Blog – Page 107 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

2015B Day 9: Only Partly Cloudy

Now that our engineering time is over — without us getting to do any engineering — it of course was a fairly clear night. Still some clouds blowing around, but the kind we can burn through with a 6.5 m telescope. Since we haven’t had much time to shake down MagAO, our first group of visiting observers had to put up with some bugs and some calibrations.

that's some b.s. — What passes for a clear sky around here.

Laird left, on his way back to Tucson. But he’s been replaced by Amali Vaz from UA, who is a very experienced AO operator and all around big help. She’s here for the next week to help us run the system, and also to foster some cross-team knowledge between MagAO and LBTI.

wait 'til you see her hat — Amali Vaz. Don’t worry, she’ll be blogging soon enough

The next two pictures were taken at the same time.

Last night Michael Franti was shouting to his Papa. Tonight, J-Lo sings about her Papi.

2015B Day 8: Clouds Say Hey

Well another night like last night. Amali got here today and she started up AO and also learned how to operate Clio. And then we sat here like this:

And this:

Sadly this means we didn’t get much of our engineering done. Oh El Nino…

Another song dancing in the streets: This one to cheer you up after seeing all those clouds and high winds:

2015B Day 7: Did You Hear About The Clouds?

Open for less than 1/2 an hour tonight. I can’t work like this.

mostly bored astronomers — A room full of astronomers trying to keep busy

Since we had a flash mob last night, here’s a song about people dancing in the streets. It also describes our cloud problem.

2015B Day 6: Arizona Engineering Clouds

Today was our first night of Arizona engineering. We have a lot of calibrations to do, with all of our modes, but sadly it was cloudy and windy out of the North. I hear it’s because of El Nino.

Didn't really work so great. — We closed for clouds a little bit into the night, for an hour or so. Then we opened again and did our best to calibrate through clouds.

Sunset:

These pictures are all from the past week or so. Which one is Tucson and which one is LCO?

Yesterday’s song was Glitch Mob, which reminded me of flash mobs:

2015B Day 5: Clio Shows Up

We have reached 100% MagAO for 2015B.

action packed KT — Katie supervises the installation of Clio. Compared to most of the things lifted by the crane in the dome, Clio is just a bitty little thing. That actually makes it harder!

whereforeartvizzy? — Your daily Vizcacha. This is one of the “wild” ones that lives over the edge north of the telescopes. Still no sign of the “tame” ones at the clean room.

If you visit LCO you’ll notice that many, if not most, of the car doors have bird droppings all over them just behind the mirrors. This video shows you why — some of the birds have discovered that other birds live inside the mirrors, and spend most of their days attacking said mirror-birds. This is just a little #LifeAtLCO.

first of too too many — The sun going down on our first full-up night.

The intended purpose of a “poker face” is to make a fortune. Tonight the Glitch Mob tells us about Fortune Days.