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IAUS 299: Misbehaving Planets and Moderately Insane Ideas

Wednesday was a half day, but before we all took off to enjoy sunny Victoria we listened to some interesting talks — and showed off MagAO. Arizona/LPL alum Jonathan Fortney gave the introductory review talk on characterizing exoplanets.

Jonathan says that planets “misbehave” when his models don’t match observations. I suspect that the planets actually know what they’re doing, but more work needs to be done.

Here’s Jonathan’s talk:

The famous Matt Kenworthy, now at Leiden but formerly a denizen of Steward Observatory, was the session chair.

Matt kept everybody in line.

This was the day when we unveiled our MagAO results to the wider exoplanet community. Katie gave a well-received talk on our system’s capabilities and our exciting results on beta Pictoris b.

Katie gave yet another great talk on our MagAO commissioning results. Here she’s fielding questions at the end.

You can watch the whole talk:

You can find all the talks on Christian Marois’s youtube channel here.

Later, a bunch of astronomers went to the home opener of the Victoria HarbourCats, a westcoast league team. They played the Kelowna Falcons. The Cats won (Bear Down!), and it was a great game on a nice night. We saw 2 homeruns, a diving catch in left field, and some close plays on the bases. We all rooted for the home team, stuffed ourselves with hotdogs, and enjoyed some good local brew.

It was a sellout crowd.

IAU Symposium 299 day 1

Our apologies if you’re having trouble keeping up, but MagAO is now in Victoria, B.C., for IAUS 299. The conference got off to a great start with a review talk by Beth Biller, a product of the Arizona+Laird system.

Beth kicked off the conference. Johanna comments.

TJ had the honor of closing out today’s session. He wowed the crowd with LBT and MagAO disk images.

TJ closed out the session.

The talks from this conference go up on youtube as soon as Christian gets them uploaded (gulp). Here’s TJ’s talk.

For me, personally, the highlight of the conference so far has been the harbour ferry ballet, a truly impressive feat of nautical coordination.

The harbour ferry ballet. Seriously — this is a thing.

This is a lovely place to visit.

The legislative offices at night.

Last day in Firenze (this time)

Today was the last day of AO4ELT3. A few more MagAO team members got their chance to pontificate.

MagAOer Runa Briguglio described testing the ELT’s M4 adaptive mirror, in a presentation entitled “Pimp My MIrror,”
Derek gave an update on his new project, the LINC/NIRVANA Pathfinder, which is an AO system add-on for the LBT.
Katie gave a great talk on high-contrast imaging with MagAO.

Now we’re off to IAU 299 in Victoria, B.C. Stay tuned for more action packed MagAO fun.

Killin’ it in Florence

The LBTAO and MagAO projects got their time yesterday at AO4ELT3. The day started with Armando giving an overview of ASM development and status, and their future potential for ELTs.

Armando compared the current state of ASM technology. That’s MagAO on the right!

Then Laird presented the results of our recent commissioning runs. It went over well, and lots of people seem genuinely impressed.

Laird wowed ’em with VisAO results.

Later, Phil gave an update on the LBTI (blog here).

Phil showed off the LBTAO systems and his baby, the LBTI.

Simone also gave a nice talk on plans for a pyramid wavefront sensor on the GMT.

Simone holding forth on Pyramid sensors for the GMT.

After the business was done for the day, we headed to the Palazzo Corsini for the conference dinner.

Olivier and Laird discuss. That’s Christian Marois in the foreground.
Sunset on the Arno
Dinner was *amazing*.
The whole affair was overseen by the Corsini family Pope, Clementine XII.

Claire Max declared it the best conference dinner in history, and she left before they got out the Grappa. Congrats to Simone and the whole conference team.

MagAO Returns to Firenze

The MagAO project once lived in Florence, Italy, for almost a year. It’s where we first got it all working and got to know our Italian teammates. We’re back, this time for the AO4ELT3 (Adaptive Optics for Extremely Large Telescopes 3) conference.

The 3rd AO4ELT conference.

We includes Laird, Phil, Katie, and Jared from Arizona, Derek from Heidelberg, Simone, Armando, Alfio, Enrico, Runa, Marco, Lorenzo, Fernando, Luca, and Paolo from Arcetri. You can also find MagAO friends such as Roberto Biasi from Microgate and Doug Miller and Olivier Guyon from Arizona.

If you are in Florence with us, come see our poster and get your MagAO sticker. We’re only giving them out to readers of the blog! The password is “Vizzy.”

Our poster. Laird and Katie are both giving MagAO talks later this week.

Here are a few views from around Firenze:

The Duomo from the rose garden, just below Piazzale Michelangelo.
A replica of David at Piazzale Michelangelo, which has, overwhelmingly, the best view of Florence.
Alfio took us to a restaraunt at Piazza Santo Spirito, and we went for full-moon walk along the Arno. This is the Ponte Vecchio, a famous bridge in Florence.