Well, here we go. Laird, Katie, Jared, and Ya-Lin are on our way to LCO. We’ve already not seen our first green flash.
Sunset from Terminal D.
I’m a bit worried though. We’re not even a day into the run and Laird is already exhausted.
Laird didn’t even make it to Dallas before passing out.
So we’re bringing back the old “Telephone Game” rules. As usual, every day must have at least one post, each post-of-the-day must use the 2017A Day X: [title] format, and each of these must include a song of the day. During 2017A each song of the day must be related to the day before’s song. We leave it up to our carefully vetted team of bloggers to decide whether they explicitly state the relationship. There are no other rules (we call this the Hernán rule).
The MagAO team has made it to Tucson in time for Thanksgiving! And the Gemini Planet Imager team travels seem to be going well too — We ran into Jenny Patience, Julien Rameau, and Ben Gerard of GPIES at the La Serena airport, who were just coming off a 6-night GPI run. Our La Serena-Santiago flight on LAN was delayed by about an hour and a half, but Jenny made her on-time SKY flight, and Julien was staying an extra night in Santiago. Laird, Jared, Ben, and I met up with about 3 others who were all headed to the Santiago-Dallas flight, which at that point was a very tight connection. LAN staff met us as we deplaned in Santiago and had us all wait until we were all together — they they escorted us through the airport. We thought they would escort us to the front of the security line or something — but they just deposited us at the back of the line, saving us no time, and having made the people who got off the plane first wait for those of us who got off the plane last. Jared, Laird, and I barely made the Dallas flight, but LAN didn’t actually have the plane wait for us or do anything to help speed us through the airport. Update: Ben made it on the LAX flight, good! Well, I’m writing this post with the benefit of airport wi-fi which works better than the wi-fi in Jared’s room, so I can include lots of pictures and a more melodious song of the day as we say goodbye to LCO for 2016:
Clio is parked awaySome fog on the last morningThe last supper and breakfast at LCO for MagAO in 2016The late LAN flight from La SerenaLaird and I bringing up his luggage from our far-away down-hill roomsGary posed for some parting shotsGrumpy basking in a sunbeamVizzy enjoying a sunset
Quote of the day:
“I’m afraid this is the beginning of a very dark time for us all.” –Laird, panicking that we might miss our flight the day before Thanksgiving.
Song of the day (a bit more melodic than Jared’s pick yesterday:)
We went from 2000 Hz to 0 in 1 day: The ASM, the NAS, and Clio all came off the telescope today. That was it; then it was bedtime. Thanks to the technical crew for their hard work getting the Clay switched over in 1 day, and to the humanitarian crew for the delicious dinner and clean bedrooms that awaited us!!
Here are some vignettes of Clio’s life this run.Top: Grumpy (left) and Vizcochito (center, right). Bottom: Vizcochito.
Well that sucked. We ended our run with a crap night, high winds, higher seeing, and jumping actuators. MagAO comes off in the morning, so that’s it.
Katie puts Clio to bed.Fellow Sagan Fellows enjoy a MagAO sunset.Laird took these pics as we enjoyed our first 2000 times-a-second MagAO images.Did you know Vizcachas use stairs? Wtf.I saw this little ass just outside my window today.
