Today, for the first time, all of the MagAO system was on the same continent, and even in the same building. On top of that, after a 50 hour odyssey Laird, Victor, and Jared arrived at LCO to begin unpacking. MagAO is officially at Magellan! Here are some pictures from today.
The MagAO ASM arrives at LCOThe conductor celebrates the end of a *slow* drive up the mountain.
Meanwhile, somewhere between Tucson and La Serena:
Victor and Jared pose after defeating Chilean customs with way too many parts of MagAO in our luggage.
And finally at the top of the mountain:
We witnessed a blast for the GMT.Here we see the backup transport system, standing by outside our dorm rooms just in case.Our future home, the Clay Telescope, is the one at left opening at sunset.Venus over LCO. By the way, the stars are weird down here.Laird celebrates the fact that none of the drop-n-tells tripped on the outer box. This means that the shell was handled very carefully on its trip from Italy.Our electronics waiting to be unpacked.Victor and Alan unbolting the top of the outer box.Jared expresses his opinion about something. Ask me later - it probably doesn't matter. Update 4 days later: it didn't matter.We only tripped 2 of 3 5g drop-n-tells on the inner box. This is a great sign that our delicate shell was treated well on its journey.Here we're moving the inner box. Jared is operating the crane, and Laird is guiding the load. Victor guides the inner box and its delicate contents down. The foam behind him was on top of the inner box.
At the end of our first day the inner box was safely stowed in the clean room, and we have started unpacking our electronics. A big first day.
The NAS and all the W-unit and VisAO electronics landed in Chile early on Tuesday morning. The first part of MagAO has now arrived in Chile!
Our other big news is that the ASM – meaning the thin shell itself and the ‘unit’, which means the reference body and attached electronics – has left Arcetri and is on the way to the airport in Firenze. This process will take a few days for customs etc. The pictures below, courtesy of Armando Riccardi, show the final stages of packing the ASM and loading it on a truck.
Our mirror is swinging through the air! This is the "small box", containing the 85cm wide by 1.5mm thick thin shell of our adaptive secondary mirror.The "large box" being loaded on to the truck. The "small box", shown above, is packed inside this box. This system is carefully designed to protect our delicate mirror during the flight.Here we see the reference body and electronics being readied for packing in their shipping box.
After our pre-ship review, we had a few things to fix – the only difficult one was a misbehaving actuator in the ASM. These have all been dealt with, and after a final review by the director we today received permission to ship the Magellan AO system to Chile.
LCO here we come!
Some packing pictures courtesy of Carmelo Arcidiacono:
Carmelo measuring the height of the packing box, resourcefully with his inseam.The W-Unit (WFS and VisAO Camera) in its wooden shipping crate. The gray crates behind contain the system electronics.The NAS being lowered into its shipping crate.The NAS safely in its box.Time to put the lid on. How many Watts RMS?
The Magellan AO VisAO camera includes a novel system for performing “frame selection”, which is the technique of using only periods of good seeing and/or AO correction in the final science image. Traditional “lucky imaging” does this by reading short exposures and selecting in post processing. In our system, we use measurements of Strehl ratio in real time and open and close the shutter based on those measurements. This video shows our shutter working with the AO loop closed in the Solar tower in Arcetri, Italy. It was taken during the week after our pre-ship review.
The Strehl time series is derived from our custom wavefront reconstructor (calculations are done on a GPU). During this testing the shutter decisions were based only on the most recent Strehl measurement, meaning that we did not use any predictive algorithms. Note the fleeting moments of a clear Airy pattern as the shutter finds the highest peaks in the Strehl ratio time series.
The real question is: does it do any good? We’re still analyzing all the data we took, but for now this demonstration is an important step showing that our telemetry and hardware systems can do real-time frame selection.
The MagAO project hosted our Pre-Ship Review (PSR) last week at Arcetri Observatory in Florence. The purpose of this review was to ensure that lab work on the AO system is complete and that MagAO is ready to move to the telescope for on-sky commissioning.
Six external reviewers (4 in person and 2 by videocon) gave us their time and attention for 2 days in real time, as well as studying up beforehand and writing a report after the fact. The scope of their expertise covered subjects from large telescopes, commissioning AO systems, instrument development, logistical implementation, real-time software, and adaptive secondaries.
The review lasted 2 days and included presentations, discussions, and a demonstration of the AO system in the tower, controlled from the chem. lab. Topics included a description of the Magellan telescope, an overview of the MagAO project and instrument, the scientific justification, detailed technical descriptions of all subsystems, logistical considerations, and our plans for commissioning. The reviewers considered everything in detail and gave us a report in the format of Findings, Comments, and Recommendations.
The review went very well — the reviewers were extremely thorough and helpful. They included three requirements and four recommendations, as well as findings and comments. We are working to address the requirements identified by the panel, before we ship to Chile. Two have been addressed already this week, and the third is waiting for next week.
Here are some photos from the review:
The PSR panel visiting the solar tower lab during the review. The large black ring hanging from the ceiling, which we call 'The Nas', contains our wavefront sensor and the VisAO science camera. Below that are our electronics racks, which will actually mount on the side of The Nas at the telescope.The MagAO PSR had lunch at Galileo's house. Galileo once walked this very balcony. This is our "album cover" shot.A happy AO operator is a good AO operator. Katie Morzinski, MagAO's newest team member, operated the AO system for the PSR panel. On her screens you can see the 4 pyramid sensor pupils, the SDSS i' PSF, and a glimpse of our mirror status displays. In the background you can also catch a glimpse of the VisAO camera in action.Alfio Puglisi explains some of the finer points of AO with pyramid sensors and adaptive secondaries, while Katie Morzinski and Jared Males concentrate on the loop.At the after party in the MagAO home-away-from-home at Via Romana 89. The entire team celebrated a successful moment in the project after many years of 'blood sweat and tears'.The MagAO PSR team celebrates the end of an intense 2 weeks. Speakers provided by Enrico "How many Watts RMS?" Pinna and music provided by Katie "Girl Bands" Morzinski.The PI holds forth - toasting a job well done by the entire team. A beam of light descends down on him to mark the occasion.The MagAO team, Magellan telescope experts, and Pre-Ship Review panel on the balcony at Galileo's house, inspired by a place where Galileo pointed his telescope to the heavens. Back row: Povilas Palunas, Al Conrad, Doug Miller, Jared Males, Ian Bryson, Marco Xompero, Runa Briguglio. Front row: Alfio Puglisi, Katie Morzinski, Simone Esposito, Carmelo Arcidiacono, Laird Close, Mark Chun
