2015B Day 5: Clio Shows Up

We have reached 100% MagAO for 2015B.

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!
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.

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”.

Here’s the ASM just being lifted.
The NAS waits its turn.
The ASM just after removing the cover.
Laird and Katie mounting the “Anaconda” cable.
Here is our first closed loop of 2015B!

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

2015B Day 1: Cloudy Days

It’s been really cloudy the last 48 hours.

Totally socked in at sunrise

There have been no vizcachas at the clean room. I found a couple on the north side of the telescope this morning though.

Can you see the vizcacha?

The clouds were still around after sunset.

Still cloudy at night.

Laird and Katie made it! Laird lost some luggage, and they’re both tired after a hectic trip, but otherwise safe and sound.

Last night we heard about bourbon and scotch. Tonight Ke$ha discusses the contents of her water bottle, though she does not specify exactly what type of whiskey it is.

2015B Day 0: Configuration

I spent my whole day working on computers — hard drive partitions and RAIDs and RAM. So I don’t have much to talk about.

There is a new power line going in just west of the road to the 100 inch. I’m not sure, but my best guess is that it has something to do with the GSMT. Today they were hard at work stringing cables.

Workers up on the new power poles.
The powerline runs off towards the 100 inch.

Laird and Katie are on their way. They’ve made it as far as DFW.

Big news: Laird has an iphone! After the 7+ years that I’ve known him, he finally has a cell phone. He checks it about every 30 seconds, so I don’t know how he survived without it.

Been fairly cloudy since I got here. Nothing to close the dome over, but not much fun for the M2FS and Fire users.

Been crappy weather the last 48 hours or so.

Since yesterday’s song was about Kentucky, with a Bourbon county connection, tonight’s song is about — what else — Bourbon.