While most of our heroes were still sleeping, Sebastiaan and I went up the telescope to perform some EFC calibration. At first the dark hole digging didn’t seem to work, and it took quite a bit to fix it. Fortunately, just before dinner time we finally managed!
We are astronomers and we are digging a hole DIGGY DIGGY HOLE
Tonight, the MagAO-X team experienced yet again an hard truth: Bad nights are part of the game. This is why the title of this blog post is unfortunately the opposite of my previous one. If you want a visual representation of this, check this out:
Thanks to Joseph Long for this pearl
At the beginning of the night, Sebastiaan tried to perform EFC on AFLep, but with a seeing between 0.9 and 1.4 arcsec and a PSF that looked like the control loop was not even close, we expect the dataset to be good to be thrown in the trash. At some point we gave up, switched to the internal source and did some engineering and more EFC calibration. We managed to take some more data afterwards, although the seeing was still around 1.
We continued with Alycia, who got two lucky hours of decent seeing and observed an edge-on disk …All this before having to close the telescope because of a huge conglomerate of clouds approaching the telescope. Time for some more engineering in lab mode and watching a movie chilling on the amazing Clay furniture.
Clay in the moonlight with clouds + a quote from one of my favorite cartoons
At least we have pictures of animals
Enjoy heartwarming wildlife pictures from today’s selection:
Song of the day + movie
During our time with the telescope closed we have talked a lot about movies tonight, and especially Disney movies. So, today the movie I want to mention is my all-time favorite Disney movie, The Sword in the Stone. I want to quote what I decided to be also the song of the day, “That’s What Makes the World Go Round”, in which Merlin explains to Arthur how opposites continuously balance our existence. Very yin and yang, right?! I utterly love it.
Left and right Like day and night That’s what makes the world go round In and out Thin and stout That’s what makes the world go round
For every up, there is a down For every square, there is a round For every high, there is a low For every to, there is a fro
Merlin, in The Sword in the Stone (1963)
That’s What Makes the World Go Round from The Sword in the Stone (1963)
Bonus cloud song
Since we watched the Eurovision movie because of the clouds, today you get a bonus song: What a masterpiece.
Ja Ja Ding Dong – Eurovision song contest: The story of Fire Saga
The Leiden team is so back! It is now the Europeans’ turn to tell you about their magical journey to LCO. Throughout the full blog post, we will also play a little game: Find the differences!
We left Amsterdam without delay and got to Madrid 6 hours before our next flight. Plenty of time to waste and not check properly our next gate yeyyy! To pass the time, Eugenia and I went on a mission: Getting to the medical center of Madrid’s airport because she had to get an injection done. We left Sebastiaan working on a proposal due literally one hour later, and he barely realized we were gone, so we set sail for an incredible adventure. You might remember from the past run how intricated Madrid’s airport can be. If you don’t, I suggest to check it out here. After asking a bunch of people and mistaking our way a couple of times, we found the way to get to the medical center: We had to go through passport control machines, go to floor 0 (basically a basement), then come back up, go through passport control again but in the opposite direction (the policeman had to let us through manually) and then go through a security check (??) to be able to go back to the cafe’ where Sebastiaan was waiting for us. Pretty scary that the medical center of an airport is so inaccessible, right?? Well, and then people ask me why I hate Madrid’s airport. In my favorite movie ever, Donnie Darko, Gretchen asks Donnie “What if you could go back in time and take all those hours of pain and darkness and replace them with something better?”. Well, I know which hours of pain and darkness I want to replace in my life: All the hours spent in Madrid’s airport. With what? With a group of happy viscachas chilling in the sun.
Anyways, let’s bring in some fun: Find the differences between these two pictures of Sebastiaan before we left and when we came back (hover on the pic for the solution).
We then had a relaxing dinner, since there was so much time to go to the wrong gate afterwards. Let’s continue to play with another before-after spot the differences game.
We then proceeded to gate S16 and waited to board. Eugenia even gave us the idea to make an April’s fools joke to our fellow Leiden people saying we have lost our plane. Ah ah ah! So funny! We then tried to board the plane but our tickets didn’t work for some reason. That’s when the Iberia lady at the gate looked at us and said “You are flying with LATAM, gate S44, RUN“. Now, can someone please explain why two airlines that are partners have two flights to Santiago from a same airport at the SAME EXACT TIME (23:55)? In our defense, yes, we knew we were flying with LATAM and not Iberia, but they are partners and also our tickets were printed by Iberia so they had their logo on it. I am honestly surprised we were the only people who were deceived by this badly designed schedule. After running for our lives, we were the last people to board the flight. Pretty scary. So, this is the story of how we were about to loose a flight while chilling for 6 hours at the airport.
The journey proceeded smoothly and we got to Santiago surprisingly rested after a lot of sleep on the plane. Again, try to find the differences between our arrival in Santiago for the 2024B run (on the right) and this run (on the left):
A few hours later we got to La Serena safely together with Joseph and Jeb. Laird was right after us, coming up with the following car. Not tired enough from our long trip, we headed right away to the clean room to (successfully) install new PIAACMC and align new prisms for the Self-Coherent Camera. Laird was also working with Tiago and Rodrigo on the polarimeters.
Right after, we have witnessed not one but two (!!) incredible events: One of the best green flashes ever seen in history – which we have slightly captured in a picture as well – and three foxies together!
Finally, I want to leave you with this hyper-memeable picture that you didn’t know you needed. Simply replace “ribs” with something else. You can thank me later.
The song of the day is a song that a random dude on my last plane made me listen to with his headphones. I don’t know if he stalked me and so he knew my name or if it was just a funny coincidence… But the name of the song is Helena. Enjoy or be creeped out. Cheers! I am going to sleep.
Elena Tonucci on the length of her journey, Santiago de Chile, 23rd November 2024
“I never lost my luggage!”
Sebastiaan Haffert, Santiago de Chile, 23rd November 2024
Yes, dear friends, these are real statements that our heroes have pronounced at the beginning of their journey back home, and I am sure you already know what happened next.
Sebastiaan and I started off our journey in the best way: We managed to get into the LATAM lounge in Santiago, chill and recharge with free food and drinks, and later reached Bogota without any troubles. Maybe this is why we were brave enough to pronounce those words. In the end, we were half way there and full of optimism.
The flight from Bogota to Madrid got delayed by about 2 hours and a half, to make us land exactly when our final connection to Amsterdam took off. But, hey, at least we had extra leg space during our flights.
At least we got each other, and that’s a lot. Ah, no, actually… At first, it seemed that the very smart LATAM system had already rebooked me to a new direct flight to Amsterdam at 20:30, operated by KLM. Great! I just needed to collect my luggage. Sebastiaan however was not that lucky, and there were no flights left for Amsterdam before the end of the day. We waited for news for a while, until he got two flights, with a stop in Milano Linate. Mamma mia! As the great PhD student I am, I offered to switch and let him have my direct flight. However, as the great supervisor he is, he refused and said (I quote) “You live for the fight when that’s all that you’ve got”. Okay, he didn’t say that but that would have been pretty cool, right?
This is how we parted ways with the promise to see each other the next day at the workshop we had to attend in Leiden. Sure….. When I got to the KLM desk to get my boarding pass, they weirdly could not find me in the system. Strange! The very very smart LATAM system had rebooked me to a new flight, what could have gone wrong??? Spot the mistake in the picture below.
At least, I was determined to find my luggage (I forgot to mention I had lost it in the meantime). In theory, Sebastiaan’s luggage was flying together with him to Milano and then to Amsterdam. Sure….. Fortunately, after going back and forth two times between terminal 4 and 2 of hell emmm I meant Madrid airport (if you want to remember the layout, go to Day 0) I finally managed to find my lost luggage!
Since I sadly couldn’t time travel back to the 24th of September to catch my flight nor wait for the 24th of September of 2025 or any other year after that, LATAM decided to pay for my food and accommodation in a luxurious hotel in Madrid. So sweet of them!
In the meantime, Sebastiaan got safely to Amsterdam and could make it to the workshop, but without his luggage. As of me, I slept (very bad) and finally got to Amsterdam on lunch time the day after. This is why our quotes at the beginning of this post are so ironic, but this is also how Sebastiaan became…
The New York traveler
Joseph, the lonely and brave New York traveler, had instead a lot of time ahead of him. After saying goodbye to the mountains, he started his journey and witnessed many interesting things. For example, a middle aged lady taking off at a right angle to the line and climbing through all the barriers. The immigration queue is an amazing place. At least he was alone and could just judge people internally while listening to the Cowboy Bebop OST to keep his spirits up. Then I think he literally kept his spirit up with some – maybe too much? – pisco. We gotta hold on to what we’ve got, you know? What matters is that, more or less at my same time, he landed in New York, but he left one day later than me. Great job Joseph.
Laird and Jialin
Sorry I couldn’t come up with a fancy title here, I am pretty lame. Laird was very disappointed at the start of his journey in La Serena: LATAM refused to give him the boarding pass for Atlanta and check his bags any further than Santiago. Not to mention passport control had a queue of over 2 hours!! Fortunately, Jialin and Laird had a layover of six hours, which was barely enough to get on the flight to Atlanta… But you know what?? They left the mountain one day after Sebastiaan and I and still managed to get home before us. It’s tough, so tough.
The last of us
After some final fun games, vizzy spotting, and sunset (with apparently the best green flash ever seen by human eyes) the last of us started their journey back to a different desert: Tucson. Stay tuned for the next blog post to hear about their journey!!
Song of the day
Although after three days of travel I could add multiple songs really, I will stick to the most important one, because during this trip we were really living on a prayer. See you next time, that’s all from Elena, folks! 😉
I could feel it from the start: This night was going to be a success. Despite the haze that we could see in the horizon during sunset, the night gifted us a stable seeing and what was cloudy now is clear, baby. Can you believe we are only already at half of the observation run!? Me neither, in fact days and nights are starting to merge in my head by now, and time has turned into a meaningless, fleeting concept. What’s more is that we are really close to a full Moon. Might not be a blue Moon, but the light it reflects still allows for more vitamin D in my body than the one I would get in the Netherlands at this time of the year. Moon, you’re the light that I needed.
Before starting our observations, the pneumatic seal on the secondary mirror had to be fixed, so we had to lower the telescope to 1 degree of altitude to reseal it. You don’t see a telescope do such a big tilt every day!
Tonight was again all about Laird and Jialin and their observations. The driver of tonight was mainly Parker, who was tutored by the more experienced grad students.
We were all really excited about digging digging dark holes, until we realized Laird was using the Lyot mask, but not the Lyot stop. Sebastiaan was very displeased about this. I am therefore obliged to call it control region, and not dark hole, from here onwards.
During the first half of the night we looked for young planets that still have residual formation heat in the iz band. Afterwards, we focused on protoplanets that are still accreting in H alpha. In the meantime, some other folks were working (or testing launch trajectories) on their laptops downstairs.
Finally, I want to acknowledge and thank one of our most affectionate blog readers. Your message really warmed up our hearts today. As a gift, I will show everyone a new animal I spotted today: Carlos!
And you, dear reader, if you are enjoying this blog, spread the word: tell your mother, your brother, your sister, and your friends, don’t let them lose the chance to discover our new song of the day every day.
