Author: Jared Males

Comm2 Day -1: Welcome to the Dance, Harvard

Congratulations to the Harvard NCAA men’s basketball team, who today upset #3 New Mexico (as the #14 seed – wow!). This makes things in the Aux building at LCO a little interesting:

Can anyone think of a basketball metaphor for "resolution vs. field of view"? In the foreground are Harvard instruments Megacam and MMIRS, and in the back is Arizona's MagAO.

#6 Arizona and #14 Harvard square off tomorrow afternoon. Bear Down!

Cleaning day.

The Clay primary mirror got a bath this morning:

The first step is to rinse with soapy water, several times, to get as much of the dust off as possible.
Not necessarily the reason the hole is there, but it sure comes in handy. Come on a mirror lab tour with me sometime and we'll talk about how you deal with not having a hole in an off-axis GMT segment.

Here is the rinse in action:

The next stage of washing is a gentle blotting with sponges. The Aluminum is on the front, and any remaining dust particles or other bits of junk could easily scratch the surface if you wipe.

The LCO crew gently sponges off the Clay 6.5m primary mirror.
The bridge the crew is on moves across the mirror as they sponge.
The sponging operation, rear view. So how many sponges are in this picture?

Here’s the action version:

I caught Vizzy napping at lunch today. Btw, I'm not too worried about Vizzy vis-a-vis Zorro - the fox is really small.
The Magellan telescopes reflecting the last sunlight of Day -1. The next wave arives tomorrow, including the PI. If you're new here, that means we'll start using non-negative numbers.

Comm2 Day -2: El Zorrito

Today was somewhat eventful. There was some more guider housekeeping, and some work on VisAO software, and a few other odds and ends. We also saw a rare member of the LCO zoo today at lunch.

It's time to start the process of cooling Clio down. The first step is to pump it down, and that got started this morning.
The primary didn't get washed today after all. The sink had to be cleaned first, to get some residual oil off. Here's Tyson going to work on it.
Instead of washing the primary, the telescope itself got a thorough cleaning.
The inside of the aluminization chamber. This contraption vaporizes aluminum to recoat the mirror.
Though the primary didn't get washed, other mirrors did.

A family of Guanacos came by the aux building today. There were a couple of little ones trotting along with the herd.

Tyson scared them away.
Here are the little ones.

The big news of the day is that I finally saw Zorro. A fox ran by the lodge during lunch and caused quite a commotion.

This is the North end of a South bound Zorrito. Once it realized it was being watched it took off - but not too fast.
I of course only had my cell phone camera, so I didn't get very good close ups.
The fox blends in with the countryside really well. No wonder I haven't seen one before today.
From the backside.
Tonights sunset is indirect - that's the Horace Babcock lodge catching the last rays of today.

Comm2 Day -3: moving the primary

The Clay telescope’s 6.5m primary mirror is getting a bath tomorrow. So today it was lowered out of the telescope, and moved into the aux. building. Not something you see everyday.

The 6.5m honeycomb mirror, inside its cell (the white cylinder), after being lowered onto its cart.
The surface of the mirror. This picture is normally almost impossible to take.
Here the mirror is making the journey into the aux.

Alan and Tyson did some guider housekeeping today, covering up some pesky LEDs. I turned the W-Unit on and made sure everything still works. No problems!

Vizzy definitely knows when he/she gets noticed and is having a picture taken.
Waiting for the sunset.
The view off the back of the mountain, right at sunset. It was cloudy all day, but it is clearing up tonight.
Our nightly sunset.

Comm2 Day -4: again back again

The “advance team” arrived at LCO today to begin preparations for MagAO commissioning run #2. Alan, Tyson, and Jared made the long overnight journey from the USA, accompanied by Povilas and Mark Phillips who were returning from the Magellan SAC meeting.

Tyson getting recharged in Santiago.
The first part of the road has been freshly paved. The rest of the way is . . . still bumpy.

After a delicious LCO supper I went up and looked everything over. Here are some of the important things I checked:

Vizzy watched the sunset with me.
Our frisbee was still in its hiding spot. Need a few more players though.
Our various caches of gear are still in place.

And of course, I took a stroll around the mountain to see how things are without us.

Andrew Carnegie, ladies and gentlemen.
Posted without comment.
To decrease plastic water bottle waste, you now get one of these nice Al bottles when you show up, and there are filling stations everywhere.
No MagAO @ LCO post is complete without a sunset from the catwalk.
I don't see the comet.
That's moonlight on Baade. That's Betelgeuse above and left of Clay.

Follow the LBTI

Hi MagAO fans, it’s been a while since we’ve updated our blog. After we recovered from our month on the mountain, and got through Christmas, New Years, and the start of the new school year, the team has jumped into processing all the fantastic data we got from MagAO, Clio, and VisAO.

In one month, we’ll be back at LCO doing our thing. It’s a little shorter run this time, but still more than three weeks.

While you wait for us to get back to work, you can get your cutting edge high-res/high-contrast science fix at the LBTI blog. There you can see how MagAO teammates Phil Hinz, Vanessa Bailey and Andy Skemer are doing at Mt. Graham in Arizona.