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.
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!
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.
Stick the MagAO-X sticker on your laptop.
Do you think point 2 is easy? Then you haven’t done it extreme.
Me applying the MagAO-X sticker on my laptop
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:
We landed (green arrow). We proceeded to (blue path) walk, then get two different buses, walk again, take a small shuttle metro, walk again, to finally get to our new gate (red arrow). Before you ask it, yes, it is the same airport, not two different ones.
It was faster to fly from Amsterdam to Madrid.
Exit is down apparently…
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.
Celia Cruz – Yo Vivire’
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.”
