Author: Jared Males

Bear Down PPVI: And the prize goes to . . .

Esther Buenzli, a Steward post-doc, won the poster prize in the 2nd session at PPVI! That means she had the best poster out of over 300. She presented her work with Daniel Apai on time-resolved variability in Brown Dwarfs, in which they used HST to track the changes in brightness of a couple of BDs. Cool stuff, and as a reward she got to give a talk to 900 people with 18 hours notice. Even more amazing, she managed to keep her trap shut about it at dinner last night, on conference orders to not tell anybody.

Esther Buenzli gives the prize-winning poster talk at PPVI.

It was a really good talk. Esther is actually leaving us — has left us — to come work here in Heidelberg at MPIA. We’re still proud. Congrats to her and everybody who worked on this.

Quote of the day: “We have an important announcement. We found a passport, for Kate Follette. If you’re her and you’d like to leave the country, please go to the information desk”

I admit that I immediately checked my passport when they said this.

IAUS 299: Misbehaving Planets and Moderately Insane Ideas

Wednesday was a half day, but before we all took off to enjoy sunny Victoria we listened to some interesting talks — and showed off MagAO. Arizona/LPL alum Jonathan Fortney gave the introductory review talk on characterizing exoplanets.

Jonathan says that planets “misbehave” when his models don’t match observations. I suspect that the planets actually know what they’re doing, but more work needs to be done.

Here’s Jonathan’s talk:

The famous Matt Kenworthy, now at Leiden but formerly a denizen of Steward Observatory, was the session chair.

Matt kept everybody in line.

This was the day when we unveiled our MagAO results to the wider exoplanet community. Katie gave a well-received talk on our system’s capabilities and our exciting results on beta Pictoris b.

Katie gave yet another great talk on our MagAO commissioning results. Here she’s fielding questions at the end.

You can watch the whole talk:

You can find all the talks on Christian Marois’s youtube channel here.

Later, a bunch of astronomers went to the home opener of the Victoria HarbourCats, a westcoast league team. They played the Kelowna Falcons. The Cats won (Bear Down!), and it was a great game on a nice night. We saw 2 homeruns, a diving catch in left field, and some close plays on the bases. We all rooted for the home team, stuffed ourselves with hotdogs, and enjoyed some good local brew.

It was a sellout crowd.

IAU Symposium 299 day 1

Our apologies if you’re having trouble keeping up, but MagAO is now in Victoria, B.C., for IAUS 299. The conference got off to a great start with a review talk by Beth Biller, a product of the Arizona+Laird system.

Beth kicked off the conference. Johanna comments.

TJ had the honor of closing out today’s session. He wowed the crowd with LBT and MagAO disk images.

TJ closed out the session.

The talks from this conference go up on youtube as soon as Christian gets them uploaded (gulp). Here’s TJ’s talk.

For me, personally, the highlight of the conference so far has been the harbour ferry ballet, a truly impressive feat of nautical coordination.

The harbour ferry ballet. Seriously — this is a thing.

This is a lovely place to visit.

The legislative offices at night.

Last day in Firenze (this time)

Today was the last day of AO4ELT3. A few more MagAO team members got their chance to pontificate.

MagAOer Runa Briguglio described testing the ELT’s M4 adaptive mirror, in a presentation entitled “Pimp My MIrror,”
Derek gave an update on his new project, the LINC/NIRVANA Pathfinder, which is an AO system add-on for the LBT.
Katie gave a great talk on high-contrast imaging with MagAO.

Now we’re off to IAU 299 in Victoria, B.C. Stay tuned for more action packed MagAO fun.

Killin’ it in Florence

The LBTAO and MagAO projects got their time yesterday at AO4ELT3. The day started with Armando giving an overview of ASM development and status, and their future potential for ELTs.

Armando compared the current state of ASM technology. That’s MagAO on the right!

Then Laird presented the results of our recent commissioning runs. It went over well, and lots of people seem genuinely impressed.

Laird wowed ’em with VisAO results.

Later, Phil gave an update on the LBTI (blog here).

Phil showed off the LBTAO systems and his baby, the LBTI.

Simone also gave a nice talk on plans for a pyramid wavefront sensor on the GMT.

Simone holding forth on Pyramid sensors for the GMT.

After the business was done for the day, we headed to the Palazzo Corsini for the conference dinner.

Olivier and Laird discuss. That’s Christian Marois in the foreground.
Sunset on the Arno
Dinner was *amazing*.
The whole affair was overseen by the Corsini family Pope, Clementine XII.

Claire Max declared it the best conference dinner in history, and she left before they got out the Grappa. Congrats to Simone and the whole conference team.