And we had a good trip back: Laird, Jared, and I enjoyed cerveza y papas fritas at our new fave spot in La Serena a.k.a. Havana.
Lunch in La Serena yesterday as we got on our way.Laird and I walking to the terminal in SantiagoHmm, wouldn’t you know it, the Admiral’s Club in Dallas has wasabi peas.A-Mountain in Tucson (exactly centered in this crop) from the planeTucson!!! From the air, we could see Arizona Stadium, the Steward Observatory Mirror Lab, and the pool where I swim! A little bit up/left of center here.Jumping for joy to be home!
It was a good run. 37 nights on sky, good weather, good telescope, good AO, good crew, good astronomers… good data! Thanks to all who made this run a success.
42 days away from home is a long time. But from our pre-astronomer lives, Jared and I are both used to long deployments in remote areas. (Although the bottom of the ocean is a lot more remote than Namibia!). Anyway, we quite enjoyed coming home:
Yesterday was day 40 and we switched back over to a day schedule, but the blog server was down so here I am posting now. Thanks to the 4th-floor at CAAO for getting us running again!
A few final pix from our last night on-sky — night 39: Sunrise on our last night observing — the run ended when the AO loop opened due to confusion with a nearby G2V star. You can see the sunlight coming around the baffles — I snapped this pic just before the loop opened. And then got a couple pictures of the final dome closing on MagAO 2014B.
Fog in the morning after our last night.Jared waves goodbye from the Clay catwalk
Day 40 was a short day for me. Laird had gone to bed at midnight on our last observing night, so we saw him at breakfast as he was just getting up but we were just going to bed. He pulled the ASM with the crew in the morning. Then Jared got up after a few hours sleep to help uncable the NAS, which they pulled next. Finally I got up in the afternoon after several hours sleep, to find that Laird Jared and the crew had already pulled Clio too! They were very fast this time!
Such tiredI went for a walk after dinner down to the original scopes, and saw the moon rise over the Clay & Baade.Sunset on Day 40 — not the start of the night, but the end of the day.A vizcacha sighting at the clean room! I dub her Vizita.
The staff here have taken such good care of us this run. They sent up my yogurt for breakfast that I had at 7:30pm, and a plate of delicious food for dinner every night. On Day 40, they were concerned that I didn’t go to lunch or dinner but also didn’t ask for una plata at night, so they sent Jared with some pizza. Thanks! It was delicious. My usual observing dinner: Dinner while observing — Una plata de la cena por favor.
We made it 40 days. I hope I can still swim when I get back!
We are happy to report that Laird arrived safely today. He ran the AO tonight, and gave Jared and I a break — it was nice to not have to worry about the loop! He made it all the way to sunrise. (Jared and I make it well past sunrise these days… or should I say nights). Laird seemed a bit surprised that Jared and I hadn’t broken more things, and of course he was pleased to see that we are still happy and healthy.
Laird also delivered some goods from home: coffee, and my new credit card after my old one was cancelled by my bank for fraudulent activity in Germany (???). Unfortunately, he apparently missed the other package — wasabi peas that Jared and I were really looking forward to enjoying. Jared loves giving Laird a hard time, so he grabbed this screen to prove that the package was delivered to the Close residence before Laird left on Thanksgiving: You had 1 job…
However, at least the Close residence is still following the blog… hello!
Tonight started out fine, but unfortunately ended with some pretty thick clouds. Well, in clouds and mediocre seeing, we can still lock on a bright star — Theta1 Ori B — and do astrometry with the Trapezium cluster! Voila: Clio images of Trapezium stars B, A, and E at M’ in the Narrow camera, nodded around to sample different parts of the chip. Something we can do through clouds and with mediocre seeing!
And now for the pretty pix: Jared captured this cute picture of a bird on the wall by the dining hall
The Baade (left) and Clay at sunset
In anticipation of Laird’s arrival, we had eaten the last of Graeme’s wasabi peas yesterday… oh well… here is a beautiful music video to enjoy instead — a treat for the eyes, in Cape Town:
Tonight was great. Good AO loop, good weather, good science. Last night, though, the internet was down for a few hours in the middle of the night, so we weren’t able to investigate the airglow until tonight, which we saw last night as fringing on the all-sky cam. Yuri Beletsky, Magellan Instrument Support Scientist and Astrophotographer, shared with us the following images he took of the airglow at LCO:
In our cell-phone-camera pictures, you can see some fog from a couple days ago (the terrible horrible no good very cloudy night) at dawn, reminiscent of some of the fog Yuri saw in his Amazing Airglow pic:
Fog rolling in around the Swope and DuPont at dawn 2 days ago
And some more goings-on:
The Clay at sunset — Panoramas by JaredI know I’m not supposed to like clouds, and I don’t… but these are pretty. (Again from 2 days ago)The VisAO PI going viscacha hunting at dusk
Typical breakfasts 1 and 2 — like hobbits!
First breakfast — at 7:30pm at the start of the night, up in the control room.Second breakfast — at 7:30am before going to bed
Well Kate, we don’t have a clever fix for you yet. But why be clever when hacking will do? The technical difficulties last night were from timeouts in the TCS communication (which mysteriously had never timed out until we tried taking data for Vanessa……). Jared implemented a workaround in which we timed various nod sizes at the beginning of the night on a test star, and used those delay times as the wait statements for the AO. It worked so great that we were able to look at 16 targets for ASU grad student Kim Ward-Duong tonight, which is a lot! We only had 1 unexplained RIP all night and recovered from that just fine. Kim is a very experienced AO observer with adaptive secondaries (MMT, LBT, and now Magellan), and has become an expert on Clio in just 3 days, so we were very efficient. It was a much better night! Here we are all looking happy to be observing with MagAO:
Here we are happily observing for Kim
Povilas: Well, what did you change?
Jared: I haven’t changed my code.
Povilas: It worked fine yesterday. You must have changed your code.
Jared: I haven’t changed my code.
Povilas: That’s what everyone says. “I haven’t changed my code.” “Fezzik, tear his arms off.” “Oh, you mean *this* mount-wait statement.”
Jared captured the sun rise in dramatic fashion yesterdayTwo days ago we ended early enough that I got a jog in before breakfast. This is on my way back. That’s Baade glinting in the sunlight, and Clay right next to it.
Jared: Well, at least there’s some good news… I still have an empanada left!
Alberto: Oh, you mean *this* empanada? …It was delicious!
(Haha just kidding!)
Anybody want a peanut?
