Blog – Page 104 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

2016A Day 7: The Hunt

We had a good night going. We think we’ve found a solution to the ASM electronics problem — one of us just has to get out of bed early and warm it up before dinner. That did the trick tonight, no problems since. But we’ve been stuck with a bum guider for the last 3 or 4 hours of the night. We need the guider to find the star, and occasionally to get the telescope in shape. Troubleshooting is in progress at dawn.

The observatory has been patrolled by several, up to 5 at a time, raptors since I’ve been here. This one was sitting on one of the GMTs new poles.

We got a real treat yesterday morning: this hawk was hunting vizzies behind the telescope. Watch how it uses the wind, and listen to the viscachas whistle. They don’t seem too worried though.

This song should be played loudly:

2016A Day 6: Samoa Pyramids

Tonight we noticed that our pyramid pupils look like Samoa(R) Girl Scout (R) cookies that Laird brought on behalf of his daughter:

Nommmm — The high spatial frequencies on the pyramid pupils look like Samoa(R) cookies and made us hungry

We started the night with some ASM issues that prompted us to send up the bat-signal to our Italian colleagues:

Thanks Marco! — What was tonight like? I spent a lot of time looking for bright HR stars near zenith, then skyped with Marco Xompero from Arcetri who gave us some ideas about our ASM issues.

Walking down the hill this morning, we saw fog in the valley and a hawk practicing hunting vizcachas:

A good night and a good morning — Fog in the valley and sun over the ridge

Even if we don’t have specific song rules, yesterday’s song made me think of this one, which is amazing:

2016A Day 5: The Internet Is Back

The internet went down in the middle of the night last night, and just came back.

Two nights ago we used a high speed camera, an Andor iXON 897 EMCCD, to measure the vibrations of our system at 2500 Hz (that means we were taking images at 5000 Hz). The camera was mounted where Clio normally goes

Cheese. — Our super whamodyne >5000 Hz EMCCD camera, just before we unbolted it and put it away.

Then yesterday, Katie rousted the crew to finally install Clio.

action shot, no posing. See how authentic it is? — Clio

Please eat your fill — A soaring hawk looking for dinner

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.

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

2016A Day 4: Eye Trouble

We started tonight off with some eyepiece observing. Of course, since we had visitors, the ASM decided to act up. It seems to be the same problem we had in 2015A — and I hope it will go away by itself just like it did then. In the brief moments we had a working AO system, we managed to induct 9 new members in L’Ordine .

L'Ordine — Katie signing new members Tom Pritzker, Margot Pritzker, and Ken Wong into the book.

chicago — Wendy Freedman just after signing her name.

pretty — A too cloudy, but gorgeous evening sky two nights ago.

It’s Valentine’s Day!

Keep it funky.