Author: Jared Males

2014A Day 5: Cerro Manqui the Cruel

Let me remind you of how cruel a mountain can be:

“Caradhras was called the Cruel, and had an ill name,” said Gimli, “long years ago, when rumour of Sauron had not been heard in these lands.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

We may not have wizards against us, but when it decides to blow here, it really blows.

The winds today on the summit of Cerro Manqui, where the Magellan telescopes sit.

60 mph winds put almost a complete stop to our operations today. We were supposed to move the ASM first thing, and support the f/11 secondary change out. Instead we had to wait until the winds died down enough. Even still, we ended up waiting for a temporary lull and rushing the ASM across the gap (a.k.a. “The Wind Tunnel”) between the Aux and the Clay elevator late this afternoon.

The vans are lined up to try to provide a wind break (I’m not joking). It didn’t really help.

Once the ASM was safely in Clay, the crew proceeded with the changeover. Here’s our delicate shell swinging through the air.

The ASM being craned into position
Almost there

The crew skipped dinner to get this done for us. Muchas gracias guys.

Katie and Laird cabling the ASM.

A few other things were dealt with in the mean time.

Sometimes you have to call in the master. Alfio made a house call in the clean room to help fix a weird bug in Clio.

After all that bluster, we ended up with a nice calm sunset.

It calmed down a bit at sunset.

The winds have picked back up late tonight. We’ve noticed that there are a lot of airplanes in the skies of LCO. Implications for the GMT laser guide star system aside, this song gives some hope that they might be useful. If it doesn’t stop blowing soon, I’ll be willing to try anything.

2014A Day 4: Backin’ dat ASM up

First, an announcement: this is blog post #200! How long can we keep this up?

Today’s big accomplishment was driving the ASM up to the summit.

The ASM backs up to the Aux building.
This scissor lift is the scariest part of the operation.
The ASM is cranked off the truck onto the lift.
Victor poses with the ASM as it slides off the lift.

Best question of the day: “Is it still one piece?” — Juan Gallardo, after the ASM rolled off the lift.

We also reorganized the cables and hoses in the W-Unit.

A freshly organized W-Unit.
The Daily Viz
Clay and Baade at twilight.

Today’s song is one of many with an astronomical theme. If you listen close lots of pop music is about astronomy in some way.

2014A Day 2: Spring Cleaning

VisAO and the WFS got a much needed spring cleaning today. We also installed some new filters.

Laird works at installing the new H-alfa filter and our new coronagraphic spots.

Jared and Alfio installed a new more powerful Y-stage motor. This motor has to lift the W-unit against gravity, and the old one was under-powered and so was failing. These motors are very powerful, even the old one, so it is very nerve racking to mess around with them. We had a stressful morning.

Alfio agonizes over the settings for our new motor (that’s it sitting next to him).

T.J. and Katie buttoned up Clio today.

This is the inside of the Clio dewar just before it was buttoned up.
Clio being lifted back onto its cart.

The weather has been gorgeous, and we’re seeing lots of locals out and about.

It was a double Viscacha day.
This guy is still hanging around. He’s not scared of me, but he doesn’t really want to be friends either.
These clowns showed up this afternoon. They always look like they’re up to no good.

Here’s the song of the day. We have spent so much time here it now feels like we’re coming home when we get off the plane in La Serena.

2014A Day 0: You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet

MagAO is back! Katie, T.J., and Jared arrived at LCO last night to begin preparing for our first official science run. Our instrument was offered to the Magellan wide community, who came up with more great ideas than we have time for. We’re taking data for astronomers from all over the world. Stand by for some more great MagAO+VisAO+Clio2 science!

We don’t go on sky until April 1 (no kidding), but we have lots to do to get ready. Katie and T.J. are opening up Clio2 to install and rearrange filters. Jared, Laird, and Alfio (who are coming in the next few days), are replacing some motors in the NAS, as well as upgrading some filters in VisAO.

It’s been a while since we’ve seen a horse up this far on the mountain:

There were a few more around, but this guy was right next to the road when we pulled up.

We’re going to try something new on this run. We’ll have a song-of-the-day, picked by whoever writes the blog post. Here’s my choice for the begining of our 2014A semester campaign.

Magellan Adaptive Optics first-light observations of the exoplanet β Pic b. I. Direct imaging in the far-red optical with MagAO+VisAO and in the near-IR with NICI

There are a number of factors that have pushed extrasolar planet imagers to work in the infrared. The first is that young planets are very hot, so they are brighter in the infrared. In fact, they become very faint at shorter “optical” wavelengths. The second factor is that adaptive optics (AO), the technology we use to image exoplanets, has normally worked better in the infrared. You could say that the stars twinkle less there. But to know as much as we can about exoplanets and their atmospheres, we want to image them at as many wavelengths as we can. So we used MagAO’s VisAO camera to image the extrasolar planet beta Pictoris b with our CCD. This is the first time that has been done from the ground, and shows that we are pushing the capabilities of AO to ever shorter (and more difficult) wavelengths.

An image of the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b made with the Magellan Adaptive Optics (MagAO) VisAO camera. This image was made using a CCD camera, which is essentially the same technology as a cell phone camera. The planet is nearly 100,000 times fainter than its star, and orbits its star at roughly the same distance as Saturn from our Sun.

Abstract: We present the first ground-based CCD (λ<1μm) image of an extrasolar planet. Using MagAO's VisAO camera we detected the extrasolar giant planet (EGP) β Pictoris b in Y-short (YS, 0.985 μm), at a separation of 0.470±0.010′′ and a contrast of (1.63±0.49)×10−5. This detection has a signal-to-noise ratio of 4.1, with an empirically estimated upper-limit on false alarm probability of 1.0%. We also present new photometry from the NICI instrument on the Gemini-South telescope, in CH4S,1% (1.58 μm), KS (2.18μm), and Kcont (2.27 μm). A thorough analysis of our photometry combined with previous measurements yields an estimated near-IR spectral type of L2.5±1.5, consistent with previous estimates. We estimate log(Lbol/LSun) = −3.86±0.04, which is consistent with prior estimates for β Pic b and with field early-L brown dwarfs. This yields a hot-start mass estimate of 11.9±0.7 MJup for an age of 21±4 Myr, with an upper limit below the deuterium burning mass. Our Lbol based hot-start estimate for temperature is Teff=1643±32 K (not including model dependent uncertainty). Due to the large corresponding model-derived radius of R=1.43±0.02 RJup, this Teff is ∼250 K cooler than would be expected for a field L2.5 brown dwarf. Other young, low-gravity (large radius), ultracool dwarfs and directly-imaged EGPs also have lower effective temperatures than are implied by their spectral types. However, such objects tend to be anomalously red in the near-IR compared to field brown dwarfs. In contrast, β Pic b has near-IR colors more typical of an early-L dwarf despite its lower inferred temperature. For more on our result see: Males, J. R., et al. "Magellan Adaptive Optics first-light observations of the exoplanet β Pic b. I. Direct imaging in the far-red optical with MagAO+VisAO and in the near-IR with NICI" ApJ, 786, 32, 2014      ADS    arxiv preprint