Jared Males – Page 2 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

MagAO-X 2023A Day 15: I do love fig newtons

Just before sunset tonight we held an “enstickening” ceremony to officially add XKID as part of MagAO-X. We’re happy to have the whole XKID team become part of the MagAO-X traveling circus.

Precious commodities those stickers — Noah peeling the 2023A mission sticker, designed (as always) by Joseph.

Jared: "This isn't going to cause rapid metal fatigue and cause XKID to explode is it?" Ben: "yeah, maybe a 7 percent chance"

or Ben is done with our blog shit — In which neither Ben nor I seemed to realize a photo was being taken

can't believe this is our first team sunset selfie — Our usual sunset party on the catwalk.

We then had another great LCO night of low winds, slow jet stream, and great seeing. The big engineering achievement of tonight was finally getting the infamous low-order wavefront sensing loop working with all of its modes on the light rejected by a coronagraph. Amazingly, this happened on Avalon’s last night at LCO for 2023A.

which one is the star and which one is the reference? — Miss LOWFS and her loop

We also welcomed Alycia to the party. As usual, she came well supplied with AO operator food (pringles and wasabi peas of course).

You can tell it’s going well when screensavers turn on.

so good we stopped paying attention — Screen saver on the coronagraph operator’s workstations!

The night was briefly in danger of being lost due to another tarantula incursion, which trapped our TO Carla on the wrong side of the staircase to the control room. It turned into an excellent opportunity for training and personal growth as Eden was the only human left to run the entire observatory.

it's not torture if your advisor thinks it's good for you — Eden holding down the fort while Shelob toyed with the rest of us.

o elbereth! gilthoniel! — my hand for scale

The obligatory viscacha pics:

I think the cleanroom viscachas are getting sick of the paparazzi — Our Fiz the Viz getting ready for sunet

that stripe tho — Contemplating the universe.

I started my long story about that one concert I went to that time. The surprise first opener was KoЯN. The expected 2nd opener was Marilyn Manson. And oh my gosh was it bad. We hung out at the front rail for a couple of songs, and all I can say is that it was weird. Maybe if this run goes on for long enough I’ll get to the fun kinda crazy, like seeing Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails tackle his keyboard player and then throw the remains of that keyboard at a different keyboard player. But this was the . . . not fun kind of crazy. Everybody in the place ended up sitting down at the back of the concert hall, like we were trying to get away from Manson and his . . . weirdness and bad music. Just awful.

But later on, I came to like at least one Marilyn Manson song, because of The Matrix. I guess this qualifies as a sea story, so there I was, in Nuclear Power School, studying all of my ass off. I didn’t have a TV, and was really only in my apartment for a few hours a night. So I had never heard anything about The Matrix. One Friday night a few shipmates and I decided to ditch the books and go to a movie, and one of them was really excited about this movie I had never heard of. Having seen no previews, not even a poster, I sat down having absolutely no idea what was about to happen. I think it’s rare experience to take something like that in with no preconceptions. Mind blown.

So anyway, this is on The Matrix sound track and I probably saw it live but have blocked it out:

Marilyn Manson Rock is dead. Yeah, it was a really f-ing weird concert.

MagAO-X 2023A Day 6: Got The Life

I’m a C++ programmer, which means I’ve been here for a week. Consequences include I’m doing laundry already, and I have no idea what day of the week it is (that might be a memory leak joke).

Sebastiaan and Warren arrived today, and immediately started tearing the instrument apart (as expected).

The XKID crew warmed it up today to inspect some things on the inside, which gave us an opportunity to go visit and see the guts up close.

you can tell b/c cell phones were allowed near it to take pictures — The view down the pipe at the actual super conducting microwave kinetic inductance detector at the heart of XKID. Because it was at room temperature, it was neither microwaving, kineticing, nor inducting at this time.

dance with the one that brung ya — Noah Swimmer likes to dance with his PhD project.

professing — Ben explains it all to Laird, Joseph, and Avalon, while Noah and Jeb (he’s back there) work.

We’ve been seeing these Neotropical Stick Grasshoppers a bunch. This one was flexing for me after lunch:

it's an alien probe sent to keep an eye on MagAO-X's progress is what it is — It’s a grasshopper?

The machine shop sink outside the cleanroom has been decorated:

maybe needs some water — Not as desolate as you’d expect

I think one of our cleanroom friends overdid the sun bathing today, and was a little out of it at sunset.

just look at the tiny little paw — sleepy viz

look at him! just look at him — oh, yawn, are you taking my,yawn, picture? (I didn’t observe actual viz yawn)

As in all things in life, there are ways to separate the people who have really made it. The signs are there if you look:

Hi Johanna! You got your own locker at LCO!!!! — How to know that one is a Certified Big Deal.

Now find Proxima -- remember what it's Proxima to. — Alpha Cen-rise. The Southern Cross is 60% up and 25% over. Follow the short arm down to the first star, then go one more.

So you could title my series of songs “concerts I went to with my best friend Ben.” Here we switch from country to hard rock and metal, and this will be the first in a sub-series about a specific show. We went to a concert in Omaha to see a band (coming up, no spoilers here), for which there were two openers. The first opener was a total surprise, that no one there had ever heard of (we didn’t even know there was going to be a first opener). I’m not trying to be that guy, you know, cool before it was cool.

They come out, and I’m grumpy “who the F is this?” And then Ben looks at me and says “are they . . . do they have … bagpipes?”. And then it was on, into the mosh pit we went. The band was KoRn (I can’t do the R right here). Awesome show. Ben still has a dollar bill signed by Jonathan Davis in the CD case he bought that night. KoRn got huge shortly after and we get to say we saw them when.

So here’s my favorite KoRn song:

Got The Life by Korn

Update: I am a big enough deal that I travel with my own personal tech support. Thanks to Joseph I can now write KoЯN.

MagAO-X 2023A Day 2: Know When to Fold ’em

Today started auspiciously, with a double viz:

such tail much wow — A viscacha on the left

she pulled her tail up when she realized I was looking — And a viscacha on the right

And there was a distant guanaco:

Gary knows how to pose — A guanaco looking back at me

Plus this little guy:

I got CLOSE for this shot and it didn't move — A tarantula crossing the road to Magellan

But alas, we ended the night with the decision to undo the last two days of Joseph’s hard work and abandon our attempt to upgrade a computer O/S. (We also discovered that one of our main motivations for upgrading on this run was . . . still a problem). So it’s back to trusty ‘ole CentOS in the morning.

I’ve seen Clint Black live twice. The first time was at the 1995 edition of We Fest, what was then the “Camping and Country Music Festival” but is now just a “Country Music Festival”. That there’s why I don’t go no more. The second time was in Lincoln, Nebraska a few years later. I almost saw him live a third time last Fall in Tucson, but couldn’t make it.

This is one of my favorite Clint Black songs:

A Good Run Of Bad Luck by Clint Black

Also from a great movie. It’s funny that Clint is wearing white here, both times I saw him he was in head-to-toe black as one would expect.

MagAO-X 2023A Day 1: Ready to Boot

We had a modestly productive day today. Our main goal during these first couple of lab days is to overhaul our instrument control computer (ICC). Joseph has been arguing with it all day, and maybe has it coming into shape as of sunset tonight.

The day started with a Vizzy visit.

a good omen — Vizzy the (current) cleanroom Viscacha. He was a little bit agitated because of a bunch of forklift operations, but settled down for a photo.

After a brief (planned) power outage we got to work putting MagAO-X on its air legs.

2300 lbs fully loaded — Mauricio Cabrales and Emilio Cerda helped us run the crane.

Overall it was a solid animal day.

skittish though — Double Guanacos by the Telescopio Solar.

not at all skittish — Herd of burros by the 100 inch.

it's good! — Two cautiously friendly girls hoping for food.

I hope not a snuggler though — I have a roommate.

higher and brighter — A brightening moon hangs over the observatory at sunset.

The song of the day is “Ready to Go” by Republica. This was the signature song of an Australian cover band playing a bar in Bahrain in mid-2003. In Bahrain there aren’t very many bars and few of those were playing good ‘ole rock and role, so the crew of USS Pasadena (SSN-752)* spent a lot of time in this particular one. I’ve been listening to this ever since.

Ready to Go by Republica

*The photo of Pasadena pulling into Pearl marks my only known presence on wikipedia.

MagAO-X 2022B Day 24: Transitive

I first came to LCO on April 18, 2012, for unpacking the one and only original MagAO. It sounds sappy to say, but life was never the same again. Tonight marked the 453rd sunset I’ve been on this mountain for (I can’t swear that I saw them all).

don't stop believin' — You’re never gonna believe this (because I lie about this all the time), but Eden and I saw a no kidding actual green flash tonight. It’s only the 2nd one I’ve seen. Believe me, if you aren’t sure, you haven’t seen it.

You can say this about being a long-run experimental astronomer: it’s never the same twice. As a team we’ve seen some stuff. The stuff this time was . . . unique. I did not see that strike coming. Even when it was announced, I assumed it would be like all the previous strikes of various flavors we’ve seen here and we would just more or less ignore it. And then when the strike was going and going, and going, we at least could be confident that we’d have all that best-in-the-world LCO seeing to make it worth it. For maybe the first time, Cerro Manqui didn’t come through — Laird and I agree that this was the worst continuous stretch of bad seeing we have seen in all that time.

Still though, without a doubt, this place is amazing. We owe a huge thank you to Associate Director Dave Osip who, as he always does, came through — this time with a short notice schedule shuffle and made sure we didn’t lose nights. And thanks to Povilas Palunas, Francesco Di Mille, and Konstantina Boutsia who dealt with the extra instrument changes and kept the observatory ready for us. Also, thanks to Emilio Cerda, Mauricio Cabrales and the crew for getting us on and off faster and smoother than I ever thought possible. You guys are awesome. And to our T.O.s, Carla, Jorge, Mauricio, and Alberto — thanks for putting up with all the trouble we can cause, and how boring we can make it.

The MagAO-X team itself is amazing. You came through, toughed it out (both when it was too long to wait, and then when it was too long to stay), and despite the rough air made this a successful run. You guys are what makes this fun, and why I’m already ready to come back and do it again. Thanks too to our observers for being patient and not blaming us for your full-widths. And it was really great to see Alycia in the control room again.

We’re almost gone. Laird and Logan jumped today.

10 .5 years later and it's the same suitcase. — See you when I see you.

did you get all the masks you dropped? — Safe travels.

Eden and Avalon and I stayed one more day to organize, tidy, inventory, and (also) take a final or two.

So this is weird. We’re leaving MagAO-X down here. The boxes sit outside, empty.

Emotional Appeal for scale. — Nothing to do but watch Vizcachas I guess.

When you spend 12% of your life somewhere, it sort of becomes part of you. With MagAO-X, the blending is a little more intense, since we normally bring it with us. (I’m not referring to the stuff in our carry-ons). For the brave members of the XWCL, we just move our whole lab with us and make ourselves at home wherever. If the switch recognizes your MAC and the WiFI is connected before your screen is on, then did you ever leave? When you’re home, you’re home.

not quite on, but somewhat on — MagAO-X gets an ~8 week rest.

But, in the end, there’s only one place to go when it’s really time to go home. One last selfie, and a wake-up, and we’re in the wind.

For posterity, I'm pretty sure this is the moment when Avalon finally went nuts — The last in line.

There has been a minor kerfluffle in the group over the song of the day rules. It turns out I didn’t say that the song had to be new, and so by construction posting the same song met the letter of the law. But I think it goes deeper: the song-of-the-day obeys the transitive property, just like the MagAO-X traveling ExAO circus.

See you in 2 months LCO.