Now that telescope proposals are submitted we return to our regularly scheduled programming. Our first order of business is to belatedly congratulate Dr. Derek Kopon, the Magellan AO Project’s first PhD. Derek is off to Heidelberg to help with the LINC-NIRVANA interferometer, but he’ll still be working on MagAO.
We also welcome our newest team member, Ya-Lin Wu. Ya-Lin is a first year graduate student at Steward and is helping us develop data pipelines to manage the huge amount of 1s and 0s we produce on a nightly basis.
We head back to LCO to prepare for first light in exactly one month. Time to start paying attention again.
The director of Arizona’s telescope time at Magellan has just issued a call for proposals for MagAO for 2013A. This is for shared-risk observing during our second commissioning run, during early April of next year. These observations will demonstrate our new AO system and science cameras in the best way possible — with science! Eligible astronomers are at public universities in Arizona (those sharing Magellan telescope time with us). This is an exciting opportunity to get involved in the first high-order AO system having broad O/IR spectral coverage!
Please see our webpage with information for observers for help in planning your telescope proposals. The optical wavelengths will be available for observation with VisAO and the near-infrared with Clio2.
Note that we (the commissioning team) will execute, in a “mini-queue”, the top TAC ranked MagAO proposals (for Clio2 or VisAO or both) in a shared-risk manner. The proposal PI would participate with the team, and could optionally join us in person, but attendance at Magellan would not be required. All proposals for this special call need to be signed off on by the MagAO PI (Laird Close, lclose at as.arizona.edu, 520 626 5992) before TAC submission. The MagAO commissioning team would receive proper credit (co-authorship) for our efforts in accomplishing any of the proposed science programs.
While the NAS was mounted on the telescope we took a quick set of readnoise measurements with the CCD39. Here are the results. The only major caveat is that the telescope was not tracking, so we didn’t test whether the drives have any impact. Otherwise, this is the most realistic set of RON measurements we have taken to date. We are very happy with the results, especially the 156kHz 3.8 electrons. This number essentially sets the limit to how faint our guide star can be, so keeping it low is important.
Pixel Rate (kHz)
Frame Rate (fps)
RON (e-)
156
80
3.8
400
197
5.8
900
893
8.4
2500
1053
10.2
Note: these are determined using the actual gains from Scimeasure, rather than assuming 0.5. This can cause as much as an 8% difference.
Extraction of the NAS Fitcheck team is underway. We all came down off the mountain today, feeling good about a successful run.
The first view of the ocean. It's at this point on the drive that your skin starts to feel normal again as the air becomes humid.
Here’s our quote from the ride down: “Pirate mining? . . . no no, you probably said iron, but I heard pirate.” (Tyson Hare)
Jason is spending the night in La Serena, doing some exploring. Laird, Alan, Tyson, and Jared have made it to Santiago, despite a bunch of airline computer problems. Here we commemorate Jared’s first Pisco Sour at the SCL Holiday Inn:
We have a 6 hour layover in Santiago, so we're spending it telling war stories from the run.
A light day today, if you use the usual MagAO tempo as your standard. Alan and Tyson did a little work on the guider this morning.
Tyson at work on the guider with the NAS still mounted.Here's the new and improved x travel limit of the guider probe.
We had some excitement today. Power to the telescope was accidentally shut off, and there was a brief attempt to blame Jared. It wasn’t him (based on what I was doing at the time, it wasn’t a dumb idea). We learned that the rotator breaks release if this happens, so we will be extra careful to make sure the rotator is pinned when we are woking inside the NAS.
Once the power was back on we craned the NAS off the telescope, and lowered it back down to ground level.
The NAS weighs 1800 lbs now, after adding counter weights during the balancing procedure. We apply this much preload with the crane so we can take the bolts off without dropping the whole thing.The NAS making the journey from the Clay to the Aux building.Laird says goodbye to his baby.
There was also a long earthquake this afternoon. Anecdotes suggest you needed to be sitting down to feel it. It was a 3.9 according to Universidad de Chile Depto. de Geofisica
After lunch we cleaned up after ourselves, inventoried our gear, made a shopping list (we go through zip ties like nobody’s business), and generally took it easy. We did install our brand new ASM cover:
The new ASM cover, and Jason Lewis.
After that, there was some relaxation, a run down to the 100″ and back, and maybe some snoozing. Once you get kicked off the telescope that’s it.
Another solitary horse today.The LCO sky put on one last show for us. This was late afternoon. (click)Tyson grabbed a nice sunset picture at dinner. (click)
escope proposals are submitted we return to our regularly scheduled programming. Our first order of business is to belatedly congratulate Dr. Derek Kopon, the Magellan AO Project’s first PhD. Derek is off to Heidelberg to help with the LINC-NIRVANA interferometer, but he’ll still be working on MagAO.
We also welcome our newest team member, Ya-Lin Wu. Ya-Lin is a first year graduate student at Steward and is helping us develop data pipelines to manage the huge amount of 1s and 0s we produce on a nightly basis.
