2017A Day 8: Vizzy day

It has been a busy day. We were searching for planets hidden in young disks but suddenly got attacked by another DSP board failure. Luckily we quickly fixed the problem and closed the loop at an amazing 0.35 arcsecond seeing. Wonderful night.

Let’s relax and see some viscachas.

IMG_7537

IMG_7597

3

1

2

DSCN3320

 

 

I find this song quite interesting:

2017A Day 3: Umbrella

It was cloudy and windy and foggy, so we stayed in the control room waiting for the clouds to go away. Laird felt bored at the beginning of the night, but he immediately realized the adaptive secondary mirror was in danger. The ASM is very delicate, and even a single raindrop can potentially destroy it. So, we need to build a giant umbrella.

Terrible weather...
Terrible weather…
Very foggy.
Very foggy.

The umbrella is just a big plastic sheet about the size of the HST primary mirror to cover the back of the ASM.

IMG_7715

We want to cover the back of the ASM.
We want to cover the back of the ASM.
Laird was training Jared how to rescue the ASM.
Laird was training Jared how to rescue the ASM.

So the ASM was saved and we were happy. Time to have some girl scout cookies!

Astronomers are always hungry.
Astronomers are always hungry. Thank you Annabel!

IMG_7710

Although we built an umbrella, I hope we will never listen to the rhythm of the falling rain here at LCO.

I was told I should follow the rules for the song. The twisters in yesterday’s song remind me of this song from Jay Chou:

MagAO helped identify the progenitor of SN 2016adj

It is rare for MagAO to carry out extragalactic observations because suitable natural guide stars are hard to find.

But this time we have got some luck. A week ago (February 8), a bright supernova, SN 2016adj, appeared in the active galaxy NGC 5128 (Centaurus A). Classified as Type IIb, its progenitor is believed to be a very massive star in a binary system, undergoing a significant mass loss before explosion. However, direct identification of the progenitor remains challenging, even though astronomers have been constantly detecting supernovae in imaging surveys.

Since SN 2016adj is only 4″ from a bright foreground star, it is an ideal target for our visible AO camera. Prompted by Prof. Nathan Smith, we used MagAO to observe the supernova on February 13, and successfully took ~2 hr deep exposures at 0.9 micron. Comparing the new MagAO image to archival HST and VLT data, we and our collaborators were able to identify a possible progenitor star. Notably, this is the 5th Type IIb progenitor identified in pre-explosion images over the past 20 years.

We used MagAO to identify the progenitor star in this pre-explosion image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
We used MagAO to identify the progenitor star in this pre-explosion image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Yesterday we posted our results on the Astronomer’s Telegram. You can find the link here:
http://www.astronomerstelegram.org/?read=8693