One week in, MagAO shows no signs of slowing down. After starting our day with a hacksaw, and some shaky ground, we prepared the shell for mounting on the ASM reference body and made our first go at it. The shell was clocked slightly, meaning that the magnets don’t quite line up with their holes in the reference body. We have rotated it, and first thing in the morning we’ll retry. In other news: VisAO is back in action, the NAS is shaping up, and we met some of the other residents of LCO.
Here's the offending bent pin from this morning. We had to use a hacksaw to get it out.MagAO survived its first Chilean earthquake. It was a small 3.9 mag tremor, but it was close. Lots of people felt it last night. This is an ever-present danger here, and this was a good reminder to 'stow for sea' every night.Here's Frederico preparing the ASM for shell mounting.Our 586th actuator.
The shell was carefully cleaned before mounting:
The shell is slowly raised with a hand crank, with many pairs of eyeballs watching for trouble.Here the shell is getting close. A little bit later we decided that the magnets didn't quite line up with their actuators and so lowered the shell again.At the end of the day, the re-clocked shell is back on the flipping bench waiting to be mounted in the morning. We mounted our VisAO electronics today. You can see the holes in the side of the box where the cooling system used to be. Here we're using a crane to tip the NAS back to vertical after installing the last box. Mas . . . un poquito mas.We paused during tipping to measure the space we have for our cooling sytem. Tyson is helping me test fit the radiator. We now have a plan.For the first time ever, the NAS has all of its electronics.
Tonight’s dinner quote: “That is not a camel.” (Alan Uomoto)
We spotted this Guanaco hanging out just below the dorms today, apparently all by itself.After lunch Laird and Mario went hunting. Apparently Guanacos follow the same rule as MagAO team members: where there's one, there's 10 or 15. Note the hawk.
Last night we bent a pin on the handling cart, preventing us from rotating the ASM back to the vertical position for shell mounting. So this morning, the first order of business was to cut the pin out of the cart. Extra fun since this had to take place in the cleanroom.
The big accomplishment today was flipping the shell so that the magnets are now facing up. This video, filmed by Juan Gallardo, shows the last step in the flipping procedure:
After flipping, the back of the mirror was inspected. Everything looks great.
The shell after flipping.
We also attached the ASM unit to the mount ring, which is how the secondary will be attached to the telescope.
The ASM on the mount ring for the first time.The ASM unit on the handling cart, being tilted to 90 degrees for testing.
Our heat transfer and fluid mechanics experiments continue:
We added ice to Povilas's fountain today. We have our own chiller for when we're actually on the telescope, so this is just a temporary workaround for the testing we are doing as part of unpacking.
In addition to the main attraction of mirror handling and testing, w-unit and NAS integration work continues. We have tested our X-Y-Z translation stages, installed a new neutral density filter in the VisAO camera, and installed a new gimbal in VisAO. We should actually mount the w-unit in the NAS in the next day or so.
Some interesting quotes from dinner tonight:
“Good news Jared, everybody else is tired, so we can get some work done tonight.” (Laird Close)
“Sometimes you have to hang the stick in front of the jackass.” (Tyson Hare)
The view from outside the Clay telescope, looking west. That's the 100 inch at left. Click for full resolution.There was quite a sunset on our way down for dinner tonight. Click for full resolution.
Another eventful day for MagAO. The big news is that we unpacked and inspected the shell, and it is in one piece. The delicate unpacking procedure took most of the day.
The process started with carefully removing the lid from the inner box.The mirror still in its shipping frame after being lifted from the inner box.
The moment of truth:
No cracks! Our 1.6 mm thick, 85cm diameter thin shell mirror survived shipping from Florence, Italy to Las Campanas, Chile.
Here’s a longer version of the last few minutes of unpacking, featuring the smooth stylings of Armando Riccardi and the mirror handling team:
Meanwhile, a whole bunch of other stuff was happening. In addition to completing the guider work we also setup the ASM cooling circuit.
Don't worry, the project isn't on fire yet, we're just filling the heat sink. Yes, that is one of our shipping crates.Victor declares victory. The pump circulates water through the ASM and the big tub.Povilas and Tyson made us a nice water fountain. This isn't just for the ambiance. Consider that the specific heat of liquid water is 4.2 kJ/kg, the latent heat of fusion (melting ice) is 334 kJ/kg, and the latent heat of vaporization is 2257 kJ/kg. And we're in the Atacama desert.After dinner we started preparing the flipping bench. Marco Xompero is making some adjusments.A group photo at breakfast. From lower left: Laird Close, Frederico Piccin, Alan Uomoto, Mario Andrighettoni , Marco Xompero, Victor Gasho, Jared Males, and Armando Riccardi (missing Richard and Tyson, who had already gone up to get ready for unpacking).In case we take a day off, there's a nice rec room here. Juan's band has taken over the ping pong table for guitar storage though.Marco gets ready for unpacking.
Alan and Tyson finished testing our newly installed guider this morning. Here’s a quick demo of the probe moving out of the way, as it would after collimating the telescope.
Alan Uomoto and Tyson Hare surveying their handiwork.
