Today was the first full day for our expanded team. After a long 2 days of travel, we got a lot of good sleeping and working accomplished. Oh, and Laird’s suitcase arrived — it’s nice to have toiletries! The expanded team looked well-rested at lunch (Marco, Alfio, Vanessa, Katie, Laird, Jared’s sweatshirt).
Today Marco and Alfio checked that the ASM cabinet powered up and that the system looked OK.
Yesterday the spic-and-span primary mirror was re-installed in Clay, and last night our telescope was collimated: The Clay telescope being collimated (last night at sunset)
Today we moved the ASM from the clean room up to the Auxiliary building at the top of the mountain. We prepped the ASM by turning to face vertically — a stronger position while in motion (it is stored face down — a safer position in case anything strikes it), inspected the mirror surface, and tied it securely to prevent bounces or shocks. In the lower left, Laird is using his sailor skills to show Vanessa and me how to tie a bowline knot. In the lower right, I am trying to get a close-up shot of the slot, my favorite fiducial. The white arcs in the lollipop part of the slot are capacitors for the sensors. We paused to take a group picture while the truck was being prepared (Alfio, Vanessa, Katie, Laird, Marco) Here the ASM is being loaded on to the truck. Very carefully. Strapping the ASM down to the truck. Here the truck is driving the ASM very slowly up the mountain. Finally, the ASM is rolled safely into the Aux. The final result.
This morning Gabriel began cooling Clio with liquid nitrogen: Liquid nitrogen being pumped from the big tank into the little tank… and then from the little tank into Clio
Vanessa got to work monitoring the instrument and updating its software. Here she is connecting the motors last night: Vanessa connecting some Clio motors
Gabriel from the day crew filled Clio during the day, and Vanessa and I filled it after dinner, in order to speed it on its way down to 77 Kelvin: Vanessa and I cooling down Clio.
Here is a video:
Laird, Jared, and Vanessa cleaned the optics in the W-unit and Clio dichroic with soft lens brushes today: Laird and Vanessa inspect the Clio dichroic. Laird is holding a soft-bristle lens brush used to wipe off dust.
This morning Jared saw a guanaco, looking quintessentially Andes: A guanaco in its natural habitat (left) and zoomed-in (right)
Vanessa and Jared saw a bird in the Aux: A bird perched on top of the shelves by the propped-open door to the Aux.
Then this afternoon, Jared and I saw two burros, very appropriately for Palm Sunday: On the left, you can see two burros in the foreground, and the 100″ telescope in the background. On the right, Jared is making big loud sounds to “get their ears up”. He succeeded.
Quotes:
“To the nunnery!” –Tyson, heading out after the morning meeting.
“You get them in your mouth!” –Laird, talking about moths at MMT (fortunately, not a problem here!).
“It’s ballpark super-well cooled down.” –Vanessa, reading the Clio temperature gauge.
MagAO fans: Did you miss AAS? Or did you see our poster at AAS and want to see it again? Kate had a lot of great conversations at the meeting (ADS link), and she has now posted her AAS 2013 poster as a PDF to our publications archive. Here it is:
Well, we can’t believe it, but various team members are going to start heading to Chile next week for Comm-2!! So we hope you enjoy this first taste of our results… and stay tuned for more soon!
Well, we are almost home… we made it to the Dallas airport. When we left in early November, the election had just concluded and I was still eating Halloween candy. Thanksgiving has come and gone. And now that we are back in the US, we are hit with the usual full-blown American Christmas with music, trees, and poinsettias overstimulating our tired traveling brains. We were trying to find the Admiral’s club in DFW and were talking very nerdily about MCMC algorithms to help us find it, and Laird said “I hope we don’t get trapped in a local minimum!” So here we are in a local minimum, and will be getting back to Tucson in a few hours. So let’s look at some highlights from the run.
The trip started with a solar eclipse on Nov 13thWe played some ultimate frisbee to unwind and for team comraderie.The control room was packed -- but we never ran out of cookies!We saw some beautiful sunsetsSaw some great vizziesAnd had some touching advisor-student momentsWe asked for more cowbell, and Simone wavefront-sensed by eye and figured out that we were phase-wrapping at the pyramid ... and that it could be fixed with a sign change in the interaction matricesWe made some pretty picturesAnd made the highest angular resolution image in the universe -- Theta 1 Ori C in the optical. We later beat this by a few mas on the same binary. Better images are on the way.
Last quote of the run:
“Is it finally safe to say things around you two?” – Laird, to Jared and Katie.
The last of the MagAO team left LCO today. So long and thanks for all the spatial resolution! Since we didn’t all overlap, here are the 3 group pictures we took that captured everyone who came on the commissioning run:
Back row: Armando Riccardi, Enrico Pinna, Alfio Puglisi, Simone Esposito, Jared Males, Tyson Hare, Phil Hinz. Front row: Marco Xompero, Alan Uomoto, Laird Close, Katie Morzinski. Not pictured: Derek KoponBack row: Derek Kopon, Ya-Lin Wu, Enrico Pinna, Phil Hinz, Laird Close, Tyson Hare, Kate Follette, T.J. Rodigas. Front row: Alfio Puglisi, Simone Esposito, Alan Uomoto, Katie Morzinski, Jared Males.Back row: Enrico Pinna, Ya-Lin Wu, Simone Esposito, Laird Close, Alan Uomoto, T.J. Rodigas, Jared Males, Tyson Hare. Front row: Runa Briguglio, Alfio Puglisi, Kate Follette, Katie Morzinski.
When you bring an expensive, delicate instrument to an observatory, you want there to be people like Juan Gallardo who put their full attention and serious effort into the procedures and operations for mounting and dismounting your instrument. Yesterday evening, we all met in the library/conference room, and Juan briefed us on the procedure to be taken today and tomorrow in removing Clio, the ASM, and the Nas from the telescope. Juan has been taking pictures and detailing every step, the whole time we’ve been here, and he put together a detailed and thorough document. Today the procedures were followed to safely and successfully remove the ASM and Clio from the telescope; tomorrow we will remove the Nas and store the ASM. Here is a picture of Juan: Juan Gallardo managing installation and removal operations
So today we were back to a day schedule. Laird supervised Nas uncabling and ASM removal. T.J. supervised Clio uncabling and removal. And Juan managed the LCO crew, for a safe and successful instrument removal.
T.J. uncables Clio at the end of the nightLaird uncables the NAS in the morningLaird and Pato disconnect the ASMFelix and Nelson lower the ASMFelix redies the ASM on its cartThis is what a non-adaptive secondary mirror (NSM ?) looks like. Felix and Nelson raise the f/11 secondary to the top of the telescope, now that our ASM has been removed -- to prepare for the next observing run.T.J. and Kate pack up Clio electronicsNelson, Felix, and Victor remove Clio on its cartOur day was coming to a close as the sun set. Which was weird because sunset marked the beginning of our work for the past couple weeks!
