Author: Jared Males

Our CRO is a very fast f/1 optic, and our ASM makes an f/16 beam. So motions of the CRO are amplified by a factor of 16 in our focal planes. We can see this on the VisAO CCD47 as a dancing image due to small mechanical vibrations of the telescope.

The MagAO project is adding a little bit to the vibrations of the telescope, mainly with two cooling pumps. One pump circulates glycol for our CCDs and the Shutter, and the other keeps Clio2 cold. With the 16x CRO amplification, we really see the impact of these pumps. We recorded 60 sec time series of the CCD47 operating at 32Hz in a 64×64 subarray mode. Here are the results:

With both pumps off:

With the Clio2 pump off, and the CCD pump on:

With the Clio2 pump on, and the CCD pump off:

We are actually very happy with the vibration performance of the system attached to Clay. Taking into account the factor of 16 for the CRO reflection, we expect to have only a few milli-arcsec of jitter when we observe actual stars. We have also taken measurements with our internal artificial star without the CRO and confirmed this. Good news, especially for VisAO.

Another experiment we conducted was having the PI bounce around the control room. He has a noticeable effect.

Happy Thanksgiving!  I am thankful for clear skies, low winds, and contactless continuous facesheets.

We are employing fine Italian craftsmanship to obtain the interaction matrices for our AO system, using the “penina” internal light source (an artifical star) and the CRO retro-reflector.  These are crucial calibrations for the feedback loop to create the desired shapes on the ASM.

Here’s a short video of today’s action:

Watching that, you’d swear Laird speaks fluent Italian. Maybe it’s just Optics.

There were a few issues having to do with the slaved actuators in the unilluminated part of the pupil, so we haven’t finished the interaction matrices yet — there’s more alignment that needs to be checked first.

We are looking carefully at the pupil to see if the CRO is aligned properly with the ASM.  So let’s have a look at the pupil.  The “lollipop” is the slot that was cut out to keep a crack in the ASM from spreading.  You can see it in the lower center of the ASM in each picture in this collage.  There is also bird poop on the tertiary — it’s the splotch in the upper right image, at about 8:00.  More on the pupil images tomorrow.

 

---

Heard at LCO today:

“We have three telescope operators? Just for Clay?” -Laird
“No. Just for you!” -Povilas

“If you don’t know which way is which, we’ll just drill two holes!” – Pato

“It’s the bird poop.” – Laird
“So we use the bird poop fiducial?” – Phil
(a helpful bird, which might actually live in the dome, gave us a nice way to figure out which way is up in our images)

“Alfio has a segmentation fault?” – Jared
“It’s not me, it’s IDL!” – Alfio

“A pupil only a mother could love.” – Laird
“In Italy we say, Every cockroach is loved by its mother.” – Alfio
“All the cockroaches are loved by their various mothers.” – Kids

---

There was no turkey today, but we tried to keep up some Thanksgiving traditions:

MagAO’s official food blogger (Derek) grabbed a shot of our turkey substitute:

We are all thankful for the 4-course meals, 3 times a day… as well as the plethora of snacks found in every building!

Our crew is getting kind of big. Todays new arrivals were: Phil Hinz, Simone Esposito, and Enrico Pinna.

This morning we finished balancing the telescope, and collimated it. We also installed our new wind meter directly under the ASM.

To prepare for moving the NAS, we officially took over the Clay control room.

The big task after lunch was to install the NAS. We reviewed the procedure with the whole crew.

We first had to wait for the Mike guider to finish coming off the telescope.

Installing the NAS went smoothly. We’ve done this once before, so it was a good chance to test the procedure we developed last time. In this video we are raising the NAS from the dome floor up to the Nasmyth platform.

Once we had the NAS installed, we attached the new and improved Anaconda for the first time.

We also did a live test of the “Snake Pit”, the box that holds the loop of the Anaconda as it coils under the NAS platform. Our current solution is really more of a sketch.

After getting the NAS mounted, we turned it over to Povilas to start testing the guider.

Finally, we opened the dome and pointed at some stars. This was the first time that real starlight bounced off our adaptive secondary mirror – First Light on the ASM! The fantastic result of the tests we did are that we can focus the ASM with the normal travel range of the vane ends (the structure that holds our ASM above the primary).

Here’s the scene in the Clay control room during our first nighttime operations:

Povilas was able to collimate the telescope, and obtain ~0.65 arcsec images on the guider. A big night!

Some random snippets of today’s conversations:

Povilas: “It worked. It doesn’t matter whether I approve.” (note: this has been added to the MagAO support agreement as rule #1).

Tyson: “You’re makin’ me nervous.”
Laird: “Well, you’re making me nervous.”

Laird: “Just as long as everybody remembers not to stick their whatevers in there.”

Alan: “If it clears, it clears.”

Derek: “My wide field lens is performing 2% better than the theoretical limit.”
Jared: “You’re wrong.”

Derek took a walk around Clay today:

While mounting the wind monitor, the primary mirror covers were open with the telescope at horizon. This was an opportunity to pose for souvenir photos in front of a 6.5 meter mirror.

Finally, we note that this is the 100th post to our blog. Thanks for reading!

Today we moved our Adaptive Secondary Mirror (ASM), including our 1.6 mm thick 85 cm wide fragile thin shell, up to the aux building between the telescopes. Needless to say, it was an exciting time.

Here’s a video of the cart being pushed and pulled onto the truck:

Other stuff got done today too.

Alan and Tyson finished installing our new cable management system today.

Here it is in action, demonstrated by the lovely Tyson:

After dinner Marco and Armando went up to Clay to begin preparing to power up the ASM electronics tomorrow.

Derek Kopon (Arizona/Heidelberg) and Marco Xompero (Arcetri) arrived today. The dining hall is getting full!

quotes of the day:
Frank Perez: “Ok, who’s in charge”
Laird Close: “Well…I guess I am.”

“It can be disconcerting at first, but you’ll get used to it” (Povilas Palunas)

“Sometimes I wonder who’s the student and who’s the director here.” (Laird Close)

For today’s operation we broke out the steel toes. There was some question about style vs. function. In the end, style won.

Armando Riccardi is here. That means it is all going to be fine. Seriously – stop worrying.

O.k. Maybe worry a little. We had a 6.2 magnitude earthquake today, almost right under us. That’s telescope shaking, rock slide causing, all work stopping strong. Strong enough that Armando abandoned the ASM in the cleanroom. Here’s a map:

The valley between us and the epicenter had clouds of dust rising, presumably from rock slides. [check back, I’ll post some pics when I get them]

In the end everything is fine. Nothing broke and we just kept working.

Progress was made on site cleanliness as well.

And we discovered what “the problem has been dealt with” actually meant. The Viscacha den in the attic of the ASB was screened over.