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Once upon a time, not so long ago…

“Well, it can’t get worse than this!”

Elena Tonucci on the length of her journey, Santiago de Chile, 23rd November 2024

“I never lost my luggage!”

Sebastiaan Haffert, Santiago de Chile, 23rd November 2024

Yes, dear friends, these are real statements that our heroes have pronounced at the beginning of their journey back home, and I am sure you already know what happened next.

Sebastiaan and I started off our journey in the best way: We managed to get into the LATAM lounge in Santiago, chill and recharge with free food and drinks, and later reached Bogota without any troubles. Maybe this is why we were brave enough to pronounce those words. In the end, we were half way there and full of optimism.

The flight from Bogota to Madrid got delayed by about 2 hours and a half, to make us land exactly when our final connection to Amsterdam took off. But, hey, at least we had extra leg space during our flights.

At least we got each other, and that’s a lot. Ah, no, actually… At first, it seemed that the very smart LATAM system had already rebooked me to a new direct flight to Amsterdam at 20:30, operated by KLM. Great! I just needed to collect my luggage. Sebastiaan however was not that lucky, and there were no flights left for Amsterdam before the end of the day. We waited for news for a while, until he got two flights, with a stop in Milano Linate. Mamma mia! As the great PhD student I am, I offered to switch and let him have my direct flight. However, as the great supervisor he is, he refused and said (I quote) “You live for the fight when that’s all that you’ve got”. Okay, he didn’t say that but that would have been pretty cool, right?

This is how we parted ways with the promise to see each other the next day at the workshop we had to attend in Leiden. Sure….. When I got to the KLM desk to get my boarding pass, they weirdly could not find me in the system. Strange! The very very smart LATAM system had rebooked me to a new flight, what could have gone wrong??? Spot the mistake in the picture below.

At least, I was determined to find my luggage (I forgot to mention I had lost it in the meantime). In theory, Sebastiaan’s luggage was flying together with him to Milano and then to Amsterdam. Sure….. Fortunately, after going back and forth two times between terminal 4 and 2 of hell emmm I meant Madrid airport (if you want to remember the layout, go to Day 0) I finally managed to find my lost luggage!

Since I sadly couldn’t time travel back to the 24th of September to catch my flight nor wait for the 24th of September of 2025 or any other year after that, LATAM decided to pay for my food and accommodation in a luxurious hotel in Madrid. So sweet of them!

In the meantime, Sebastiaan got safely to Amsterdam and could make it to the workshop, but without his luggage. As of me, I slept (very bad) and finally got to Amsterdam on lunch time the day after. This is why our quotes at the beginning of this post are so ironic, but this is also how Sebastiaan became…

The New York traveler

Joseph, the lonely and brave New York traveler, had instead a lot of time ahead of him. After saying goodbye to the mountains, he started his journey and witnessed many interesting things. For example, a middle aged lady taking off at a right angle to the line and climbing through all the barriers. The immigration queue is an amazing place. At least he was alone and could just judge people internally while listening to the Cowboy Bebop OST to keep his spirits up. Then I think he literally kept his spirit up with some – maybe too much? – pisco. We gotta hold on to what we’ve got, you know? What matters is that, more or less at my same time, he landed in New York, but he left one day later than me. Great job Joseph.

Laird and Jialin

Sorry I couldn’t come up with a fancy title here, I am pretty lame. Laird was very disappointed at the start of his journey in La Serena: LATAM refused to give him the boarding pass for Atlanta and check his bags any further than Santiago. Not to mention passport control had a queue of over 2 hours!! Fortunately, Jialin and Laird had a layover of six hours, which was barely enough to get on the flight to Atlanta… But you know what?? They left the mountain one day after Sebastiaan and I and still managed to get home before us. It’s tough, so tough.

The last of us

After some final fun games, vizzy spotting, and sunset (with apparently the best green flash ever seen by human eyes) the last of us started their journey back to a different desert: Tucson. Stay tuned for the next blog post to hear about their journey!!

Song of the day

Although after three days of travel I could add multiple songs really, I will stick to the most important one, because during this trip we were really living on a prayer. See you next time, that’s all from Elena, folks! 😉

Did you know it’s voting day in Chile? A whole national holiday, everyone off the mountain to go participate in government. (Well not viscachas. But all the human crew.) Really! They brought the turno bus up on the weekend, instead of a typical Tuesday. The summit was going to be mine, a little staycation, some peace and quiet, boundless bouncing, etc.

But those kids… there they were. Here when no one else was. Cawing to my colleague Carlos. Scarfing down cold empanadas like it was 12 midnight instead of 12 noon. Napping on public couches. Rolling on public pool tables. Crawling around the boulders. Cracking open stones. Performing impressionistic rock percussion (hearing bells chime). Staring off to the vistas.

Now I’m a humble viscacha. I have my perch, and I stick to it. I huddle close to the eves in the mornings, and I sun bathe in the evenings. It’s demanding, standing watch over the cleanroom. I don’t mind. What better place to keep an eye on things?

Want to know what I notice? That every few seasons there are these astronomers that just don’t quit. They’re here week after week, even when the turno changes. Even when they think, or even mutter to themselves “I know I got to get away.” So of course these were the astronomers to upend a quiet weekend.

I’m a Vizzy who minds his business. But even I noticed a regular wasn’t here this time. Not that I was prying, but there were a lot more questions and running around this time. Like “are you sure that’s where that cable goes?” and “wait did we remember to grab the nitrogen tank?” and “what do you mean it’s not in the handbook?” and “dos? Dos? Dos mas??” Not that I’d get involved, but seemed a lot like a tricycle operation learning to be a bike. Whole new levels of confidence and skill to get things off the ground.

But they did it. Just in case anyone needed some kind of, oh I don’t know, summary or conclusive account. From someone in a senior position.

Those kids worked themselves and their telescope to the bone. Who else would let so much morning light into Clay’s dome? Who else would have a TO shuttle up 20ish pounds of empanadas? What other crew would attempt to commission a half dozen new technologies in just two weeks? What other team could get so many of them to be success?

(Please see: documentation of dawn observing submitted to evidence.)

I think this means something. Like they’ve grown up. Or that shiny box they keep shuttling around has passed some sort of say, bus test.

After weeks of this nonsense, seems like they’ve finally packed up. The AO kids have been trickling out for the last few days. I know if [they] don’t, [they]’ll go out of [their] mind. I got some good byes, some good last chats. This final crew? I think they got a good last sunset too. The whole package, green flash and all.

So. The kids are alright. Old kids and new kids (and new new kids). And kids who didn’t make it this time. I know them all pretty well. I’ll look forward to seeing big smiles next time they see me. Which will probably be in what, three months, four? They just can’t stay away.

Song of the Day

Today, the night crew from telescope removal day attempted to get back on to a day schedule, which is always so much harder than it sounds. Additionally, we bid farewell to Laird and Jialin! Before he left, Laird gave his stamp of approval towards the state of the instrument after Eden was able to successfully close the loop after we got all the cabling straightened out. Great job everyone who contributed to the DM re-cabling in the clean room, it was perfect the first time…! (I think it was Eden, Katie, Parker, and Jialin)

After all of the major parts of MagAO-X passed initial testing, it was time for me and Parker to shine with some much-needed plumbing maintenance for our computers in the electronics rack.

The frustrating thing that keeps happening is that some variety of slime mold or bacteria keeps accumulating in and around the heatsinks in the CPUs and GPUs and causing embolisms to form in the glycol tubing network after some months of operation. Until we get a permanent handle on this phenomenon, we have to back flush the various components that are most affected. To do this right, we removed the glycol filter and found it pretty caked with that nasty slime mold stuff, which required cleaning to avoid causing a straight up clog if/when we dislodged bigger pieces during the flush procedure.

We report that the plumbing maintenance was a success and saw at least one very large clot get dislodged from one of RTC’s GPUs (oddly satisfying). We cleaned the filter again, for good measure, and confirmed the system was performing as expected. Hopefully we’re good until the next run!

Meanwhile our Leiden colleagues were living it up in the glamorous LATAM lounge at SCL. Sebastiaan looking more less healed and photogenic as ever after a restful night of sleep at the apartments at El Pino.

As is the tradition, we couldn’t miss tonight’s sunset, but in front of the cleanroom this time. ‘Cause at night, the sun in retreat, made the skyline look like crooked teeth.

Bonus Content

There isn’t a whole lot of technical stuff going on these days with the observing run over and the rest of us just counting down the hours until our departure. There has been a lot of discussion about lucid dreaming and dreaming in general this run so I thought I’d share one of my recent dreams from a couple nights ago. This was undoubtedly inspired by Joseph’s fun trip down midway through the run to go see the penguins where he brought up some groceries to resupply our dwindling Snack Stack. Among these items, was the biggest, most beautiful bottle of Benedictino I’ve seen in a long time. For those who are out of the loop, we recently got our most precious bottles of fizzy water (Benedictino) replaced by a generic brand of agua con gas for sustainability, as these new bottles are reuseable and hold a lot more drink. This is obviously an admirable move, I mean, think of all the Benedictino bottles at the bottom of the ocean, but still, it’s not the same, man. And we’ve really been missing this brand of fizzy water.

The dream went something like this:

I was just finishing up dinner at the lodge and on my way to bringing my tray back to the dish pit, when something in the reach-in cooler where the soda bottles are kept caught my eye and hit me like those first rays of sunlight hitting your face after emerging from a dark cave. There was absolutely nothing in this fridge *except* a freakishly large bottle of unopened Benedictino fizzy water. And lucid me decided it was about to be all mine.

The light inside the fridge glowed a ghostly white and blanked out everything else around me, and the Benedictino sparkled as if it were a holy deity sitting before me. Every one of my heartbeats pounded through my body like the distant firing of 19th-century cannons as I twisted off the cap and watched it fall from my nerveless fingers silently into the dark abyss. I grabbed the bottle like an ancient artifact and, with trembling hands, slowly raised it to my lips where I was met with the intoxicating aroma of atomized carbonic acid. Tilting my head back, the fizzy water began its descent into my stomach in a raging whirlpool as the bottle began to rapidly shed its weight. Closing my eyes, a spotlight shone onto me as my mind thundered with horns sounding victory and the cheering of an invisible crowd. Lowering my head back down, I was met with the gaze of an enormous condor perched on the outdoor patio, a cheese empanada clutched in one talon and bottle of orange Fanta in the other, and saw the reflection of the Chilean flag in its predatory eyes. It nodded in approval and with a screech, flew off toward the Magellan telescopes guided by the light of the setting November sun. I looked down to the previously full gallon-sized bottle of Benedictino to find it entirely empty. 10/10 dream.

Song of the Day

Today was dedicated to removing MagAO-X from the platform and safely returning it to the cleanroom. It feels like just yesterday we were taking it out of the cleanroom, but time sure flies by when you are surrounded by great company and beautiful mountains. However, Elena and Sebastiaan started their journey back to Leiden around lunch. For the rest of us, it is just another day in paradise.

The day crew started bright and early after breakfast to get the instrument prepped for transport. This included removing earthquake bars, bumpers, geophones, and building the cart.

Once the prep work was done, we proceeded to wrap the world’s most expensive present in saran wrap and two emergency blankets.

After craning MagAO-X off its legs, it made the journey down the elevator and onto the Isuzu.

Following the instrument, legs, and electronics rack making it down the mountain, one last task remained for the day crew. We needed to put everything back on the way it was before the transport. Within a few hours, we completed all tasks prior to our deadline of 4PM, which is when the night crew took over operations.

MagAO-X made it back to the cleanroom in record time, so we took the opportunity to train the kids how to cable the DMs. To be honest, I expected this to be a high stress learning experience, but with the expert guidance from Eden, the process went smoothly and efficiently.

Fast forward many hours and everything was re-cabled and set-up for remote operations. By this point, delusion was setting in and it was time to get some sleep.

Only one thing remained on our checklist at the end of the day and that one thing was some MagAO-X plumbing. Stay tuned for Jay’s overview of the plumbing work.

Song of the Day

Today’s song reminds me to appreciate where we are, what we’re working on, and who we are with.

It’s nearly three weeks into this observing run and being stuck on this mountain together has finally driven us to form opposing factions. Professor Laird Close fearlessly leads the “day shift” camp: holders of doctoral degrees, champions of going to bed at a reasonable hour, and cart-building aficionados. The second “night shift” faction is largely anarchist, with its leadership defaulting to whichever graduate student is the least sleepy when a decision needs to be made. Only the unthinkable, an alliance between these two groups, will grant us the strength to accomplish our next monumental task. That’s right—it’s about time to uninstall MagAO-X from the telescope.

But before we do that, we had one last night of on-sky shenanigans (and science!) to get to. Before sunset, Eden went pro-photographer on some viscachas, and Jialin caught a tender moment:

We then briefly reconciled our differences to focus on something both night owls and early birds can agree on: watching the beautiful sunset together. Sadly, this is our last sunset with Sebastiaan and Elena before they head back to the Netherlands. We wish they would come hang out with us in the Sonoran Desert sometime, not just the Atacama… “Parting is such sweet sorrow”

Tonight was an observing night for our Michigan/MIT collaborators, and we were able to get some really nice Hα images once the seeing calmed down in the second half of the night: “[MagAO-X] will make the face of heaven so fine / That all the world will be in love with night”. The day-shifters missed the best seeing due to their sensible bedtime, but on their way down the mountain they stumbled upon some critters we hadn’t yet met on this run:

Once we’d closed up for the night, the de-cabling crew took on the task of shutting down the instrument and beginning the removal process. Despite a pervasive, nagging sensation that we were under-supervised, we managed to get the instrument ready for the day crew’s craning operations.

As I write this, the day crew is up on the telescope platform picking up where we left off. Despite our differences, I wish them the best of luck in their endeavors. We’ll reunite in the cleanroom sometime later today to begin reassembling the whole thing—but that’s content for another blog post.

Song of the Day: okay, okay. This might be a bit of a stretch from this run’s blog rules. I really love classical music, but since there had to be song lyrics written into the blog post I thought I’d have to abstain this run. Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture does not contain lyrics, however it is based off of a play that is rife with quotes that seemed appropriate. We’re getting close to the end of the run here, so I figured why not: