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MagAO-X 2026A Day 30: Wind Troubles

The day started with Jared, Katie and I flying from Santiago to La Serena with another minor delay of about an hour. As we were driving up to the summit in the afternoon, the remote crew back in Tucson were in charge of aligning and prepping Alycia’s observations. Due to us three being in Chile the remote crew had the privilege to stay up the whole night to operate MagAO-X, which means ‘doble’ the red bulls according to Jay.

Unfortunately, it was a rather poor night for observations. The wind spiked halfway through the night to over the telescopes critical threshold. This means the telescope operator must close the dome when wind speeds exceed 35mph and must remain closed until there is 30 consecutive minutes of wind speeds under that threshold.

The telescope operator also informed us that if the wind speed exceeds 50mph, it is mandatory that we leave the control room and go back to the dorms for our safety. Despite the wind getting close to 50mph, there was still work to do if I wanted the opportunity to test predictive control using accelerometers, so the hard hat came out and we went to work.

Alycia was able to salvage the end of the night after the wind calmed down and was able to observe another target. Sebastiaan also hoped back on Zoom at the very end of the night (and right before his lecture in Leiden) to take some predictive control vs integrator data and help me test the accelerometer predictive control.

With that being said, Jared, Katie and I made it to LCO safely and got to take in another great LCO sunset after a long day (or two) of traveling.

Color of the Day

Song of the Day

MagAO-X 2026A Day 29: Dawn of the final day

Alright, here’s the scoop: I’m beginning to write this blog at the start of observations and I predict median conditions or slightly better. My qualifications for making these types of predictions is a 100% accuracy rate so far for this run and I intend to keep it that way! Though I admit I’ve only made one prediction so far…. we’ll see how the night turns out. Keep scrolling to find out the outcome 🙂

Before opening up the telescope for the night, we had Sebastiaan and Joseph assisting remotely with instrument setup and calibrations, which went more or less without a hitch and we were able to conjure up a pretty nice dark hole on-sky at the start of the night.

Anywhose, half the team (including our fearless leader Jared) is en route to Las Campanas Observatory to work on taking MagAO-X off the West Nasmyth platform. As I write this, they are currently on a Delta flight to Santiago. Let’s check on their progress, shall we?

Ah, delayed… situation is normal, it seems. Hope the rest of the trip goes smoothly !

An update on the dwindling snack stack in the remote ops control room, with a nice fresh blueberry coffee cake delivery courtesy of Mel :-d

With observations going smoothly during the first part of the night, we were able to spend a bit of time sprucing the place up a bit. The camsci monitors are now under a very watchful set of eyes…

First target and set of observers are done, and seemingly pretty happy with their data.

Well, unfortunately the satisfied observer trope came to an abrupt halt towards the middle of the night with conditions taking a turn for the worse. As I write this, we’re currently closed for wind. And before that, we were struggling to keep the loop closed due to bad seeing. How it’s going:

I guess I’m 1 for 2 for predicting how the observing conditions will go for this run *shrug*. Not great, but not bad either.

Colors of the Day

It’s Memorial Day, so the swatch of the day is to honor the memory of fallen soldiers.

Song of the Day

I Remember (deadmau5 & Kaskade)

MagAO-X 2026A Day 28: Many photons make light work

In this blog, we celebrate observing in good conditions! The astronomical seeing at Las Campanas was ~0.5″ or better for the whole night!

I-band 135-second equivalent coadded frame.

Using this time, I managed to get a very nice sequence of coronagraphic data on a circumstellar disk with the polarimeter.

Can you see the disk?
The squad operating for me while I observed from Taiwan.

The crew celebrated such a good night of observing with a pool party!

Grillmasters
Proof of Pool
Beware of monsters

Color of the Day

As Logan is off to the Grand Canyon for her summer residency, I decided to pick a color reminiscent of the stratified canyon walls at sunset–if you’re in Northern Arizona this summer, be sure to stop by to say hi to her!

Song of the day

And a song (err, playlist) to match

August 10 – Khruangbin; Esperanza – Hermanos Gutierrez

MagAO-X 2026A Day 27: All H-alpha, no whammies

You’ve tuned into a Laird Close takeover night! That’s right folks, only Laird, all night night long. If you know one thing about Laird, it’s that he’s our #1 H-alpha fan. Which is valid if you designed a whole instrument to make it happen.

The Laird-approved documentation method.

Things went smoothly, happy skies and clean PSFs. So smoothly, in fact, we had to bring some of our own entertainment. It’s a real BYO affair in the control room these days.

A textured read.
Coronagraph Mask? Nah.

Also today, if you disrespect your sleep schedule enough, you made it to Logan’s origin’s seminar talk! She’s doing some cool things with future high contrast imaging and with JWST right now.

High contrast imaging for the future!

Color of the day:

CACAO good-to-go green!

Song of the day:

Patience by Tame Impala

MagAO-X 2026A Day 26: Come along for a ride!

After a short break of three whole days, it’s time for another MagAO-X night. Within these 3 days, we have welcomed 2 special guests back to Tucson: our MagAO-X alumni Logan Pearce and Lauren Schatz. They have joined in on our weekly Friday group meetings and the happy hour pizza slice. While Logan is preparing for her talk on Monday, Lauren joined us in the control room tonight to pick up where she’s left off last time in April: GEO observations with MagAO-X.

Yay Logan and Lauren!!!!

As anticipated, the seeing was relatively high in the beginning of the night. Before it had a chance to lower to enable fruitful science observations, the winds picked up a speed of 40 mph and the dome closed. Luckily, after 1 hour, the wind slowed and we went back to observing a few GEOs. As the second-shifters started to roll into the control room, we taste tested some beaver nuggets (disclaimer: does not contain beaver) brought by Logan.

Cinnamon Sugar?
Or sea salt caramel?

The transition smoothly to non-sidereal tracking mode messed up the pointing of the telescope and wrapped up all the solar system objects of the night (GEOs are also within the solar system, so yes, I consider them solar system objects). Once the pointing issue is fixed, we immediately hopped onto a young star, hoping to find an accreting planet.

oh winds

Although the seeing kept below 1.25″ for the reminder of the night, our journey up (or down) tonight has not quite ended. The dome closed again due to high winds and as decided by the observer, we wrapped up the night of observing.

Color of the Day

beaver nugget yellow

Song of the Day