MAPS Sep. 2023B Night 3: Wind, Wind, Wind, and much coding

As was stated in the Mary Poppins Movie “Winds in the east, mist coming in, /Like somethin’ is brewin’ and bout to begin. /Can’t put me finger on what lies in store, /But I fear what’s to happen all happened before.”

For us it has been out of the South with max of 60 mph. Which means that winter is coming and it is the only change we have in the difference between winter and summer and summer and winter.

“Winds in the south, cold coming in, /Like turbulence brewin’ and about to begin. /Can’t put me finger on what lies in store, /But I fear that AO will soon happen again.”

Was it a green flash? To began the night we started with beautiful clear skies and 30 mph winds

Wind is the worse when it comes to observing. Snow, Rain, Clouds I understand, but wind and with skies like this it seems a waste.

An advantage to having intermediate wind you have the ability to work on code and test it out when you are able to get back on sky. So there has been a lot of debugging going on and improvements the the overall MMTO AO experience when it comes to interfacing with the system.

The hints of a MMTAO GUI to control all the inner workings of this system. AO systems are like a mechanical watch the majority of people only see the face of it and never see all the gears and inner workings. We build items in the other direction we have all the inner workings first and then we add the fancy face.

Sleeping accommodations working at the MMTO while waiting for winds to die down.

Well that is all folks. A lot of coding, a lot of friendships being made. So all in all a great night and but looking for clear skies and no wind.

MAPS 2023A Day 1: Clouds, Clouds, Clouds, and Adaptive Secondary Mirrors

The night started off with clouds and the group had a nice and easy time getting to start their systems. Nothing like having time to catch up and get lunch together.

At midnight the weather decided to clear and we had high hopes of starting where we left off last night. It is always good to have high hopes. The ASM decided to change the way it had been functioning for the last night and time was taken to troubleshoot and verify the issue.

Acronyms

What will you hear when you are in the MMTAO control room:

  1. ASM
  2. CACAO
  3. MILK
  4. CHAI
  5. DoCrime
  6. Pisces
  7. TBX

In a sentence:

The TBX cameras sent images to CACAO that is using MILK to send commands to CHAI which caused the ASM to DoCrime which allowed Pisces to see clearly.