Katie Morzinski – Page 34 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

Comm2 Day 3: NAS and CRO day

Today we installed the NAS (the metal ring that mounts to the telescope and holds all our instruments) and the CRO (the calibration return optic, for internal alignment and calibration). We also said goodbye to Tyson — thanks for everything! It was a long day and I’m tired so this will have to be quick, even though lots of fun stuff happened.

First the NAS was installed.

optics is a French sport — Povilas collimating the telescope before the NAS was put on.

Mission Impossible? — Here comes the NAS, up from the basement of the dome.

Then we needed to create a new fiducial for the CRO so that we could align our internal light source along the optical axis. It was a fun exercise by me, Marco, Alfio, and Vanessa, and it reminded me of the Inquiry labs I did in the Professional Development Program when I was a grad student.

Great job, everyone! — Coming up with a procedure and then implementing it to create a new alignment fiducial on the back of the CRO.

Yay! — The final result of the new fiducial on the CRO.

was pretty fun — Laird and I putting some more tape on the CRO fiducial.

thanks — Juan and Laird going up in the scissor lift to install the CRO (that I’m handing to Laird)

Quotes:
“Here, try it — shine a light in your eye!” — Laird

“I know I don’t like it just from looking at it.” — Laird

Laird: “This is a little unexpected.”
Povilas: “If it’s unexpected, that’s your fault.”

Comm2 Day 1: The ASM heads up the hill

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!

anchor — 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:

Not our secondary! — 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.

Laird claims he is a better sailor than Jared. — 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.

Photo by Paula -- came out very well! -- Vanessa's camera — We paused to take a group picture while the truck was being prepared (Alfio, Vanessa, Katie, Laird, Marco)

I think we have a very similar shot from Comm1, except this time we turned it 180 to face away from the sun. — Here the ASM is being loaded on to the truck. Very carefully.

Vanessa takes amazing pictures. — Strapping the ASM down to the truck.

Slow enough for a PI to walk beside — Here the truck is driving the ASM very slowly up the mountain.

Carefully. — Finally, the ASM is rolled safely into the Aux.

Going to the telescope tomorrow — The final result.

This morning Gabriel began cooling Clio with liquid nitrogen:

Gaseous 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:

A happy grad student is a good grad student — 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:

Until we ran out of LN. — 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:

Don't sneeze, Vanessa — 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:

Cutie — A guanaco in its natural habitat (left) and zoomed-in (right)

Vanessa and Jared saw a bird in the Aux:

Mellon — 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:

Harking back to his farm boy childhood in Pullman, WA and Brookings, SD — 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”.

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 AAS Poster by Kate Follette

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!

MagAO Commissioning Day 30: Local minimum

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.

Sol — The trip started with a solar eclipse on Nov 13th

soaring — We played some ultimate frisbee to unwind and for team comraderie.

MagAO1 — The control room was packed -- but we never ran out of cookies!

Kate Alan Phil Jared Ya-Lin — We saw some beautiful sunsets

Four years — And had some touching advisor-student moments

I put on my pants just like everyone else — We 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 matrices

21 mas — And 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.

MagAO Commissioning Day 28: Going home

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: