Author: Katie Morzinski

2016B Day 16: 1.6 kHz

Tonight Clio and VisAO were together again — except we didn’t do much together. Separately we tested the new VisAO SDI+ mode and did some basic set-up tests on Clio. And we got AO up to 1.6 kHz! Thanks to Arcetri here and there:

The AOistas last week hard at work to give us this nice night on sky

And the wind died down and we had as low as 0.35” seeing!

And thanks Baade for delivering such superb image quality to us over here on Clay

Vizcochito greeted me on my way up:

It was really windy all day, and Vizcochito was huddled on the roof of the “garage” at the clean room, out of the wind.

And there was a salad animal at dinner!

Una animale ensalata

2016B Day 15: Benvenuti nell’Ordine

Tonight we inducted 6 more members into L’Ordine degli Astronomi al Limite di Diffrazione: we observed Mira A and B through the eyepiece. First on the list was Alfio who helped us come up with the name for L’Ordine.

Alfio looking through the eyepiece and signing the book. My classical observation of Mira A and B.

Then we got back to work, testing and debugging our new modes, interaction matrices, and higher frequency.

Ys PSF from Jared on VisAO tonight.
Yesterday on the CRO we finished the interaction matrices for bins 4 (top) and 5.
From last week: A vizcacha watching the sunset.

2016B Day 13: Return of the CRO

Marco, Runa, Enrico, and Fernando left yesterday. Kelsey and Lauren left today. And Simone and Armando are leaving tomorrow. After Laird’s very nice technical post yesterday, I will just have some pretty pictures for today. We started the evening with a very delicious meal of Hector’s pizza which is so good! Then we got back on the CRO to take more interaction matrices, after the success of yesterday’s brief on-sky test of our basic calibrations.

These power spectra show the input turbulence (red) and the rejection with our corrections at different orders with different numbers of modes. Yes this is a pretty picture.
Enrico took this picture of the CRO alignment — nice job! Yes this is another pretty picture.
MagAO women: Lauren, me, and Kelsey.
Sunday was a 3-vizcacha day. I named them Vizzy, Grumpy, and Vizcochito.

2016B Day 5: Alora Alignment

Ok Alora! Lots of aligning optics today. Kelsey and Lauren are figuring out the ropes, and Fernando arrived this evening.

Do you see the green laser dot on the graph paper strip taped down in the middle? This is how Enrico aligned the new tip/tilt stage yesterday. Today it was the new camera lens in the PyWFS.
Lauren, Alfio, and Enrico in the Aux working on PyWFS alignment.
These black and yellow birds are flitting around these fragrant yellow flowers
Vizzy was waiting for us
!!!Guanacos!!!