Logan Pearce – Page 2 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 12: Off the charts

If you’ve been around this blog a time or two you’ve probably heard our woes with respect to seeing — the measurement of just how twinkly the stars are. Twinkling is bad for science, and our instrument can’t operate well if the seeing is too high.

We started this run with some pretty good seeing! In fact, two nights ago was the first night for my program and the seeing was excellent! I was able to observe a lot of my targets and get great images. You might have seen that last night was less spectacular, and I’m sad to see tonight is no different.

To the mooooooon — Off the charts seeing

That’s 2.5 arcsec seeing, wind gusts of 35.

Before we closed for wind and more engineering, Jialin got to drive some and I took some maybe-useable data.

Some animals and nice shots from the day.

Some of Eden’s lovely telescope night shots

BUT WAIT! The night’s not over yet. Immediately after my time was up and I left the control room, seeing tanked just in time for Jay’s disk observations

The night ended strong with Jay riding out his target until sunrise.

Some of you may have clocked that I arrived a bit late to the mountain this time. Well here is the quick story time.

In May last year I had a foot surgery that through many ups and downs has still not fully healed today (that’s a story for another time). I haven’t been able to bear weight on my left foot since May, approximately 10 months of not using my foot. About three weeks ago I got the go ahead to start walking on it again, and I was slowly and carefully transitioning back to bearing weight. But even though I was mostly walking, I couldn’t walk long distances, so I decided to bring my knee scooter to get around the airports easily.

In Santiago customs I got selected for an extra security scan and as I was hauling my luggage around I lost balance and fell over the front of the scooter, which severely messed up my left first metatarsil bone (the main bone through your foot leading to each toe). I couldn’t put any weight even on my heel or move or touch or even put my croc shoe on my foot. So I decided to stay in La Serena and see a doctor to be sure it wasn’t broken. It wasn’t. But the long period of disuse makes it incredibly lucky that it wasn’t! I saw the dr again a few days later, then headed up on Thursday.

I’m doing a lot better now! Still not walking, I’ve got crutches now to get around the site. But definitely better. At this trajectory I might be able to walk some by the time we leave.

So that’s the story!

The song of the day is The Calamity Song by The Decemberists

2024Aa Packing Party

MagAO-X is up and off to the great mountain in the south! As we are approaching our next great observing run, this time in two parts: 2024Aa in March (14 nights) and 2024Ab in May (10 nights). We spent the week packing her up and buttoning her down, and today saw her stuffed into the shipping truck and waved goodbye.

Our mascot for this run is the Bubo Magellenicus, or the Lesser Horned Owl (of fluffy–butt allsky cam fame)

Please enjoy this video and pics of the week’s events.

The song of the day is Yakety Sax

Annular eclipse of the heart: L&L adventures reprised

I suspect all of our readers will be aware that last Saturday there was an eclipse event over the US. At 9:30 am Tucson Time was the peak of the annular eclipse, an eclipse where the moon is at the furthest point on its orbit, called apogee, so the disk of the moon is a smaller angular size on the sky than the sun (where normally they are essentially the same size) so it doesn’t block the whole disk and you can’t see the corona. Instead you get a “ring of fire” caused by the moon’s antumbra on the Earth’s surface.

Source: https://www.eclipsewise.com/solar/SEhelp/SEbasics.html

Tucson was not in the area of max shadow, it only got about 80% coverage. So some XWCL members traveled to regions getting the full antumbra effect.

I met up with XWCL alum Lauren Schatz and UA OpSci grad Silvana Ovaitt. When Lauren was at XWCL she was my hiking and camping buddy, so we reunited for more L&L adventures by camping in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park!

We also went on a backcountry guided tour off the public access road and led by a local named Larry

Song of the day is Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden.

It’s giant! It’s magellan! And it’s a telescope! Coming to a Chile near you in [mumble mumble mumble]

The MagAO-X team is also fully engaged in preparing for the next big thing in telescopes, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). GMT is one of the ELTs (extremely large telescopes) being planned for the next generation of ground based science, along with the Thirty Meter Telescope and the ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (yes, ELT is an ELT). GMT is currently being built near our MagAO-X home at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Our group is knee deep in planning for GMagAO-X, the extreme adaptive optics coronographic instrument for exoplanet science on the GMT.

So we made a big showing at the GMT Community Science Meeting this week in DC. These meetings are run every year with a rotating science focus, this year was our time to shine with the Exoplanets meeting. The idea is to get future GMT users together to talk about the exoplanet science they want to do with this powerful exciting new platform. Jared gave an invited talk about GMagAO-X, while Laird, Jay, Maggie, Eden, Sebastiaan, and I presented posters about our current and future science. MagAO-X collaborator, super star, and blog alum Alycia Weinberger was there as well. There was an opening reception Tuesday night, two full days of talks and posters, fancy pantsy meals provided (and open bar!!), ending with a half day wrap up on Friday. All in a super fancy hotel in the middle of DC. I had a great time, this was maybe the first time I’ve been to a conference where every talk was something I was interested in (my optics colleagues may have felt differently).

Pics for your viewing pleasure.

Laird spotted a GMT in the Natural History Museum

Fancy snacks! Candied bacon and chickpeas

Posters! One of these things is not like the others…

Poster Pops! Little 1-min advertisements for your poster.

Our fearless leader gave a talk all about GMagAO-X

Jared volunteered me to chair so I volunteered me to chair his session.

The tweet with the most engagement won a piece of glass from mirror 6!

Our group discussion’s opinions about what’s needed for the future of ELT science

I’m writing this from home the day after the conference utterly exhausted! Tons of fun, tons of travel, and the open bar didn’t help things.

I’ll end with the super fancy conference group photo!

You didn’t know that that’s what DC looks like? You need to travel more.

The song of the day is Science Is Real by They Might Be Giants

Congrats Dr. Long!

Yesterday our very own Joseph Long ascended the hallowed steps of academia and become a PhD holder! The PhD defense at Steward begins with a 30 min public talk summarizing your thesis (summarize 5-6 years of work in 30 mins????), followed by a snake fight with just the committee, who then kick you out to decide your fate. Reception to follow in the venerated “Interaction Area” at Steward, the area in which we interact.

I am actually in California right now doing an internship at NASA Ames for the next 6 months. But Joseph is pretty much my best grad school friend and I have a lot of airline miles, so I hopped a quick flight for the festivities.

Even though I've only been gone about 3 weeks it felt so good coming home. Even though I am living out of a suitcase in my own home with no car! :-D — There’s the Catalinas in the window

The Public Talk

It was standing room only (not just because the only room he could reserve was too small…) as the audience sat in rapt attention for Giant Planets, Sirius, and Starlight Subtraction At Scale.

The plot every exoplanet talk is required by law to show.

Joseph’s aesthetic and vital GUI interface for MagAO-X

Did I put him over the edge into passing? We'll never know. But it didn't NOT help... — A certain member of Joseph’s committee is well known for his love of orange Fanta at the telescope.

The Celebration

Of course he passed! While the OpSci grads get lovely sashes, a certain Steward postdoc-turned-faculty Kevin Hainline pioneered a slightly sillier tradition for Steward grads: an elaborate crown and cape featuring highlights of their research. If you follow this blog, you are well aware of the craftiness of some of our group members. So the troops were mobilized into action in true XWCL spirit (with heavy consultation with Kevin).

The cape is an astronomy fabric with gold letters (Avalon-printed) and plots from his papers with logos he made as well. The crown has a circus flair, and features bells on the ends, with a dumpster (I mean a MagAO-X with one too few doors on the top, oops) as the center feature. Around the base of the crown are hand-drawn (Eden-drawn) animals from the mission patches Joseph designed, each with their own crowns. Jialin also made some incredible art of Joseph, to be featured below.

So as we were heading down to the interaction area to bestow these surprises, we ran into Joseph in the hall and had to hide them behind our backs. The crown kept jingling tho! Stop jingling!

The encrowning and encapening

Jared’s first astronomy PhD student. He’s had all OpSci grad before this.

Three generations! Laird was Jared’s advisor.

Ewan Douglas was also a committee member. The other two joined remotely.

Joseph’s ‘rents! Two Drs Long + Dr. Capt. Mrs. Marta L. Gwinn-Long (Ret.) M.D. M.P.H.

I didn’t really get any pictures of the food! Jay Keuny’s partner Mel made incredible focaccia bread, Jay made amazing pistachio macarons, Maggie brought a lovely pie, and Jialin brought fun Asian flavor chips!

Behind the scenes

Avalon’s amazing craft skills on the letters

I made the MagAO-X and laptop from afar in San Jose

Bonus crafts

Jialin made some incredible Joseph art:

Jester Joseph. Check out the pineapple and space cats lurking in the cards.

As a congrats gift, I made as Business Viscacha, or Businesscacha, or Biscacha. Behold Bizzy Biscacha:

He’s got some serious viscacha business to get to.

The briefcase opens and there are little letters in there 😀

Bizzy in his new home, attendin’ to business.

The Future

This summer Joseph is moving to New York City to begin a postdoc software fellowship at the Flatiron Institute. He’ll still be active with MagAO-X so keep an eye on this blog to follow his adventures.

The song of the day is HAPPY!