We packed everything up and left the mountain, and now I’ve gotten enough sleep I’m finally awake enough to post some pictures for you.
The crew spent most of the day putting MegaCam on the telescope, which uses the F/5 they put on the day before. It’s a big job, being one of the biggest and heaviest instruments.
Victor and Francesco lift MegaCam up through the floorMegaCam and Cartzilla. Cartzilla is so big and heavy they have to take down a post to fit it through the door, and it has to drive on tracks so it doesn’t fall through the floor.The crew prepare M1 for MegaCam
Then they had some time to squeeze in taking Clio2 and the MagAO NAS off the telescope before supper.
Felix prepares to take Clio2 off the NASFelix, Juan, and the crew prepare to lift the NAS off the telescope. They worked very hard that day to get it all done before supper.Jared secures the NAS on its cart
We parked them in the Aux.
The NAS parked in the AuxClio2 parked in the Aux
Earlier in the day, Laird and I accompanied the ASM down to the Clean room.
Baby Vizzy flopped out in the sun after being terrified out of his wits from the loud diesel Isuzu that brought the ASM down to the clean room
We had a final dinner, then packed up to leave.
Our last dinner — stuffed zucchinis andFinal sunset from the catwalk
Today Laird got up at 8am while Jared and I went to bed after our Last Star last night. Laird and the crew took down the ASM, then Laird and Jared de-cabled the NAS and I de-cabled Clio with their help. Here are some pictures:
Jared peering through the opticsShutting down Clio.Turning off the Clio pump in the scary loud pump roomThe tunnel by the scary loud pump room.Jared feeds the anaconda through to Laird, who catches it in the snake pit belowLaird in the snake pit. Left: the view from beneath the NAS. Right: The view through the hole from on the NAS platform.Jared and Laird posing by the NASJared shows us how he really feelsPovilas works on the M1 mirror.Tonight’s dinner was delicious – stuffed tomatoes, sliced potatoes, and salmon with a cream/shrimp sauceIt was a rare 3-vizcacha day at the clean room today.
The song of the day is inspired by the film 28 Days Later. We hope when we get back to Tucson, it isn’t a post-apocalyptic wasteland with everyone crazy party-rocking and/or our loved ones turned into zombies. Still, should the need arise, we are ready to party rock.
We have observed our last target star of the 2014A run. It was another great night, with half arcsecond seeing almost the whole way.
Just after sunset from the catwalk.
We now have 2 days of packing and storing and inventory to do, and then we start the long journey home. Laird and Katie got started as soon as the dome closed.
Laird and Katie (behind him holding the light) started the Clio warm up this morning.
We have to spend some time saying goodbye to all of our friends. We won’t see them for 6 months!
A vizzy hanging out waiting for sunset
And we need to spend some time actually looking at the night sky, it’s so beautiful here.
Yuri Beletsky has once again supplied us with an amazing photo. He took this two nights ago while we were observing.
We spent a lot of time on this run trying to mitigate the effects of diffraction. So check out the wave nature of these guitar strings:
Only one more night to go — I think we’re going to make it! Tonight was fun in a crazy busy kind of way. We did about 20 targets total, most of them were faint Clio targets. Vanessa had left at the end of the previous night, so this kind of a night kept me really busy and missing her. Here is a picture of Jared and Vanessa and me at the end of last night right before Vanessa left to go back to Tucson:
Me, Jared, and Vanessa on Vanessa’s last night
Tonight we bagged about 20 targets and spanned a factor of a million in guide star brightness. And that’s without any optics changes — we just bin the pixels on the CCD and adjust the gain, and we can lock on zero-th to 16th magnitude guide stars!!
Here we are locked on one of the brightest stars we can do: Two bright stars on Clio. This is just about the brightest guide star we can guide on.
And on one of the faintest stars we can do: Here we are locked on a 15.5-th magnitude faint binary (the bright one at upper left). And see the star about 5 arcseconds away, it’s still pretty round! Wow. OK yes, we did have amazing ~0.5” seeing tonight — yay LCO!
We also got some amazing images with VisAO: A bright star in z’ on VisAO. What an amazing dark hole around the star, which means the AO correction is working so well that it is clearing out all the scattered light up to its control radius!
And finally, we imaged yet another faint substellar companion — Pluto! Pluto and Charon! Our observers tonight, Amanda Bosh of MIT and Stephen Levine of Lowell Observatory, needed to get some data for their on-going program, and we were all so excited to image a (dwarf?) planet and its moon tonight! We are locked on Pluto itself.
Here we are in the control room at the end of the night, wrapping up our calibrations and data. From left: me, Amanda, Stephen, and Jared. Photo by Amanda Bosh.Jared taking VisAO dataLaird keeping the AO system under controlGorgeous star trails over the Clay telescope, courtesy Amanda Bosh. The dotted line is a blinking airplane flying by. Simply gorgeous. Click for high-res.
Quote exchange of the day:
“Ok, open the AO thing.” – Jen.
“Ok, the AO thing is open.” – Laird.
Video of the day: Amanda Bosh’s video of the Baade (left) and Clay (right) telescopes going on-sky for the night. Really cool! Thanks, Amanda!
After another busy night, I didn’t put together a substantive post. Thankfully, today was a beautiful day, with plenty of both literal and eye candy for the blog.
Francois played Easter bunny and hid chocolate eggs around the control room for all to enjoy.
Thanks, Francois!
Jared spotted our friendly local Easter “bunny”
Jared spotted Vizz chillin’ in the rafters
And Jen had a new roommate when she woke up this morning
Jen’s pint-sized lizard friend
I took a few last photos of the local flora at sunset
Clay’s twin Baade is visible in the backgroundThe sunset was fiery redI finally reached the top after a long mozy up
Here are a couple more stunning photos Jan Skowran and Yuri Beletsky took over the last few nights:
The twin telescopes: Clay and Baade by moonlightJan caught another sweet shot just as we were switching targets.Before the moon rose, Yuri captured this beautiful deep exposure, with the Milky Way and airglow.
I feel like I’ve just arrived, and it’s already time to head home. It’s been a blast working with a great group of team members, telescope crew, and observers.
Until next time, MagAO!
My last chance to see a green flash
Though it’s about 24hr door to door, I remind myself that it’s not so far in the grand scheme of things:
