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2015A Day 3: Boom Clap Clio

Ah Las Campanas The Bells. And here are the Belles of Las Campanas:

The Belles of Las Campanas, today. 🙂 Gwen Rudie, Jackie Faherty, Johanna Teske, Katie Morzinski

Our friends Jackie Faherty and Johanna Teske are observing on Clay tonight. We got to give them some various tours and they documented it on Twitter — follow the links of their names for their MagAO Tweets!

Long successful day. We finished all the Clio things. Thanks to all our support on email and Skype! Tomorrow we button Clio up and pump it down. Today involved a lot of good hard work by Laird, Jared, Manny, Juan, me… We inserted the new Brackett Gamma filter, removed some thermal mass from various parts of Clio, fit the APPs in, and documented lots of things. Here we go!

The filter wheels — we inserted the Br Gamma filter through the port (left), and put the blank in the open side in the wheel on the right.
The new vector-apodizing phase plates (right) in the pupil wheel (left).

My animal sighting was a pack of mules, at lunchtime and after supper:

A herd of burros! They don’t seem to like the car, or the cell phone camera.
I see you!
Our first blogged full sunset of 2015A!

And this song…

…so we can hear the cover:

2015A Day 2: Long Stressful Day

Today was a challenge on two fronts. Katie and Laird spent the day performing surgery on our beloved Clio camera. They’re doing some housekeeping and getting ready to install our new coronagraphs and Brackett gamma filter. It’s always fun to open a dewar and take apart a bunch of filter wheels. I spent the day trying to get our new (higher power) X-stage motor up and running. It should be noted that a significant fraction of the day on each front was spent solving problems that only Jordan Stone cares about.

Perhaps the biggest news is that we had our first Viscacha siting. On our last run they were very skittish, but they’re back to being the lazy sleepy grumps we have come to know and love.

Povilas wins the day for his practical joke. He talked Juan into coming into dinner and telling us that our schedule was wrong and that we are due to be on the telescope a day earlier than planned. Ha ha, good one Povilas.

Here’s Clio heading into the operating room.
Clio on the operating table. Think he/she/it will make it?
My day was spent cabling and uncabling this motor (and the spare), and tweaking parameters. I think I finally got it tuned up just before bed time.
Vizzy 1 and 2. No sign of Grumpy. look at those tails.

2015A Day 1: You Can Call Me Larry

Home at last. After our 24 hr delay in Tucson, and listening to all the horror stories from people who had been trying to get to Santiago for several days, as soon as our plane pushed back the pilot cut the engines and we sat on the runway for an hour to let a thunderstorm blow through.

But all’s well that ends well. We made it safe and sound to LCO just in time for dinner tonight. The first steps of preparations are done: dust covers off, some Clio mounting hardware replaced, some organizing, and we checked on the mirror — it survived. Tomorrow the real fun begins, with moving and then opening Clio to add our new coronagraphs and reorganize filters. We also begin work on our new X-stage motor, which is more powerful than the current one.

Larry got some tea at the Santiago airport Starbucks.
Here we are in the van, having just departed el Pino on our way to the mountain. It always feels good when you start this last leg.
The last glow of sunset.

And from the better safe than sorry department, this is not a cover by Daughtry, but it is a cover by a band opening for Daughtry.

2015A Day 0: On The Road Again

Well, we at least made it to Dallas. We’ve been talking to other people here also trying to get to Santiago. Apparently flights have been routinely canceled over the last few days due to volcanic ash. I thought we were far enough north that it isn’t a issue, but guess not.

Laird and Jared yesterday, after our flight cancelation. We’re scrambling to try to get good seats. It didn’t work.
Laird and Katie in the AA Admiral’s Club in DFW’s Terminal D.

2015A Day -1: Here We Go Again

Nowhere fast — that’s how you might describe the MagAO run so far. This post should have been “Day 0” (our traditional day before Laird arrives at LCO), but as you can see we’re moving backwards.

Laird, Katie and Jared tried to leave Tucson today, but, well, they just decided to close the runway 15 minutes before our scheduled departure. We’re not entirely clear what was going on in the tower at TUS today, but it is clear that they started maintenance on the runway before all the planes that needed to use it had left. To be clear, we were in our seats, buckled, doors armed, ready to push, when they closed the runway.

So, anyhoo, we’re still in Tucson. At least we get to spend our travel delay at our own homes, rather than in some random airport hotel in some random city. This happened to Laird, Victor and Jared way back in May 2012, on our first unpacking run.

Quotes of the day:

“Well, we used up our travel contingency. We only have our O-ring contingency left, we better not use that up.” — Katie, commenting on the Gantt chart implications of today’s events. Don’t worry, as long as we don’t forget to grease the O-ring this time, we’ll be fine.

“It means we’re f#@*ed.” — Laird, commenting on the practical implications of today’s events.