Katie Twitchell – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

MagAO-X 2025A Day 21: MagAO-X Wrapped

If you take a step back and really think about it, the way we celebrate birthdays is pretty weird. Wearing a conical paper hat? Lighting a small fire atop some food and then immediately blowing it out? Sitting awkwardly while everyone in a room sings to you? If you think a little too hard about birthday traditions, they’re all a bit strange.

Maybe that’s how we tried to justify the ritual we put Matthijs through on his birthday. Sure, craning and cart-building and wrapping a one-ton instrument in saran wrap and emergency blankets is a little weird. But hear me out: if you look at the big picture, it’s not so much more bizarre than party hats and birthday candles. Plus, I’m certain what we unwrapped today was orders of magnitude more expensive than any birthday present any of us has ever received.

I’m talking to you from the perspective of the day crew, who went to bed while the night crew braved the last few (not ideal) hours on-sky at the telescope. Laird, Elena, Matthijs and I were up bright and early to begin the process of moving MagAO-X from the Nasmyth platform down the hill to its temporary home in the cleanroom. This involves hard hats, steel toes, and a whole lot of bolts.

... because we didn't have to deal with last night's seeing — all smiles

it's hard to keep them on when you're laying on the ground installing earthquake bars! — tbh i wish our hard hats had a chin strap

put your thumbs up if people accidentally keep referring to you as a grad student! — tbh i wish our hard hats had a chin strap

We had gone over the procedure with the LCO staff the day before, so the day’s craning operations went smoothly. Before we knew it we were loading the instrument into the cleanroom, followed by the legs and the electronics rack. After some more craning, cart disassembly, and an unexpected battle between the instrument’s caster wheels and the cracks in the floor, by 3pm we were ready to pass the baton back to the day crew.

i like to think of this room as "the airlock" because of the double doors into the cleanroom situation — a beautiful gift ready to be unwrapped

nakey — a beautiful gift ready to be unwrapped

They expertly finished what we started, cabling up all our electronics, including the DMs, in record time.

looking a lot more enthusiastic after a few hours sleep

yes, that is a national treasure quote — “How do a bunch of guys . . . build all this?”
“The same way [people] built the pyramids, and the Great Wall of China.”
“Yeah. The aliens helped them.”

After this, a few of us are staying an extra day to set up remote ops so we can keep working until we see each other again at LCO for 2025B. We’ll be far away from each other, but we promise not to be distant.

Song of the Day:

Plantasia – Mort Garson

MagAO-X 2025A Day 12: Step Up to the Plate

Like our new friend Emi mentioned in her blog post, there were a lot of us on the mountain yesterday. Josh, Eden and I rolled up to LCO that morning after a smooth trip from Tucson, and Matthijs joined us later that afternoon. As fun as it was to have (nearly) the whole crew down here at once, the arrival of reinforcements meant Parker, Jay, and Alycia all headed down into La Serena this morning. We wish them better luck in their journey home than they had on the way here.

ay! I'm walkin' here! — unclear whether the matching outfits were accidental or if Parker is slowly morphing into Jay

ninki minjaj — unclear whether the matching outfits were accidental or if Parker is slowly morphing into Jay

Before I talk about tonight, I would be remiss if I didn’t shout out the alignment work that Laird and I did yesterday afternoon. With only the power of a ball driver, a suction cup, and a pair of tweezers, we managed to correct the mis-clocking of one of our Lyot coronagraph masks. If you think you have steady hands, try holding them both at arm’s length on-and-off for two hours while navigating a minefield of extremely sensitive optics that stand in your way. This was a task not for the faint of heart—or the large of hands.

the second time in recent history that I really should have taken both a before and after photo — the way the spiders line up is *chefs kiss*

We had a beautiful albeit chilly sunset to kick off our night. Logan and Emi went vizzy-spotting, because it is simply impossible to have too many viscacha photos.

"and we'll become silhouettes" — a good omen

Tonight we took a lot of data in MagAO-X’s Hα mode, which is a mode of operation that we use when we’re looking at young systems undergoing active planet formation. The first half of the night was dedicated to our collaborators at Michigan, and we spent the second half observing some targets from our very own Laird Close and Jialin Li. Because Jialin joined on Zoom, we were blessed with a reluctant guest appearance from Jujube:

we here at XWCL find that phone photos of computer screens have a certain charm about them

Conditions were decent, so science went on pretty much uninterrupted for the entire night. At the end of the night the wind started to pick up, but we didn’t let that stop us from taking data until it started to get light outside.

*someone* has to quote star wars, given that parker has never seen it — “That’s no moon . . . it’s a space station!”

In other news, we’ve been making some critical advancements, pushing the boundaries of extreme AO beyond what has ever been seen before. No, I’m not referring to automatic gain optimization, or coronagraphic low-order wavefront sensing, or even electric field conjugation for quasi-static speckle nulling. Instead, I’m referring to Maggie-OX: our trusty computerized voice that, among other things, now contains a variety of . . . walk-up songs? Picture this: you’re about to sit down at the AO station in the control room. You’ve got a long night ahead of you, battling r₀ and τ₀ and all the other nuances that come with extreme AO operation. You’re a little stressed, and more than a little tired. Then, suddenly, in the distance, you hear it: the little speaker at the control station playing your specifically-designated hype music. People are clapping, cheering even. You’re sauntering up to the computer in slow motion. Fireworks explode in the background. It’s a scene straight from a movie. You were born for this.

Okay, maybe it’s not that dramatic. But it is fun to have a theme song, and laughter makes the nights go faster. It’s the little things.

Song of the Day:

Just Like Heaven – The Cure

MagAO-X 2024B Day 18: Shifting Alliances

It’s nearly three weeks into this observing run and being stuck on this mountain together has finally driven us to form opposing factions. Professor Laird Close fearlessly leads the “day shift” camp: holders of doctoral degrees, champions of going to bed at a reasonable hour, and cart-building aficionados. The second “night shift” faction is largely anarchist, with its leadership defaulting to whichever graduate student is the least sleepy when a decision needs to be made. Only the unthinkable, an alliance between these two groups, will grant us the strength to accomplish our next monumental task. That’s right—it’s about time to uninstall MagAO-X from the telescope.

doctors — *“two houses, both alike in dignity . . .”*

not-doctors — *“two houses, both alike in dignity . . .”*

But before we do that, we had one last night of on-sky shenanigans (and science!) to get to. Before sunset, Eden went pro-photographer on some viscachas, and Jialin caught a tender moment:

so beautiful! would be a shame if someone image compressed her

“Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight! For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.”

We then briefly reconciled our differences to focus on something both night owls and early birds can agree on: watching the beautiful sunset together. Sadly, this is our last sunset with Sebastiaan and Elena before they head back to the Netherlands. We wish they would come hang out with us in the Sonoran Desert sometime, not just the Atacama… “Parting is such sweet sorrow”

“I defy you, stars.” — “But, soft! what light through yonder [mountain range] breaks?
It is the [west], and [XWCL] is the sun“

Tonight was an observing night for our Michigan/MIT collaborators, and we were able to get some really nice Hα images once the seeing calmed down in the second half of the night: “[MagAO-X] will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night”. The day-shifters missed the best seeing due to their sensible bedtime, but on their way down the mountain they stumbled upon some critters we hadn’t yet met on this run:

aaaaa — “What’s in a name? that which we call a [tarantula]
By any other name would [be] as [scary].”

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa — “What’s in a name? that which we call a [tarantula]
By any other name would [be] as [scary].”

Once we’d closed up for the night, the de-cabling crew took on the task of shutting down the instrument and beginning the removal process. Despite a pervasive, nagging sensation that we were under-supervised, we managed to get the instrument ready for the day crew’s craning operations.

you know a DM cable hates to see us coming — *“Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall.”*

As I write this, the day crew is up on the telescope platform picking up where we left off. Despite our differences, I wish them the best of luck in their endeavors. We’ll reunite in the cleanroom sometime later today to begin reassembling the whole thing—but that’s content for another blog post.

Song of the Day: okay, okay. This might be a bit of a stretch from this run’s blog rules. I really love classical music, but since there had to be song lyrics written into the blog post I thought I’d have to abstain this run. Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture does not contain lyrics, however it is based off of a play that is rife with quotes that seemed appropriate. We’re getting close to the end of the run here, so I figured why not:

Plus, this is a version from a Dutch symphony!

MagAO-X 2024B Day 8: International Geographic

Empanada Sunday is always hard to follow, but today started off on a really strong note: an adult and a baby vizzy graced us with their presence just before sunset. Viscachas are notoriously jumpy creatures (in both senses of the word), so there was a National Geographic-esque effort to get some decent shots. Fortunately, our efforts paid off. I now present to you some full-resolution images of the cutest little guys known to mankind:

"one of the best viscacha photos I've seen" - Laird Close — you should see these lil guys bounce

babysitting is hard — a very tired looking parent

Nothing I write will be more interesting than this little guy, so if you stop reading here I won't be offended — the feets! the nose! the EARS!

And some slightly-less-cute behind-the-scenes footage:

last known image of Jay Kueny before his death from mysterious plant sap poisoning — is there a group noun specific to graduate students?

now that's slack-moji grade content — is there a group noun specific to graduate students?

After the sun went down and vizzy-viewing was over, we got straight to work. Jay and I first fiddled with some cables on the platform to diagnose a shutter issue, and before we knew it, we were on-sky. The seeing started off a little rough at >1 arcsecond, but after a little patience and a little tweaking the AO system, we started to produce some good images for our collaborators at Michigan/MIT.

(quick aside: if you don’t know what we mean by “seeing,” this blog post by Logan offers a quick and easy explanation).

The last few hours of the night were for engineering. We started off with a game of telephone: Laird went onto the telescope platform to do some alignment with Jialin acting as chief flashlight-holder and walkie-talkie user. I sat in the driver’s seat in the telescope control room with the other walkie-talkie and Jared on Zoom. To get our mirror aligned, I relayed communication from Jared over the walkie-talkie to Jialin, who then relayed the message to Laird. Then Laird would tweak the alignment and tell Jialin, who radioed the message to me where it was finally heard by Jared. Thankfully it only took us a couple of iterations, and nothing got too garbled as the message made its way from Point A to Point B.

After alignment we continued with more engineering tasks, mostly trying to use our low-order wavefront sensor to get vibrations under control. I also got some time to experiment with the ADCs (atmospheric dispersion controllers). Unbeknownst to me, as I tinkered with speckle fitting and prism angles, the other two first-year grad students on the mountain (with the help of the talented Jialin Li) were taking portraits that would make any astronomy aficionado burn with envy:

in which Parker "The Vortex" Johnson blocks a few more stars than is usual for a coronagraph — Thanks for inviting me, guys

Oh well. There are many nights yet to come. In honor of finally (sort of) getting into the rhythm of a night schedule, the song of the day:

Daysleeper – R.E.M.

Don’t wake me with so much
. . .
My bed is pulling me, gravity
Michael Stipe (and also me)

MagAO-X 2024B Day 1: Bait and Switch

We’re off! The Tucson MagAO-X crew (notably sans PI) set out for our 2024B run at pretty much the crack of dawn on Sunday. Delta Airlines must have heard through the grapevine about Jay and Jared’s intercontinental sprint from last time and opted to intervene—when we booked these flights, the only option from TUS-ATL was taking off bright and early at 7:10 AM. We all found each other at our departure gate (we congre-gate-d? that one’s for you, Josh), redistributed the snack load, and boarded the plane without a hitch.

not pictured: disgruntled expressions before boarding the second time — all smiles before boarding (the first time)

Given that I don’t normally wake up at 5 AM, I was asleep pretty much the second I found my seat. I woke up about an hour later convinced that we must at least be somewhere over Texas, but when I pulled up the window screen I was dismayed to discover we hadn’t moved an inch; perhaps the lack of jet-engine noise and air turbulence was the reason I’d slept so well. From what I gathered from the captain’s announcement (in which I heard an airline pilot say the phrase “this is really embarrassing” for the first time), there had been a minor computer malfunction. Maintenance had been called in to deactivate the broken computer so the backup could be used, but instead they disabled both the broken and the working computer. Oops. This resulted in our sitting on the tarmac for about 2 1/2 hours, de-planing, and then re-boarding before leaving sometime around 10:30 AM. If any of us had wished for a later flight, our wish was certainly granted.

Despite the maintenance difficulties, we arrived at ATL with ample time to grab a smoothie, stretch our legs, and get some homework done. I guess a 6-hour layover really does make you delay-proof.

W311 if I remember from lens design correctly — big stretch

showing off our snacks to the whole airport — big stretch

We boarded our second flight with no issue. However, as a fun little treat and test of our patience, the captain again came over the PA system to let us know that maintenance needed to fix something up before we could take off. Thankfully, this time it only resulted in about 10 minutes of delay, and a (not) short nine hours later we arrived in Santiago!

"sleep royalty" — if you don’t have a store bought neck pillow, homemade is fine

gained a member but lost another — if you don’t have a store bought neck pillow, homemade is fine

We learned a few lessons in the Santiago airport, the chief being that the line to re-check bags with LATAM is fast if you have Delta Status, but if you don’t have status you can skip the long “regular people” line by being declared a “problem” by the airport staff. Not naming names.

An obligatory Starbucks run and a short flight later, we made it to La Serena, traded some Doctor Pepper Zero (a USA special) for some Nespresso at El Pino, and headed up to see our favorite telescopes. At LCO we met up with Sebastiaan and Elena, ate a group dinner, and—of course—watched the sun set.

I'm being bullied for being short — can’t quite reach north enough

nice to meet you, how've you been? — can’t quite reach north enough

or, for those classy enough, coke zero — in the evenings, we face east to drink tea

peep clay at the top — but first, let me take a selfie

Welcome back, everyone.

In honor of our journey, the song of the day is Traveling On by the Decemberists: