT.
Yep, it’s that time again. If you’re thinking we just left, you’re right. We just barely had more time at home than we usually spend here.
The drive up:
Some work got done:
It’s my turn to set the rules. We’re going back to basics. The only requirement is that any Day X post must have a song of the day, no other rules.