Blog – Page 112 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

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.

2015B Day 4: The Loop Has Closed

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”.

always scary — Here’s the ASM just being lifted.

don't get bitten — Laird and Katie mounting the “Anaconda” cable.

now time for bed — Here is our first closed loop of 2015B!

Following last night’s song, which was a Gaga Parody, here’s a Gaga cover.

2015B Day 3: MagAO 2 GMT

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.

Click to embiggen? — Panorama from GMT of Magellan

Again, looking at RMT — Jared and me at the GMT site

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: