Our first non-Arizona visiting astronomer was taking data with Clio and VisAO tonight. His name is Brett Addison of the University of New South Wales, Sydney. Here is a picture of the team with our visitor. On the left side of the room going back: Jared, Katie, Brett, Hugo. On the right, coming forward: Alfio, TJ, Laird, Ya-Lin. Photo courtesy Jordan.
Also Alycia arrived safely today.
Today the seeing was bad to very bad for almost the whole night. Seeing was off the charts. Yet we managed to close the loop with very very low gains and only 66 modes.
A zoom-in of the seeing. The part where it starts to get better is at around 5:30am, and we started around 8pm, so that was a long night of a lot of bad seeing!The AOI GUI is running very smoothly tonight, which is great because we won’t have Alfio here for the whole run…
Alfio made a new mirror diagnostic last year that shows the mirror commands sampled at a very high speed. See the video here: It’s a really cool one!
Then this run he added the plot to the right that shows the maximum mirror command at each time step. I liked this plot so much because it shows you both how stable the loop is as you are adjusting the gains, and also gives a diagnostic for what happened if the loop breaks open. I told Alfio it was my favorite plot, so he made a quick update to the code: My favorite plot.
Laird took a photo of the pupil from the NAS. It’s just like last year’s — even the bird-dropping-fiducial is still there, only now it’s de-aluminized tertiary. The slot (lollipop at 9:00) is useful for a fiducial when modeling the PSF of Clio — see my post from last year.Also this mirror has lots of bird-dropping fiducials. But anyway… Hi Mom! And Dad! And everybody!Another panorama
In honor of our knocking out targets numbers 1-10 tonight (although we had to skip target 3 due to seeing and faintness, so it was 9 targets total…) here is Tina Dico singing her song Count to Ten:
Today was our first official science night! The previous nights were engineering, but tonight we had a visiting astronomer here at the telescope, and he was calling the shots for his observations. He took logs while we helped him take data, and the operations went pretty smoothly.
The Clay at sunset, from the vantage point of the wild viscachas
The night started out well, with Alfio successfully managing a difficult aquisition, and with the data coming down the pipeline looking just fine.
This picture is from yesterday, when we looked at the Trapezium to do some astrometric calibration. Pretty cool how you can see it on the acquisition camera huh?
However, around midnight the clouds thickened up, and the AO system couldn’t stay locked. Clouds, clouds, and more clouds
We kept trying brighter and brighter stars, eventually trying a 0-th magnitude star — the wavefront sensor would alternate between saturating counts on this bright star to not even seeing any photons from it at all — 12 mags of extinction! Sigh. So it was a disappointing night. At least we were able to get some testing of various modes and set-ups done, so that’s good. But we are really hoping for a better night tomorrow!
Time for the pretty pictures: Panorama from East to West by the Aux at sunset
Top: To the West at sunset. Bottom: To the East at sunset.A wild viscacha behind the Clay (as opposed to the “tame” ones that hang out at the clean room)Mizz Vizz said hello to us on our way to dinner by the clean room
This is the song in my head when we are watching the photons on the wavefront sensor slowly diminish:
Today we went on sky and closed the loop! The first half of the night was cleaning up final guider problems, but then just before midnight we acquired our first AO setup star and were able to close the loop with an audience and everything! I’m glad we showed the GMT folk some good images before they had to leave. Jordan arrived safely today.
First we finished up the final touches — removing the ASM cover and mounting the wind monitor: Povilas and Laird took off the protective cover of the ASM. It required the scissor lift and then some climbing.
This is what the Clay control room looks like during commissioning and engineering.
Then Alfio closed the loop and we had some beautiful 6.5-m diffraction-limited images!! First closed loop of 2014A!
A brown dwarf companion imaged in thermal IR filters with Clio2 today
There was also some good wildlife today: Jared took these gorgeous photos of a horse in the afternoon.
Vizzy has a special affinity for Jared, and she (Mizz Vizz) let him get really close to take these pix with his cell.
The song today is historic and fun:
Well, now we’re all on a night schedule — the run has begun!
You may have heard that a magnitude~8 earthquake struck northern Chile after dinnertime. Thanks for all your checking-in emails, and we are happy to say that we did not feel the earthquake at all; it was up in way way northern Chile and we are approximately central:
LCO is about halfway down Chile and the earthquake was way up in the north.
Our thoughts and well-wishes are with the people affected.
Ya-Lin arrived safely this afternoon.
Today we worked all day and all night so I have a lot of pictures to catch you up.
Yesterday Pato balanced the telescope and I got a good view from the catwalk. Povilas was working on alignment.
Pato balances ClayHere’s what the ASM looks like hung up above the telescopeThis is what the crosshairs look like on the ASM cap for fiducial alignment. On the left is a picture of the crosshair taken from standing on the NAS through a telescope Povilas had connected for alignment. On the right is me looking tired.
Today we installed the rest of our instrument: the NAS ring that holds VisAO and the wavefront sensor, and then Clio mounts to that ring. The crew pushes the NAS ring from the Aux to the telescope
Emilio and the crew work on the NAS while Fernando looks onJared and Laird cable up the NASThe crew put Clio on the NASWe are carefully checking to see if Clio is going to fit with the new dust coversT.J., Povilas, and Jared checking out ClioClio attached to the NASThe Clio umbilical after we wrapped it all upClio temperatures are goodClio cloning successful
Then we turned on all our various cooling systems before powering everything on.
Laird showed me the fans for cooling the ASM heat-exchange glycol
The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be built on a neighboring peak, and so Antonin Bouchez (the AO lead on GMT) and colleague are up here to look in on what it’s like to install and bring online an AO system up here. We are happy to be their pathfinder and to host their visit.
Jared, Antonin, and Laird look on as Alfio and I power up the ASMLaird is plugging in the single-phase and 3-phase power sources for the ASM, while I am hoping he doesn’t fall off the ladderLaird and Alfio check out the ASM guiUp in the Clay control room after powering on the ASM, Alfio and I are checking that everything is ok while Antonin and Laird look on
Tonight we wanted to go on-sky for the first time, but unfortunately we had a major issue with the guider communications and software. TBD, check back in tomorrow.
Did I mention that we worked all day and all night?
We’re pretty tiredT.J. fell asleep at the Clio workstation while waiting for the dome to open.I passed out on the couch in the lounge.
The song of the day is a change-up of genres. It’s a fun one, Lonely Boy by Mnozil Brass. Enjoy!
Today I worked with Mauricio and Laird on evacuating the air out of Clio’s cryostat, which involved cleaning the o-ring and then hoping for a good vacuum. Laird did some fixes to the ASM, removing the alignment laser and making an alignment fiducial instead, and fixing some of the protective covering on the back to keep out the dust. Jared and Alfio worked in the morning on software and electronics for the AO system, and in the afternoon and evening they with Laird tested the cleaned VisAO optics and closed her back up.
Mauricio helped us with vacuuming out Clio’s cryostatJared and Laird cleaning optics yesterday. Today they finished testing their new optics and closed up VisAO.Laird did some surgery on the ASM and I helped a bitI went for a walk/jog and Povilas zoomed by while I took this picture of the valley towards the ocean out there, and the lodge and bird droppings over here.My nephews are really into trucks. There are some really nice ones at LCO.A blue truckA red truckVizzy contemplating the sunset
Song of the day for heavy-hearted basketball fans, if you need a cry š
(family-friendly version):
On a happier note, let’s close with some light-hearted fan mail from my sister: My big sister sent MagAO a fan letter — thanks Anna! She was one of the original 4 MagAO blog subscribers on google reader
