Author: Tiffany Nguyen

MagAO-X 2026A Day 9: Clean Up Day

Today was full of action!

To prepare for install tomorrow, we had a whole lot going on. Laird and Katie had some alignment work, me and Eden were finding new focus positions for the camsci stages, Rob and Viktoria worked on camdurham, and of course there were still grad students in the library working on their code as usual.

Maybe they know we’re observing soon… because we got lots of visits, including one from Roburro!

At 5 pm we had our safety brief for packing and installation on the telescope, after which we went right to the clean room for clean up.

With a couple of us new to the procedure, there sure were a lot of helpful hands. We got to work de-cabling, wrapping up the instrument, and moving it in place for tomorrow’s transport further up the mountain.

Sebastian & his work!
Just a couple of twins

Song of the day

Welll apparently Jared says he plays a version of this song very often..

Color of the day

Aureolin / #fdee00

Color of that Super K fiber optic cable I learned about today.

MagAO-X 2025B Day 6: A Thanksgiving Miracle

Hi, Happy Thanksgiving and welcome to my first blog post and first time in Chile!

Not long after a long travel, we woke up and were immediately put to work. There were a lot of things to be done on Thanksgiving, and gifts to be unwrapped.

The gift! (Credit: Miles Lucas)

Of course before opening the the gift, we had some tasks to do. We were putting MagAO-X in place! It wasn’t too dangerous, but my screw did get jammed today.

Credit: Miles Lucas
Installing the polarimeter! Credit: Laird Close

Lunch Break! Credit: Jared Males

Today was a whole lot of new experiences, but very importantly, I finally learned what it meant to cable the DM.

so that's what they were talking about
cabling the DM?
How’d our cabling go??

It was hard, but it turned out that we did our cabling properly! I mean we did have to replace something, but that was actually due to dust.

Today also featured the full tour from Laird and Jared. We experienced the echo chamber and some secret underground parts of the telescope.

Echo chamber!! Credit: Katie Twitchell

And all of a sudden, it was already time for the first shift. Operating looked very complicated, but Katie told me all about it. Seeing PSF’s on sky, AO in action, and everything I learned about in simulations was pretty awesome, though I know there is still a lot for me to learn… (How exciting!)

Credit: Eden McEwen

On the way back down from the telescope we saw all the stars in the sky, and finally I saw a bunch of donkeys! (I was looking for you!) What a long day, but a great Thanksgiving.

Song of The Day:

Following that Radiohead theme. And also me in Chile!!! I’m a tourist and all…

The Tourist Radiohead

Fun Fact:

I was in a Popeye’s ad once.