Home of MagAO and MagAO-X.
For the first time in MagAO’s history we closed the loop on our first night. It usually takes too long during the day to get everything done. We didn’t get Clio bolted on, but we were able to close the loop with the “dummy dichroic”.
Following last night’s song, which was a Gaga Parody, here’s a Gaga cover.
Clio is cold, thanks to Mauricio Navarette’s help with the liquid nitrogen. He brought a longer hose, showed me how to clear out the warm air before pumping it in, and filled Clio when ever he could today.
Jared and I went for a ride in the new Clay car with Michigan grad students Jeb Bailey and Yingyi Song to the GMT site. Buell posted about the ground-breaking ceremony last week — it wasn’t just ceremonial, there is actual construction going on up there. It’s a huge flat Cerro Campanas and we found some rocks that ring like bells as the name says.
Yesterday’s song of the day was a pop parody about science. Today’s song of the day is a pop parody about doing science:
MagAO’s revolutionary visible light capabilities have allowed us to directly image a planet residing inside a circumstellar disk gap for the first time. These images, of the forming protoplanet LkCa 15 b, provide the first incontrovertible evidence of accretion onto a forming planet.
In fact, the study joined two independent results from Arizona facilities – interferometric data from the Large Binocular Telescope on Mt. Graham in Arizona and direct images from our very own MagAO system at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.
The MagAO data was obtained by myself (Kate Follette), Laird Close, Jared Males, and Katie Morzinski as part of the Giant Accreting Protoplanet Survey (GAPplanetS). The final product: images of the forming protoplanet LkCa15b glowing in the light of ultra hot hydrogen gas. This is an indication that the planet is still growing, because Hydrogen gas glows at this characteristic wavelength of light when it is in the process of falling onto a massive object – in this case a protoplanet! LkCa15 b is visible glowing in Hydrogen-alpha, but unlike our previous discovery of HD142527B, it is NOT glowing in ordinary visible light. This indicates that the underlying object is very low mass – the first true GAPplanet!
Read about the entire study, which combined our H-alpha data with near-infrared interferometric data from the Large Binocular Telescope collected by Steph Sallum and Josh Eisner, at the links below. Steph and Josh were able to isolate light from two more protoplanet candidates – LkCa15c and d, and saw LkCa15b in the same place as the MagAO direct images, providing independent confirmation of its identity as a forming protoplanet!
Based on the issues Jared has been having with the Adsec Supervisor harddrives, we decided to test booting off the Clio harddrive spare that Vanessa and I made a few runs back. Laird and I supervised the crew moving the ASM to the top. Mauricio and I began pumping down Clio. And Jared continued to trouble shoot his various computers and cameras. Pictures:
Yesterday’s song of the day was by Kesha, so today’s is a fun Kesha parody by Jank about Astrobiology:
It’s been really cloudy the last 48 hours.
There have been no vizcachas at the clean room. I found a couple on the north side of the telescope this morning though.
The clouds were still around after sunset.
Laird and Katie made it! Laird lost some luggage, and they’re both tired after a hectic trip, but otherwise safe and sound.
Last night we heard about bourbon and scotch. Tonight Ke$ha discusses the contents of her water bottle, though she does not specify exactly what type of whiskey it is.