Author: Katie Morzinski

2017B Day 2: On Sky!

In a new world record, the crew installed the ASM, the Nas, and Clio all in one day. After dinner we finished connecting and cabling everything. We went on sky and closed the loop around midnight. Clio is still getting down to a cool 55 K (-218* C or -360* F). It started out at 287 K (14* C or 57* F) and it was a long cold day for me yesterday:

Cooling down Clio. I am acclimated to temperatures like the 38* C (101* F) in Tucson yesterday, so I was wearing all of my wool and down to try to stay warm as I spent the day in a 56* F (14* C) room with a 77 K liquid.

Laird worked all day today with the crew, with Jared and I joining later so that we could sleep a bit during the day to be up all night. Pato Jones helped Jared and Laird cable the Nas, turn on the guider, and balance the rotator:

Here Pato and Jared are during cabling of the Nas. Good thing Pato is wearing his hard hat.

We had some trouble shooting to do after getting on sky and closing the loop. This included the Clio motors, nodding, rotating, and at the end of the night the ASM was complaining because it was too cold, so we were trying to let it warm up. We also had problems with X11 windows being too slow on one of the default computers in the Clay control room “Guanaco”, so we switched to a computer of our own:

Jared at the new AO work station with high-speed X forwarding. Meanwhile, Hernan edits the night report to notify the day crew of the rotator issues.

With the loop closed and before I tried to change any filters, I managed to measure the focus position in one Clio filter, 3.3um:

Closed loop image of a bright star at 3.3um with Clio, and a good focus curve

Well, we’re happy to have gotten on-sky in the fastest time ever, so we will leave it at that and head down to a delicious LCO breakfast:

Breakfast at LCO: Fresh squeezed orange juice, strong tea with heated milk, oatmeal with heated milk, and two fried eggs with avocado

2017B Day 0: Arrived at LCO

Guess what… we’re back! Laird, Jared, and I made it safely to LCO after 27 hours of travel. Clio is already on the vacuum, pumping down since Tuesday thanks to Jorge Bravo. The sunset was cold and beautiful.

Top: At sunset time, a picture towards the snow-capped Andes to the East. Bottom: Clio is where I left it, and evacuating nicely already.

And by the way, Kesha’s back too. Hopefully our 2017B run will be just as powerful and beautiful as this new work of hers:

Short-and-sweet 2017B Blog Rules:

  1. There must be a post every day.
  2. There must be a song-of-the-day every day.

 

2017A Day 20: All packed up

Last night was our final night on-sky in 2017A. Laird went down around 10pm — hopefully he got to sleep fairly quickly, as he had to be up at 7:30am for a long day’s work. Jared went down around 3am — and he had to be up around lunchtime to help Laird. I’m not needed as much for the dismounting of the instruments (other than Clio), so I was the one to stay up running AO for T.J. and helping him trouble-shoot VisAO. As soon as T.J. recorded his final photons at the end of the night, I shut down the wavefront sensor, the ASM, VisAO, and Clio. Then I disconnected Clio from the telescope, coiling all its wires up for safe transport, and went to bed. Meanwhile, Laird was finishing his breakfast, and came up with the day crew to remove Clio and the ASM from the telescope. Then when Jared woke up he helped Laird de-cable the Nas which they then removed. Finally, I woke up and helped clean up and put away our various tools and sundry. Now it’s 1am and I’m awake enough to post through the struggles of the weak wi-fi in buildings B-9 and B-10.

When I walked up today I saw a herd of 6 guanacos — 4 adults and 2 babies — on the hillside to the East of the road up to the Astronomer’s Support Building. I didn’t have my phone with my so I didn’t get a picture, so I just have to remember what I saw (as my Mom says). One guanaco was especially close to the road, munching on a bush — when I saw it I thought it was Gary Galileo Guanaco — and then I saw the other 5 — if it was him, he’s never brought his family before! The 2 babies were hanging out with 1 adult (their mom?) and as I walked by the first guanaco (Gary?) walked over and stood by them protectively (their dad?). The babies hid behind the other guanaco as I walked by, but they both turned their heads to watch me pass. If your internet is working very well, maybe you can find some baby guanaco pictures.

I am doing laundry right now, and just power-cycled the wi-fi repeater to try and improve the signal in our rooms, to no avail. Yesterday’s song of the day featured a girl singing excellent impressions of (mostly) female pop singers, so for today’s song of the day I have an excellent mash-up of famous songs by 4 female pop singers:

2017A Day 19: La Grande, Grande Araña del Cerro Manqui

We are still talking about spiders today because that thing was huge and scary. But Laird saved us from the spider… or the spider from us…

First here’s Laird’s video he took this afternoon while he was trying to convince it to leave Clay:

And then pix from Jared from last night and Laird from this afternoon:

The saga of the spider. Top and middle: It was really huge. Bottom: Laird shooed it out of Clay with the ASM-protecting roll of Saran wrap. Thanks Laird! T.J. was happy that Clay was safe for one more night of observing.

It’s our last night on the telescope and T.J. enjoyed some nice conditions:

Good seeing, low wind, clear sky, moderate humidity

We’ve done a pretty good job eating Girl Scout cookies this run. Here is the last roll of thin mints:

Tonight the last of the girl scout cookies disappeared. Also I had a delicious guacamole burger!

Vizzy is still hanging about the clean room.

Vizzy looking cute as always.

For the past few days we’ve had songs about fireflies, a preview about spiders, and a song by Shakira. So for my attempt to follow the blog rules, this girl has got it all:
Britney Spears’ “Toxic” (evoking the spiders through the Chilean Rose Tarantula, which is not actually toxic, but it can shoot its spines into your eyes so you should treat it like it’s toxic), Owl City’s “Fireflies”, Shakira’s “Waka Waka/This time for Africa”, as well as bonus Nicki Minaj’s “Where them girls at” and Ke$ha’s “Your love is my drug”!