Jared Males – Page 31 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

SCExAO: The World’s Highest Altitude Pyramid WFS

I’m on Mauna Kea visiting Olivier Guyon and the Subaru Coronagraphic Extreme AO (SCExAO) system. At 13,800 feet I’m pretty sure this is the highest altitude pyramid AO system in the world. Despite having a pyramid wavefront sensor, SCExAO is a pretty different AO system from MagAO. For one thing, there isn’t an adaptive secondary. Instead, the deformable mirror is on an optical bench off to the side. SCExAO is also not the only AO system – before light gets to SCExAO it has been corrected by the AO188 system, which is the AO workhorse of the Subaru telescope.

Not that many people . . . — The SCExAO+VAMPIRES+FIRST teams hard at work.

SCExAO hosts several science cameras, including VAMPIRES and FIRST which are being engineered on this run. I’ve also seen some impressive demonstrations of low-order wavefront sensing, focal plane wavefront sensing, and speckle nulling. SCExAO has some really exciting high contrast imaging capabilities.

I think Vizzy could beat up Chuck — The SCExAO pyramid pupils and the H band PSF.

As you can see, the SCExAO team is very creative with their camera displays. They consider Chuck Norris to be their spiritual leader, though somebody seems to like My Little Ponies.

my little pony — Nem operates the Brony cam.

Mauna Kea is high, and the air is thin up here.

28 meters of telescope. — The two Keck telescopes and Subaru. Click for more cowbell.

We stay at Hale Pohaku (HP), which is at a more comfortable 9000 feet.

No Hector either — The dorms at HP. Not as cozy as LCO, but very nice.

One thing that I learned during this visit is that if Olivier ever asks you to go for a walk, you say NO. What he considers a “walk”, most people would consider “rock climbing in the dark”.

death march — Mauna Loa through the clouds. I thought maybe this was when we’d turn back. I was wrong.

The view is amazing from up here.

above the clouds. — The sunset from Subaru’s observation porch.

14000 feet away from the beach. — The view to the northwest just after sunset. Click for more cowbell.

Being back in Hawaii reminds me of old times. The song of the day describes one of life’s enduring mysteries, which I still have little insight into.

2014A Day 27: Last Star

We have observed our last target star of the 2014A run. It was another great night, with half arcsecond seeing almost the whole way.

no clouds — Just after sunset from the catwalk.

We now have 2 days of packing and storing and inventory to do, and then we start the long journey home. Laird and Katie got started as soon as the dome closed.

lowering vacuum — Laird and Katie (behind him holding the light) started the Clio warm up this morning.

We have to spend some time saying goodbye to all of our friends. We won’t see them for 6 months!

almost tame — A vizzy hanging out waiting for sunset

And we need to spend some time actually looking at the night sky, it’s so beautiful here.

not airplanes — Yuri Beletsky has once again supplied us with an amazing photo. He took this two nights ago while we were observing.

We spent a lot of time on this run trying to mitigate the effects of diffraction. So check out the wave nature of these guitar strings:

2014A Day 22: Grumpy’s Back!

The big news of today is that our favorite Viscacha made an appearance at the clean room wall today. We’ve been missing him!

nice to see you anyway — We hadn’t seen the old man, Grumpy Viscacha, Vizzy himself, for a long time. We were getting worried. Yes, he’s still grumpy looking.

After a few days of Engineering and Arizona science, we welcomed Subo Dong from Peking University to the Clay telescope. Jennifer Yee (Harvard), who is observing in a few nights, was also here to help out and see how things work.

billions and billions — Jared, Subo, Jennifer, and Katie set a record for most Sagan fellows (current or past) using MagAO at one time.

We continue to make progress in improving the quality of MagAO operations.

thanks boss — This blog gets results! Here we see logs being taken by the AO operator.

The MagAO team is thoroughly nocturnal now. But that means our food is eaten in the wrong order by all standards of civilization.

or pass out. matter of taste — Katie’s breakfast. Which was really her supper. Or whatever you call the meal before you go to bed.

for various mothers — Just some flowers cuz I saw them today.

Finally, we have a clarification from Katie’s post about all of our control loops. Though not specifically annotated, the VisAO Gimbal was shown on the diagram, and you just have to know where to look for our X-Y-Z stages.

excellent blog reading skillz Anna. I'm impressed. — The board GUI (code by Alfio), with extra annotations to show where everything is. Today’s free-sticker-question: what’s wrong with our X-Y-Z coordinate system?

Listen close to this song, and you’ll hear an entire verse about adaptive optics. Plus, once you’ve been on a month long MagAO run you’ll know what Bono is saying, though maybe not in spanish.

2014A Day 19: The Shadows Of The Night

T.J., Alycia, and Kate left us yesterday. Vanessa was supposed to be here, but her flight was delayed. So, it was down to Laird, Katie, and Jared to carry on the MagAO mission tonight.

Our day started early. We had to get up before dinner to do some maintenance on our shell wind monitor. This is a little anemometer attached right at the edge of the secondary mirror to tell us if the winds get too high. One flaw with our current device is that it is battery powered and the batteries only last about 10 days. So the crew tipped the telescope over for us, and Laird and Katie climbed up to replace the batteries.

it blows — Laird and Katie replacing the batteries on the wind monitor.

After that bit of periodic maintenance was taken care of, we headed back down the hill for our usual breakfast.

dorothy mantooth is a saint. — We have a nice steak dinner just about every evening — for breakfast.

After that we headed right back up, and closed the loop. Our minimum number of planets detected tonight is 1 (100% confidence). The maximum number is 4, with a most likely value of 2. Stay tuned.

Locked. — How the AO system looks when it’s running well.

Tonight was a little bit more interesting than usual, since we got to enjoy a total lunar eclipse. We knew we were in for a special night when we saw the moon rise over the Andes on our walk up to the telescope after dinner

peak-a-boo — The moon looked almost shy.

With only 3 of us to operate MagAO, Clio2, and VisAO, plus Ernan our telescope operator, we had to watch the eclipse in shifts, leaving one person inside the control room to come holler if something went wrong.

Laird worked hard to get some nice shots of the dark moon.

steady hands Laird. — The eclipse as seen from just outside the Clay control room.

No skip frames though. — Laird might have had too much caffeine before taking this shot. He might also be over-driving tip and tilt.

When the moon is full here, the mountain top is really really bright.

The light that never warms. Yes. The light that never warms. — Clay, containing the MagAO system, by the partially eclipsed light of the moon.

MagAO also obtained world-wide coverage of the eclipse. Well-planned, I say.

in flight — The departing members of the MagAO team saw the eclipse from the Miami airport this morning.

On our walk up at sunset, the Moon and Sun were 180 degrees apart in the sky. On our walk down at sunrise, they had nearly exactly swapped positions. Mornings here can be stunningly beautiful.

check the blog already — The moon, now opposite the sunrise. Free MagAO sticker to the first person who emails me the name of the pink band on the horizon (hint, the answer is in a blog post from last April).

You might remember that this isn’t the first time we’ve observed an eclipse at LCO.

Here’s the song of the night:

2014A Day 17: Working Away

Tonight we are happy to present you with the first release of the official trailer for the MagAO movie, directed by Alycia Weinberger.

Coming soon to a theatre or scientific journal near you.

We’re still here at LCO, observing star after star, seeing disk after disk, maybe a high contrast close separation point source or two, and we aren’t out of cookies yet. Here’s a few more things going on:

it's not my fault. I'm always ready. — Those “keeners” (Laird’s word) at Baade always beat us on sky. We’re getting faster.

hangin' in there. — The MagAO adaptive secondary mirror catches the last daylight as we open to take flats.

Alycia got a good picture of a cute little vizzy at the ASB which she posted the other day. I saw him or her tonight, and I’m sure this is a new animal that we haven’t been seeing before, maybe a young vizzy. In any case, it’s cute.

We are now totally on a night schedule. Here’s Laird, Kate, and T. J., heading down to a late breakfast before bed.

we do more before sunrise. . . — Laird, Kate, and T. J. headed down to breakfast after a long night of MagAO science.

It’s always pretty here, and watching the sunset is our nightly ritual.

boring sunsets = good astronomy — Laird, Alycia, and Kate watched the sunset from outside the Clay control room.

This came up last night. Man these guys are cool.