Those who have passed through this group know that Warren Foster, former Master’s student now CAAO engineer, was personally victimized by the PIAA Complex Mask Coronagraph. From hours trying to figure out how to fit an elevator system into the already chaotic MagAO-X bench so we could drop in/take out four PIAA lenses to cold nights aligning said lenses alone on the nasmyth platform during observing. Warren needed some healing and today’s SUCCESSFUL install of six picomotors for remote alignment of the lenses was just what the doctor ordered.
Take a peak at the highly aesthetically pleasing cabling job done by Warren, Jay, and me:
(left) PIAA cables routed up to cable tray and down metal frame of the instrument. (right) iPIAA elevator is on the lower left and PIAA elevator is on the lower right.
After yesterday’s computer issues caused a lot of delays, we made up for it today with some optomechanical wins. We installed the LLOWFS camera shutter, installed a Vector Vortex Coronagraph (VVC) to work with our reflective LLOWFS system, and realigned the LLOWFS camera since the VVC moved the pupil (except this time it took 30 minutes instead of 16 hours). Additionally, were able to easily align the reflective Lyot stops with a great new mount designed by our visiting Brazilian postdoc, Tiago Gualberto Bezerra de Souza.
(left) Filter Wheel Lyot with new mounts and rotation rings for alignment. (right) Reflective Lyot stop feeding lens then LLOWFS camera through new open shutter.
I am not going to pretend to understand everything Jared did software-wise, but our fearless leader has worked nonstop on trouble-shooting computers, power systems, and creating GUIs.
This engineering run has been one of my favorite experiences at LCO (uh oh my non-astronomer is showing). Really though, the engineering is incredibly fun and this place is so beautiful and teeming with interesting wildlife.
(left) Milky Way courtesy of my iPhone 12. (right) Baade opening early in the evening, courtesy of Jay.Carlos the Culpeo sighting, courtesy of Warren.
Now, a moment for the flowers at the Carnegie headquarters in La Serena.
Roberto really has the best view.
Song of the Day:
In honor of our little friend Carlos, “White Winter Hymnal”, Fleet Foxes, 2008.
Warren and I made it up the mountain without any necessary running. However, due to the leftover storms from Hurricane Helene, the ride was bumpier than usual thus less sleep than usual.
Progressively disheveled.
We didn’t want to be left out of Empanada Sunday, even though we technically didn’t arrive till Monday morning, so we managed to find a tasty new, or at least new to us, spot in the Santiago airport.
Something old, something new. Featured: Starbucks and Trib’s.
Up on the mountain, spooky clouds were a-brewing.
Is that a sky grating?
Okay they were kinda pretty. After dinner we got to work. Jay and Jared worked on telescope proposals while Warren and I staged the instrument for upgrades tomorrow. We moved PIAA hardware out of the system so Warren can install alignment motors on them and I’ll have room to install a reflective Lyot mask for LLOWFS. For unfamiliar readers, PIAA stands for Phase-induced Amplitude Apodization and is a type of coronagraph that utilizes four specially shaped lenses, two on either side of a light’s focus with a diffraction mask placed directly in the focus. This device will allow us to block out light from stars with Earth-like planets orbiting very close-by. Lyot-plane low order wavefront sensing (LLOWFS) will allow us to track lower order modes of turbulence in the atmosphere and enhance the PIAA’s function.
Only bad news of the day: The focal-plane LOWFS (FLOWFS) shutter gluement failed. Luckily, we have three jam packed days here in Chile to work on a bunch of engineering tasks in prep for our November run.
Sad. Jared didn’t like the white glue anyway.
Song of the Day:
We aren’t at a hotel in California, but an observatory motel in Chile is close enough. Hotel California, The Eagles, 1977.
For the first time ever, an adaptive optics system at Las Campanas Observatory was installed without the guidance of Professor Laird Close! Laird is back in Tucson supporting his daughter at her high school graduation (congrats Annabel!) This means I got to fill in for my advisor as optomechanical lead on MagAO-X, and align the instrument to the telescope. It’s not as easy as it sounds!
To be honest, our smaller group of grad students really stepped up to the plate today to get this install done quickly, efficiently, and correctly. I guess we have good teachers or something….
Action shots of bringing the legs out of the aux buildingAn anxiously awaiting PIThe elevator is so fun
One of the most important items I was tasked with today was not forgetting to remove the window covering on the back of the instrument (you know, so the starlight can actually get inside MagAO-X).
Proof.
One of the more challenging sections of the alignment process is leveling the legs. Each of the four legs has four jack screws that are driven into corresponding metal casters placed on the floor. This raises the instrument to a particular height and does a preliminary leveling of the table before we turn on air flow to float the table. For some reason Josh got the pesky leg and we had to adjust it several times to get that lovely “0.0 degrees” on our digital level.
Pictured: Josh defending his leg. Not pictured: Me frantically running around with a caliper measuring each leg’s height off the floor.
Other antics today: Our beloved postdoc, Dr. Sebastiaan Haffert, left the US today to return to his home country to become a professor at Leiden University in the Netherlands. We know he is going to accomplish amazing things! Too bad he’s leaving behind this group of jokesters (see our clown car).
Good luck Sebastiaan!It’s too cold to walk to lunch
Once we got the table leveled, and confirmed the ability to float and stay level, it was time to cable the instrument to the electronics rack.
Eden guides the way!
Cabling went smoothly and all the DM actuators were live on the first try! Woot! After that, most of the team went to the early dinner while Kian and I stayed back and installed the worst part of our instrument: the bumpers. Below are some photos. Each leg of the instrument gets a bumper. Notice in the picture the rubber is not quite touching the instrument. That is intentional. When the telescope slews (rotates) our instrument mounted on the nasmyth platform rotates right along with it. If there was an emergency stop, and the telescope abruptly stopped moving, our floating table’s momentum would cause it to continue to move right off of its legs and go flying like a frisbee. Thus we have four bumpers attached to the legs to bump the instrument back onto the legs in case of such an event. While these are a necessary safety precaution, they are no walk in the park. They’re heavy and unwieldy, and if you recognize that clam looking piece of metal, that is because it has to be uninstalled from the cart we use to wheel MagAO-X around, then reinstalled onto the legs with the bumper hardware.
The A and B side is more challenging since the instrument is cabled on that side. Cabling team gets priority so the bumpers don’t mess with any DM cabling.We typically install the C and D bumpers on the outside of the clam pieces and the A and B bumpers on the inside of the clam pieces.
Nonetheless, Kian and I persevered. We installed all four bumpers plus some earthquake bars and we were ready to observe! But not before some sunset shots!
Red at night, sailor’s delight?
Now I am sitting in the control room, writing this blog, as Jared works on calibrating, Eden is taking logs, Logan works on her dissertation, Kian is modeling some coronagraph, and Joseph tries to fix our never-ending computer problems. Josh and Jay are hopefully peacefully asleep, as they are taking over the second half of this 14 hour observing night. The dome is currently closed due to clouds. Before we closed though, Jared managed to close the loop at 3000 Hz for the first time on-sky!
Happy control room
The best fifteen minutes of my day was really just a few seconds. As soon as Jared confirmed that the system was aligned and a star was incident on our cameras, just as well as the March run, I felt a huge weight leave my shoulders. I have done well by my advisor and I can rest easy knowing I handed off MagAO-X in a usable state.
Song of the Day:
Your song of the day is paying homage to the worst 15 minutes of my day.
First and foremost we hit the beach! Just like California on the other side of the equator, the Pacific Ocean is not warm, but majestic as always.
Vacation time!
We went to the historic shopping center and craft market, La Recova. Great food, great souvenirs, great sleepy pups. Knowing full well we would be missing the 2nd empanada Sunday at LCO, we took advantage of our time in proximity to Chilean restaurants.
Peep the pisco sours
The most exciting part of our trip was undoubtedly our tour of the Pingüino de Humboldt National Reserve. The folks at El Pino Lodge (Carnegie’s base camp in La Serena) were able to set us up with an amazing bilingual tour.
In case any future astronomers would like to attempt this expedition, I will lay it out. First, you drive about 1.5 hours north of La Serena to Punta de Choros where you will board a boat. Katie and I don’t really know what we were expecting, but we weren’t expecting this:
You begin by cruising around Isla Gaviota in hopes of maybe seeing a whale or dolphin. We didn’t have that luck but we were not in for disappointment. The main part of the tour is slowly taking the boat around Isla Choros and taking in all the wildlife and crazy rock formations. The only people allowed on Isla Choros are biologists studying the animals. However, several sea lions popped into the water to study our boat!
Our tour guide/translator was amazing!
Did we get to see the bell of the ball? The South American Humboldt Penguin? You betcha.
In the final portion of the tour, you get off the boat and wander around Isla Damas and take in the unique flora and fauna.
As Arizona girls, we love a good cactus
Finally, on our way out of the city we had to take a look at Faro Monumental de La Serena, the distinctive lighthouse 25 meters high (hey that’s how big GMT will be!).
We are less than 24 hours from observing and it was crunch time today! We needed fuel so thankfully Sundays at LCO are empanada days!
Chef’s kiss
Laird and Jared were making bets on how long till we get a “grumpy cat”, ie an error message in our computer’s hardware tracking system, once we are on-sky. Laird bet Jared all of his empanadas for the rest of the run. In the words of our PI, “nothing is worth that.”
Another good omen for the observing to come was our observation of a jumping guanaco.
This was all Maggie got:
Come back!
Actually, a few moments later we captured this adorable moment (can you tell we miss our pets?!)
Look at him scratch his little head!
Now, we actually did work today too. Final calibrations were taken, iEFC alignment techniques were practiced a final time, we ensured our brand new Lyot LOWFS (LLOWFS – pronounced “yo-fus”) camera is functioning, and focused the acquisition camera.
The facetiming dream team
After a meeting with the LCO staff going over our commissioning procedure for tomorrow, the team de-cabled and wrapped up the instrument.
MagAO-X youths crushing it on their first clean room pack up
