Well…something happened tonight. We showed up and the telescope opened. That may have been the most exciting part of the evening observing-wise.

The 2nd shift took over and watched the seeing monitor agonizingly creep upward with no end in sight.

This seeing monitor is reaching record levels.

In fact, the weather left Miles downright bean-boozled.

The color of the day is “soft aluminum foil.”

Song of the Day

This song of the day accurately describes my (declining) mental state and the state of the instrument over the course of the night.

Remote observing feels weird. Not because of what goes on in the ROC, but rather because of what goes on outside the ROC. When we observe at LCO, Tucson starts to feel a little bit like a dream. When you’re on top of Cerro Manqui, the idea of grocery shopping or vacuuming or pulling up the weeds in the yard is so distant it’s almost ludicrous. There is only telescope. But, during these remote ops nights, those things aren’t far away. Dishes need to be done, cats need to be fed, the car runs out of gas, and your professors expect you to show up for class. The world doesn’t pause for observations in the way it sometimes feels like it does when we go down to Chile.

However, this means the good things in life also don’t get put on hold! These include, but are not limited to: the ability to replenish the snack pile mid-observing run, joyful toddler noises, and getting to sleep in your own bed at the end of a long night.

And, if you’re lucky like me, you get to show off your work to your parents! It would be a little bit of a journey for them to come down to Chile, but they made the trek down to Tucson this week. Among other things, they got to witness MagAO-X doing some real science in really good seeing conditions.

While we don’t have a dedicated kitchen staff making us empanadas in Tucson, being able to get a Sonoran dog and a churro right before observations is pretty sweet. So I’ll stand by what I said: remote observing feels weird–but it certainly comes with perks.

The color of the day is açai-blueberry blue.

Song of the Day

Welcome to Day 22! Tonight was another observing night for Alycia, while we were here in Tucson operating remotely. However, since she was great at both operating the system and logging, it wasn’t too eventful for the three of us on second shift.

With this being the first run observing remotely, I’m sure it would be worth documenting our experience. More similar to LCO than you’d think!

Night Lunch

5 pm Workout

Carlos

Observing Snacks

Unfortunately there was just one photo in blogops so this will have to do..

Color of the Day

#FFAC1C Color of that one snack that smiles back

Song of the day

I Still Do by The Cranberries

There is an eerie silence in the Clay control room. It’s a bit like a spooky Twilight Zone episode where everyone has disappeared, but their disembodied voices periodically ring out.

Despite the remoteness of 2026A, it made sense for me to be here, as I will be spending the rest of the week at LCO meeting with colleagues to work on a new Magellan instrument called MagNIFIES. When it comes to Magellan in about 4 years, it will be the best infrared spectrograph in the world. How awesome to use one amazing instrument and plan another in the same week.

I arrived yesterday, hung out a bit with the MagAO-X remoters and visited Baade by moonlight to see the engineering in action (their control room was almost as crowded as when the MagAO-X team is here).

Speaking of the Moon, my flight was landing in Santiago just as the Moon was rising. The couple in the seats in front of me asked the flight attendant why it was such a strange color. The flight attendant turned out to be a keen observer of the sky from the plane, and clearly understood that the Moon could only be seen like that at certain times of month and that the orange was normal (but she didn’t mention Rayleigh scattering). In contrast, a few minutes later, the people behind me, apparently less keen observers of the sky, asked her, “What is that thing?” and had trouble believing it was the Moon.

A different color is definitely on my mind today, as it is May 1, i.e. “College Decision Day,” and that means that my youngest offspring decided whither he will fly from our nest. I helped my mom find yarn in “CWRU Blue” so she could make him an appropriate hat. Yes, there is a web app for finding yarn to match a given hex code.

However, unless it is allowed to be totally self-referential, that is not really a color associated with this blog post, so …

Color of the Day: Rising Moon Orange

Song of the Day: The Sounds of Silence by Simon and Garfunkel