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Today was an eventful day. Almost every blog post by me has mentioned VIS-X, the beautiful integral field spectrograph for MagAO-X. And, every run up to know had me doing optical alignment on the Nasmyth platform during morning shifts (after observing 🙁 ). This time the optical alignment finally did not drift during shipment! I only had to do some minor alignment of VIS-X to the MagAO-X output beam. Everything was aligned by the middle of the afternoon. No more mornings full of alignment for me!!!!

While I was doing the alignment on VIS-X, Laird was leading a small group to check on the MagAO ASM. The MagAO ASM is going back to Tucson after many years of living at LCO.

Laird invited everyone to have a last look at the ASM before it goes off to it’s new destination. Jared was not interested and tried to ignore the existence of the ASM. We now have MagAO-X which is a lot of fun! The MagAO-X OCAM2K was recently updated with new binning modes that should improve our performance on fainter targets. Jared was busy trying to figure out how the new binning modes could be calibrated. This was not straight forward.

The animal of today is Carlos and he showed up during dinner as a nice surprise.

After dinner, Eden took all the LCO first timers to see the other telescopes on the mountain top.

Song of the day:

I hope you enjoy content from the newbies! It was Josh’s first blog post yesterday, so naturally it was my turn for a blog debut today.

With the loop having been closed at the end of the day yesterday, we were ready to start working with MagAO-X this morning. I had actually never seen someone close the loop before, so I got the chance to watch that for the first time. Maggie and Laird added in the flat-field mask, then tag-teamed with Sebastiaan for some more alignment:

After lunch, some of us absconded to the library to do homework (and procrastinate writing a grant proposal). As I attempted to decipher my metrology assignment, the lights suddenly went out …

uh oh.

Not being too familiar with the way all the computers/electronics work, I wasn’t sure what the exact ramifications of the power outage were—but I did infer that it was, at the very least, wildly inconvenient. We did eventually get everything running again and were able to take some engineering data after dinner:

Only a few of us made it out to watch the sunset, but those of us who did were rewarded with some beautiful views; plus, those of us who were watching closely saw the Sun’s green flash (I swear!).

Laird, Maggie, and I closed out the day by taking a quick look at the stars before heading to bed. I’m already in awe of how many there are, and I’m promised the view is even more spectacular when the Moon isn’t out. I can’t wait.

Song of the day:

Hello and welcome to my first ever blog post! Day 2 began with yet another Gary sighting–our good luck charm for the DM cabling and optical alignment to come. Following our daily dosage of guanaco, we got to work in the clean room.

Here at the MagAO-X secondary HQ, we always make sure to ground ourselves (both physically and emotionally) prior to handling expensive electronics.

While the MagAO-X youth were hard at work cabling, Maggie and Laird were busy prepping the optical table for its lengthy stay on the Magellan telescope.

Following a busy morning of cabling, some of us took a short-ish break to veg out in the Magellan library, while others remained busy at work.

By late afternoon, the optics were aligned and the DMs were cabled, allowing us to close the loop! Laird, in particular, was very excited.

With the AO loop closed and the majority of the day’s work completed, we had ample opportunities to enjoy the sunset amongst our furry friends at LCO.

Tomorrow, we begin our instrument calibrations. Stay tuned!

Song of the Day:

Is there anything more tantalizing than an fresh, unopened box of MagAO-X? This team just couldn’t resist. The unpacking festivities started at the first call of the returning night shift astronomers and did not finish until our good friend Orion had completely risen.

The very first gift of the day was an early morning Carlos Culpeo spotted by a Josh who’s sleep schedule hasn’t quite agreed with all the travel yet. This curious fox was later spotted at lunch, and we hope he becomes a regular.

After a reviving breakfast of the highest LCO standards, we shuttled up to the clean room and got to work on our hard hat activities. This includes the reverse of everything we did in Tucson (see Logan’s packing video) but enjoy these snapshots of cranes and dollys and etc. to jog your memory.

We were so fast and efficient, we had time to catch another fan favorite, Gary, who wandered up to the parking lot to check on what we were up to.

With another good animal omen bestowed upon us, and lunch in our stomachs, we got back to work freeing the electronics box from it’s larger, wooden box. Don’t try this at home kids, these are advanced crane moves best performed with at some two professionals and at least four grad students standing around in hard hats, looking anxious.

And all of a sudden, MagAO-X was out of it’s box and in the clean room, and it was only 3pm! Every time, it seems like we do it faster. Even our crane operator Juan was surprised. About at that time we all were ready for some caffine, and a break from hard hats.

Woof. What a blog post. We’ve unpacked it, so we must be done, right? What, we still need to set up the clean room? You mean we’re only halfway through? Well… if this blog post is long, it’s only because you’re right there in it with us.

Before we could do anything else, the clean room had to get… actually clean. The youngest and spry-est of us took on the challenge. Special recognition to Katie for surviving the fumes of the glass cleaner long enough to finish the clean room mopping.

Once Laird arrived, some initial optical inspection occurred! Welcome Laird! Turns out you can only do so much without the cameras on to tell you what’s misaligned, so the real alignment will have to wait for tomorrow.

We ran into some unexpected traffic on our way back up to the cleanroom from dinner at the lodge:

Once we were finally clear, we finished up with the nitty gritty of glycol and cabling

The good news? ITS ALIVE. All of the computers have turned on, the new GPUS hare happily chugging along, and we are ready for the DM cabling and alignment tomorrow. If you made it this far, congratulations, you have gotten through what will probably be our second longest day of the run.

Wow, does it feel good to be back.

Song of the day

Maggie says we gotta have some nature? Here’s a cool condor shot I took today!

And in his majestic honor, the song of the day:

It’s been a whole year but the team is back! The unpacking and alignment crew arrived at the beautiful Las Campanas Observatory this afternoon.

Fun fact: if you have items to declare upon arrival to Chile, your line takes you to a fun sign that only you and your advisor get to see.

Once we arrived at LCO, we got straight to work! Well we did as much as we could until dinner…

We set up our first instrument computer, “AOC”, then got out of the way so the LCO crew could mop the clean room in prep for our long day of unpacking tomorrow.

We are big fans of the new decals highlighting the copious wildlife at LCO!

We are also big fans of the newly established salad bar during dinner! However, this new station did confuse our postdoc, prompting him to wonder about his salad’s whereabouts (see title).

Finally, a good omen for the run ahead of us: a satisfying viscacha siting this afternoon.

Blog Rules: The only rule I’ll implement as the first blogger of this run is that you must incorporate a native plant or animal in your blog. Today’s “song of the day” is the wind quietly blowing over the Atacama Desert.