We spent almost the whole night with the loop closed, with a few exceptions. For instance, we had to open the loop during an earthquake! Not a big one, but the floor rumbled and the loop went a little crazy because of the vibrations.
One of the fun things about observing with AO is that we frequently discover that stars listed as singles are doubles, triples, or even quadruples. This happens when we pick a star just to do engineering tests, and we find more stars than we expected. Here’s an example from tonight.
A quadruple, probably hierarchical, star system that we weren’t expecting. This is a VisAO z’ image.
The same horse is still hanging around. He still won’t let me pet him.
Our horse friend posing dramatically
We couldn’t do much in the way of photometric standards, but the sky was pretty.
Tonight’s sunset.
In addition to the quad, we imaged a couple of star fields and clusters. We counted lots of stars on both of our cameras.
“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 positionAlmost 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.
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 VizClay 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.
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.
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.
