Blog – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

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 🙂

anybody who's anybody knows when the seeing is this good at the start of the night, it's like 5 sigma certainty the night will be good

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.

getting dropped off at the airport in a yellow bug is such an awesome aesthetic

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.

finally, a decent dataset for our UASAL collaborators...!

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.

The squad operating for me while I observed from Taiwan.

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

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.

Proud parent stance. — 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.

Conclusion, front dino has the best hand-feel. — A textured read.

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.

two monitors for twice the content. — 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.

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.

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.

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.