Author: Elena Tonucci

The Europeans

Once upon a time, not so long ago…

“Well, it can’t get worse than this!”

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.

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.

Hey there, here is Elena from Leiden. I am new to MagAO-X but jumped right in to write this first blog post of the run. But what do I know? This is my first observation run, first time in Chile, first time many things. I don’t even work in Arizona, what is this mess?! Well, as an outsider, I want to document my experience of fitting into the team with a quick tutorial on how to speed up the process, as a reference for newcomers of the future. You will thank me later. There are only two important points to remember. Careful, the second is utterly complex!

1. Write your first blog post. You are not really part of the team until you write your first blog post. Don’t be shy – you know, that chaotic energy you hold inside after 30+ hours of travel? Let it out and write your masterpiece.
2. Stick the MagAO-X sticker on your laptop.

Do you think point 2 is easy? Then you haven’t done it extreme.

Wear shoe protection. That’s not enough, you need to use that… thingie… yes, that thing against electrostatic shocks, you don’t want to get hurt! Close the strap around your foot and the thread goes inside your sock. Good. If you have voluminous hair, tie them before you wear the hair net. You don’t want hairs stuck under the sticker. Also wear a coat, face mask, and gloves. No fingerprints allowed!!! Here you go. Now you can carefully apply the sticker on your laptop and… Welcome to the MagAO-X team.

And now, let me briefly explain the magical journey Sebastiaan and I went through to travel from the old continent, and specifically the land of tulips and sea level, to sunny, caliente, mountainous Chile. The journey actually started off great, if we don’t count the fact that I forgot the charger for my camera at home, and Sebastiaan, having forgotten of the existence of the Sun after 5 months in the Netherlands, didn’t pack his sunglasses.

This is not even nearly as dramatic as finding your way through Madrid’s airport. Fortunately, Sebastiaan already holds a PhD or we would still be stuck there. Here you have practical pictures displaying the madness of this airport:

It was faster to fly from Amsterdam to Madrid.

From Madrid to Santiago? Both our heroes slept through the entire flight so we have no recollection of this part of history.

After stopping at Pollo Stop for a nice chicken wrap – that they had to make twice, as they had put cheese in the Sebastiaan’s “sin queso” wrap – we got on our last flight. This was so short it didn’t even feel like flying. I must say tho, I would have preferred another 10 hours of travel by plane rather than the last 2 hours of drive. Fellow car-sick people will understand me. Those were the 2 worst hours of the journey out of a total of 32.

Song of the day? Heard it on the radio in the car driving up the mountains as I was trying to keep Pollo Stop safe where it was supposed to remain: Inside my body. It’s I will survive but in Spanish. A nice tune to celebrate getting to LCO safe and sound.

People have told me I have now the power to decide rules for the next blog posts. Since it is late, I am tired, I love singing, and I depleted all my imagination to write this blog post, I will stick to: Every blog post needs to contain at least two sentences that are lyrics from songs. Put them between “” and write at the end the songs where they come from. I said two but the more you manage to use, the more pleased we will all be.

Since I am generous, I will give you an alternative. Instead of two lyrics, you can use one quote from a South American writer or poet that links to the events of the day. Sorry, I know this is difficult, but this is my only chance to show off my literary culture. Here my sist Isabel is explaining perfectly how tired you can get when traveling to LCO with an excellent simile.

“I was so drained I felt as if I were staring through a telescope at the light of a star dead for a million years.”

Isabel Allende, The Stories of Eva Luna