Author: Jared Males

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.

MagAO Returns to Firenze

The MagAO project once lived in Florence, Italy, for almost a year. It’s where we first got it all working and got to know our Italian teammates. We’re back, this time for the AO4ELT3 (Adaptive Optics for Extremely Large Telescopes 3) conference.

The 3rd AO4ELT conference.

We includes Laird, Phil, Katie, and Jared from Arizona, Derek from Heidelberg, Simone, Armando, Alfio, Enrico, Runa, Marco, Lorenzo, Fernando, Luca, and Paolo from Arcetri. You can also find MagAO friends such as Roberto Biasi from Microgate and Doug Miller and Olivier Guyon from Arizona.

If you are in Florence with us, come see our poster and get your MagAO sticker. We’re only giving them out to readers of the blog! The password is “Vizzy.”

Our poster. Laird and Katie are both giving MagAO talks later this week.

Here are a few views from around Firenze:

The Duomo from the rose garden, just below Piazzale Michelangelo.
A replica of David at Piazzale Michelangelo, which has, overwhelmingly, the best view of Florence.
Alfio took us to a restaraunt at Piazza Santo Spirito, and we went for full-moon walk along the Arno. This is the Ponte Vecchio, a famous bridge in Florence.

Comm2 Day 22: See You When I See You

MagAO won’t be back on the telescope for a year. That’s a long time. In the mean time, we have some amazing data to analyze, and we have some upgrades planned (which is why there’s such a long break). We’ll keep you posted as new results come out and our schedule progresses. The adventure isn’t over yet!

Laird, Katie, TJ, and I left LCO today. This was our last view of the telescopes.

Thanks to everyone at LCO for helping us get where we are. The future of MagAO is bright, and we are going to do a lot of fantastic science here.

The western valley below LCO. You can see the sunrise shadow of Magellan.
We made a pit stop at the offical MagAO watering hole, the Casino Enjoy in La Serena.
A cruise ship gets underway from La Serena. We’ll be back.

Some quotes:

“no, no, no.” — our waitress, wagging her finger at Laird. Apparently you can’t order beer before noon on Sunday in La Serena.

“No! The blog is over. I should be able to say whatever I want.” — Laird

Comm2 Day 16: Bad Horrible No Good Seeing

Alycia says I’m spoiled. Fine. But when you’re used to half arcsecond seeing, one arcsecond seeing is a “disaster” (Alfio’s word, not mine).

Seeing blew up right before it was time to do my favorite star.

We did do some good science tonight. The AO system is running fantastically well now that we replaced the troublesome switch BCU, and our two cameras are catching all sorts of diffraction limited circumstellar photons.

On my way up tonight I had to negotiate a Burro herd.

Just standing around, slowing traffic.
The babies were making all sorts of noise. They sound just like you’d expect: hee-haw.
Mom. She made sure I didn’t get too close.

Vizzy was in his usual spot:

Sleepy.

We had a surprise visitor in the control room tonight:

This little dude was hiding under Katie’s bag. Fun.

Tonights quote:

“When it’s good, it’s very good. The problem is when.” — Alfio, talking about a nameless telescope, somewhere else.