Jared Males – Page 20 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

2015B Day 14: Clear Skies

After that horrible beginning, we’ve now had a solid run of clear calm skies. Almost relaxing. This is Day 14, and it’s also blog post #360. Did we come back around yet?

Last night we had some fun with a surprise binary. This is at H-alpha:

easy — 4.8×0.0079 = 38 mas = 1.8 lambda/D

One of the clean room Vizcachas is still around. We just saw he/she for the first time a few days ago. Pretty skittish so far, maybe it’s a new tenant.

Toto blessed the rain, and Clint Black likes it now.

I’ve seen Clint live, great show.

2015B Day 9: Only Partly Cloudy

Now that our engineering time is over — without us getting to do any engineering — it of course was a fairly clear night. Still some clouds blowing around, but the kind we can burn through with a 6.5 m telescope. Since we haven’t had much time to shake down MagAO, our first group of visiting observers had to put up with some bugs and some calibrations.

that's some b.s. — What passes for a clear sky around here.

Laird left, on his way back to Tucson. But he’s been replaced by Amali Vaz from UA, who is a very experienced AO operator and all around big help. She’s here for the next week to help us run the system, and also to foster some cross-team knowledge between MagAO and LBTI.

wait 'til you see her hat — Amali Vaz. Don’t worry, she’ll be blogging soon enough

The next two pictures were taken at the same time.

Last night Michael Franti was shouting to his Papa. Tonight, J-Lo sings about her Papi.

2015B Day 7: Did You Hear About The Clouds?

Open for less than 1/2 an hour tonight. I can’t work like this.

mostly bored astronomers — A room full of astronomers trying to keep busy

Since we had a flash mob last night, here’s a song about people dancing in the streets. It also describes our cloud problem.

2015B Day 5: Clio Shows Up

We have reached 100% MagAO for 2015B.

action packed KT — Katie supervises the installation of Clio. Compared to most of the things lifted by the crane in the dome, Clio is just a bitty little thing. That actually makes it harder!

whereforeartvizzy? — Your daily Vizcacha. This is one of the “wild” ones that lives over the edge north of the telescopes. Still no sign of the “tame” ones at the clean room.

If you visit LCO you’ll notice that many, if not most, of the car doors have bird droppings all over them just behind the mirrors. This video shows you why — some of the birds have discovered that other birds live inside the mirrors, and spend most of their days attacking said mirror-birds. This is just a little #LifeAtLCO.

first of too too many — The sun going down on our first full-up night.

The intended purpose of a “poker face” is to make a fortune. Tonight the Glitch Mob tells us about Fortune Days.

2015B Day 4: The Loop Has Closed

For the first time in MagAO’s history we closed the loop on our first night. It usually takes too long during the day to get everything done. We didn’t get Clio bolted on, but we were able to close the loop with the “dummy dichroic”.

always scary — Here’s the ASM just being lifted.

don't get bitten — Laird and Katie mounting the “Anaconda” cable.

now time for bed — Here is our first closed loop of 2015B!

Following last night’s song, which was a Gaga Parody, here’s a Gaga cover.