Author: Jared Males

We got this close:

We wanted to at least be testing the guider tonight, even if not closed-loop AO. But alas, we didn’t quite make it. The last thing we didn’t quite get accomplished was bolting the NAS to the telescope. It’s ready to go though, and we’ll be operating at the diffraction limit soon.

We, by which I mean Katie, did a little more last minute work on Clio today.

Perhaps the biggest news is that our adaptive secondary mirror (ASM) is alive and well. It was mounted on the telescope this morning and tonight we powered it up.

Some quotes from today:

“After I’ve been here too long I get kinda giggly.” — Povilas

“The problem with Povilas is that he’s almost always right.” — Laird

“You see Laird, this is why I don’t trust you.” — Povilas

“No, I did NOT ask for double onions!!!!” — Laird

Katie set a new precedent yesterday by posting a cover as the song of the day, but satisfying the 2015 A Blog Rules by posting the song being covered as the cover. See how that works? Well I’m going to follow her lead and start with the covers.

This is a MagAO blog first: the song of the day is by a group of people who have MagAO access — who knows, maybe they have time this semester. Stick around at least through the 3rd solo starting at 3:00, she absolutely KILLS it.

Like any other truly great song, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” is just as amazing in many very different styles. Here’s a sampling:

And for completeness, here’s the one and only original:

Today was a challenge on two fronts. Katie and Laird spent the day performing surgery on our beloved Clio camera. They’re doing some housekeeping and getting ready to install our new coronagraphs and Brackett gamma filter. It’s always fun to open a dewar and take apart a bunch of filter wheels. I spent the day trying to get our new (higher power) X-stage motor up and running. It should be noted that a significant fraction of the day on each front was spent solving problems that only Jordan Stone cares about.

Perhaps the biggest news is that we had our first Viscacha siting. On our last run they were very skittish, but they’re back to being the lazy sleepy grumps we have come to know and love.

Povilas wins the day for his practical joke. He talked Juan into coming into dinner and telling us that our schedule was wrong and that we are due to be on the telescope a day earlier than planned. Ha ha, good one Povilas.

Home at last. After our 24 hr delay in Tucson, and listening to all the horror stories from people who had been trying to get to Santiago for several days, as soon as our plane pushed back the pilot cut the engines and we sat on the runway for an hour to let a thunderstorm blow through.

But all’s well that ends well. We made it safe and sound to LCO just in time for dinner tonight. The first steps of preparations are done: dust covers off, some Clio mounting hardware replaced, some organizing, and we checked on the mirror — it survived. Tomorrow the real fun begins, with moving and then opening Clio to add our new coronagraphs and reorganize filters. We also begin work on our new X-stage motor, which is more powerful than the current one.

And from the better safe than sorry department, this is not a cover by Daughtry, but it is a cover by a band opening for Daughtry.

Well, we at least made it to Dallas. We’ve been talking to other people here also trying to get to Santiago. Apparently flights have been routinely canceled over the last few days due to volcanic ash. I thought we were far enough north that it isn’t a issue, but guess not.

Nowhere fast — that’s how you might describe the MagAO run so far. This post should have been “Day 0” (our traditional day before Laird arrives at LCO), but as you can see we’re moving backwards.

Laird, Katie and Jared tried to leave Tucson today, but, well, they just decided to close the runway 15 minutes before our scheduled departure. We’re not entirely clear what was going on in the tower at TUS today, but it is clear that they started maintenance on the runway before all the planes that needed to use it had left. To be clear, we were in our seats, buckled, doors armed, ready to push, when they closed the runway.

So, anyhoo, we’re still in Tucson. At least we get to spend our travel delay at our own homes, rather than in some random airport hotel in some random city. This happened to Laird, Victor and Jared way back in May 2012, on our first unpacking run.

Quotes of the day:

“Well, we used up our travel contingency. We only have our O-ring contingency left, we better not use that up.” — Katie, commenting on the Gantt chart implications of today’s events. Don’t worry, as long as we don’t forget to grease the O-ring this time, we’ll be fine.

“It means we’re f#@*ed.” — Laird, commenting on the practical implications of today’s events.