Home of MagAO and MagAO-X.
The return of IR WFSing! After squashing some software bugs we closed the loop on 3 and then 20 modes with CACAO using the IR WFS:
I’m back at home where I’m finding it brilliant, reliable, intelligent, diligent, glorious, exceptional, and troublesome. Thanks to the mountain team for enabling a good remote-observing session.
The song of the night is Malagueña – Michael Lucarelli, classical guitar:
Tonight after some daytime work on the rotator we tried the rotational centering again. Alas Brian saw that the star was still jumping when he sent the command, and thus we still couldn’t find the chief ray. We moved on and attempted a curvature wavefront sensing test where we defocussed the hexapod and that helped us get as close as we could get with alignment.
From last night’s opening:
Next up was CACAO to start improving our AO modes. This took us a while to get set up, especially the IR WFS which we haven’t used for almost a year. By the end of the night we had a 3 modes loop and were attempting to move on but needed more help with the gains gui that was again not working. Tomorrow we’ll keep going!
Here is the MLAT with the IR WFS:
The song of the night is “Diggy Diggy Hole” by Wind Rose:
Hello dear blog friends, I’m back after being away due to beautiful, robust, inquisitive, dynamic, gregarious, exuberant, thoughtful reasons. And here we are at the MMT to observe adaptive-optically again!
The installation was more challenging than usual because both MMTO and MAPS teams were somewhat short staffed, but was still all done well by sunset.
As per usual we started with alignment. Once we got the star on Pisces (with, again, disturbingly unique-to-this-run Az-El offsets), we did a rotational centering test in order to find the chief ray. Not the one where you rotate your images and see where the star goes on the pixels, but the one where you rotate the instrument and see where the star goes on the camera. We started the rotator at -60 and went all the way to +60 — the result was a compact bean (looks kinda like this). We started the rotator at +60 and went all the way to -60 — the result was a large arc (looks kinda like this). (Images taken in strip scan mode.) The center of the bean did not coincide with the center of the arc. The arc did not overlap the bean. We saw the same behavior on the acquisition camera, so it’s not the Pisces mount wobbling. It seems the rotator itself is jumping at the start of a move. And it appeared to be when started from any initial position.
With that diagnosed and the star set to somewhat the average center, we decided to stop messing with the instrument rotator (which we don’t generally move as of yet) and moved on to WFS alignment. This included working on the fibers for the newly re-installed IR WFS, adjusting the tip/tilt mirror settings and checking whether differences between Vis and IR were due to any common optics, and finally closing up at dawn with still an open question about co-alignment. To be continued tomorrow night!
The song of the night is “The Happy Song” by Imogen Heap:
We haven’t said much about GMagAO-X since the PDR went well, but we’re still a key part of the collaboration’s suite of instruments. This week we’re in the Steward news talking about what the future instrument could mean for science:
At first light, astronomers will use a special tool called GMag AO-X, an “extreme AO” coronagraph. It will block out starlight and reveal the faint glimmers of orbiting planets.
“The Giant Magellan Telescope will be a major upgrade for our ability to study planets around other stars, especially when we take pictures of them using the in-development instrument GMag AO-X,” said Jared Males from the University of Arizona.
“The big improvement in resolution and sensitivity over today’s telescopes will open the most exciting science case imaginable: looking for life on those planets by focusing on their atmospheres,” he enthused.’
Read more at the original article: “The Giant Magellan Telescope ushers in a new era of astronomy” by Eric Ralls
Hi I’m here to blog the third and final day of the Magellan Science Meeting. It was a short day, the meeting officially ended after lunch. We spent the morning with talks focused on the future of the observatory and current and upcoming instruments. Including G-CLEF, a high resolution spectrometer designed to be coupled to GMagAO-X on the GMT, to feed diffraction-limited 25.4m primary sized PSFs into fibers for getting high high high contrast spectra of planet atmospheres in reflected light, specifically targeting the O2 absorption line on something like Proxima Centauri b. IF Prox b has an atmosphere and IF G-CLEF + GMagAO-X can achieve contrasts of 10 billion and IF there is life on Prox b then we MIGHT see a deep O2 absorption line. A high risk observation but the highest of rewards! Oh, and IF GMT gets built. Melting-face-emoji. Until then G-CLEF is planning to travel to Magellan to be coupled to our favorite child MagAO-X.
We said goodbye to Jay in the middle of the morning as he is flying off home.
The meeting concluded with discussion groups focused open questions for the future of Magellan. Some of the major topics under discussion: 1. How do we handle the numerous incredible and in-demand instruments that all want to live on the Nasmyth West platform for long times, including yours-truly, 2. How do we handle interruptions for targets-of-opportunity, such as supernovae that need to be observed immediately once they go off, and how do we compensate observers who lost time due to the interruptions, 3. Is there a better way to handle scheduling than giving someone one full night when they may only need 2 hours at the same time over multiple nights. This last one hasn’t affected us so much since we run our own mini-queue during MagAO-X’s blocks, so we can accommodate those types of things, but it is definitely a problem with other instruments and observers.
Then it was lunch and then it was time to go. Jialin and I are both boarding trains to New York, although not the same train… Shrug. Jialin is meeting her mom and they are bopping around NYC, I’m meeting blog-favorite Dr. Joseph Daniel Long for a visit to Flatiron Institute, and a little bopping around as well, as a treat. Jialin got a happy meal at the train station.
One thing I really enjoyed about this conference is even though it was a diverse set of science topics, everyone was doing observing. The speakers did a really good job talking to the diverse audience and making every talk accessible and interesting to folks from different fields. It was nice to see how everyone was using all the numerous instruments and expansive science impact of the observatory we all know and love. Special thanks to Dr Johanna Teske for all the hard work she did to put this together while also supporting the ongoing PFS run!
Catch you later peeps
The song of the day is Drops of Jupiter by Train
