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This is the time of night an astronomer’s workday would be in full gear, but dear reader, your favorite astronomers are all home or tucked into their LCO beds, dreaming sweet dreams. The MagAO-X team, working 24 hours since you heard from us last, have observed our last target, removed our instrument from the telescope, safely trucked it to the clean room, and started to pack it away for its long trip back home.

In this great relay race, Jared, Sebastian and I were the night team. As the rest of our team hit the hay around midnight, our noble observing efforts were met by some of the worse seeing of the run (after 22B, we do feel lucky to only have one or two nights to complain about, instead of the whole run). Around 1, Jared jinxed us with “At this rate, it’s going to be terrible all night and clear up to 0.5 arc-seconds right before we try to close.” In the great cosmic comedy the universe plays on worn-out astronomers, turns out he couldn’t have been more right:

Seems like LCO weather agrees with my high school track coach, you can’t give up the race right before the finish line. So the night team observed until the sun declared our time up, and only then did we begin the task of shut-down and de-cabling.

We passed the baton to Laird and Joseph around 8 in the morning, and I’m told that the craning, carting, tethering, trucking and boxing all went well. I can only tell you what I heard because once Jared gave me the all clear, I sleepwalked straight down the hill into bed. Though I was solidly asleep for the rest of the day-time packing work, the successes did not go undocumented:

Right before dinner, when I finally woke up, we were much further along into packing than Jared had feared we would be. Huge thank you the LCO crew who got us off the telescope so quickly, then helped us even more this afternoon to get MagAO-X in its shipping box. After a leisurely meal, the AZ crew headed back to the clean room and started corralling our doodads into the right corners.

We start again bright and early at 8:30am to finish prepping ourselves and the instrument for the long flight to Tucson. Think of us, as we all try the magic trick of switching to a day schedule on a days’ notice.

With things going smoothly, we seem to now have this mythical thing called “free time” and with it the team sneaked in a little wildlife spotting:

With these fancy new phone cameras, some team members are getting particularly good at the artistic type of astro-photography:

But wait! Where did Jialin and Jay go?? Rumor has it they got out just in time, and are having plenty of good adventuring before their 24hr journey to the US. Travel safe friends! See you Tucson.

Song of the day:

As we watched the seeing mysteriously dip last night just as we thought about calling it, Jared goes “you know that song, the Wellerman”? To Jared’s surprise and chagrin, I had completely missed the entire TikTok trend of covering this New-Zeland Sea ballad. It became popularized by Scottish singer Nathan Evans around 2021 but the original tune can be tracked back to the 1830s. It loosely follows a Moby Dick-esq narrative of a whaling ship being dragged along by an unattainable whale. Jared goes on to explain that the tantalizing 0.5 arc second seeing is our white whale, dragging us on until the last possible photon. With the night and the run ending, this felt more true than ever.

“The Wellerman” seems like a fitting song of the day, and of course I have heard it, all it took to remember was a quick search. How could I forget it? I love a good folk tune… love a Scottish accent… but wow I love a old sea song! What the conversation with Jared reminded me of is that, though I don’t really care for metal, heavy metal, etc… I LOVE Pirate metal. People yelling in general angst? I’ll pass. People yelling about the high seas? Sign me up. A fellow friend in the AO research field and bassist in their own right introduced me to Alestorm a few years ago, an Scottish band that exclusively does pirate metal. I haven’t gotten to see them in concert… YET, but I take this band as the single most impactful recommendation music-wise I’ve ever gotten. So in honor of our telescopes and how successful this run has been, I’ve picked their song “Magellan’s Expedition” for today.

As a bonus, here is Alestorm covering “The Wellerman” because of course they did, everyone covered it, even Kids Bop 2022.

This evening Dr. Matías Díaz, a support astronomer here at Las Campanas Observatory, helped us take a next-level team photo.

Of course, we have more people in our group than pictured, and by the time we visit again in 2024A (!) we’ll probably have even more new members. By then I will have decamped for the Flatiron Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York, but it’s famously hard to see stars there. Maybe they’ll invite me back.

It’s our last night on sky, which is always bittersweet. Tomorrow’s a long day of removing from the telescope. So, what have we got to show for the past 22 days?

• 14 terabytes of high-contrast astronomical data (and counting)
• a new observing mode that keeps light where it should be, allowing us to pass these savings on to the consumer (shout-out to Ms. Lowfs)
• a handle on our induced DM ✨sparkles✨, which will let us unravel the profound mysteries of pyramids (thanks Eden McSparkles)
• a lot of improvements to VIS-X (gaan met de banaan, Dr. Haffert)
• one new extreme-AO-fed instrument (shout-out to Noah & the Ex-Kids, opening for Weezer on tour this summer)

We’re about to commission our knife-edge coronagraph, but this blog post can’t wait. It’s time for the prospective students to choose their Ph.D. institutions, and we must put our best foot (feet?) forward.

Song of the Day

I went to a liberal arts college, which makes some people assume I didn’t study physics or something. In fact, astronomy is one of the quadrivium of artes liberales, and my college had a Department of Mathematics and Astronomy before it had a physics one. It’s physics now, though. So there.

Still, a smaller student body and more flexibility in courses of study meant some interesting cross-pollination between departments. One of my classmates in Advanced Intro Astronomy was named Maurissa, and she was actually a music major. She took astronomy with us, but she also had a band, did stuff with electronics, and was in a Balinese gamelan ensemble. Anyway, she was the one who introduced me to Brian Jonestown Massacre, the above psych-rock band with good vibes.

Bonus Song of the Evening

Sometimes you don’t need something musically interesting, and swoopy synths suffice. Anyway, the blog title reminded me, and after all—we are almost home.

Whelp, it’s getting to be that time. The sun is rising as I type, and it’s officially the 16th. Tonight is our last night on the Clay for 2023A, and tomorrow morning we tear it all apart, box it up, and GTFO.

Another night of awesome seeing let us all catch up on some coding and analysis.

The conclusion of my concert story, which started with the surprise KoRn and went though an awful Marilyn Manson performance, is the band we actually went to see: Danzig. It was every bit as good as one could hope. We were right in front for the whole show. At one point Glenn Danzig reached out and clasped Ben’s hand – legendary. Here is Danzig’s iconic “Mother”:

Recently, a tragic event occurred on the mountain and I am here to tell the tale of the “Empocalypse.” It all began with a hungry astronomer who walked into the kitchen, ready to heat up the favorite meal of the crowd… Upon opening up the fridge that was supposed to be filled with a mound of carefully wrapped empanadas, the astronomer discovered a fridge devoid of empanadas. As the news went around the telescope, the cries of the grieving observers filled the rooms. The empanadas are one of the few things that hold value within the MagAO-X group while we are at LCO, and their sudden disappearance almost started a riot. The dissatisfaction has been reported to telescope officials and hopefully, it will be taken seriously. On the brighter side of things, since the calamity, the snack selection has increased, one of which being a miniature version of the hangry astronomer’s favorite.

On the contrary, we have been treated well on the science side, some might even say spoiled. The seeing read by Dimm dropped below 0.3″, which is a rare occurrence. The TO even called his buddy over to witness such an event. Just when we thought the night would continue to have spectacular seeing and a smooth sail, the seeing doubled by midnight. However, great spectral data were still taken with VIS-X.

Per the title of the blog post, I feel obligated to continue to share other moments of this run that embodies similar energy. Well, truth be told, I am feeling like an ExAO, thus, I am writing a blog post full of content that is deserving of some love and attention (according to me, BAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!)

We have our second special visitor in the telescope. This bird scared me more than the occasional “Chicken Nugget.” In addition to almost giving me a heart attack, it brought a special gift of bird dropping. It was our unsung hero, Jay, who cleaned up after the surprise visitor.

As we are nearing the end of this observing run, it would not be proper to think the kids can still be considered “normal.” Ok, maybe I should only speak for myself, but I do have some evidence of abnormal behaviors.

Regular Animal Spotting

Song of the Day

During my last visit here in December, my music app of choice sent me a recap of my 2022 music journey. My top album was “Bad Mode” by Japanese Artist Hikaru Utada and its title track is my chosen song of the day. I first discovered them a decade ago through my older cousin’s iPod playlist, and ever since, their songs have been on my playlist. As they have risen to fame and become less active way before I was a fan, I have not been able to catch their live performance. It is, however, on my bucket list to be at their live performance at least once.

There are a few hiccups to expect on a night-to-night basis, but in general at this point we’re pretty fine-tuned to the MagAO-X workflow. This means there has been more opportunities to enjoy the finer details of #LifeatLCO before and after our shifts. From going viscacha family spotting on the rocky ridge next to the Magellan telescopes…

…to taking neat synthwave/outrun inspired photos at sunset and twilight. Being my first time here at LCO, it’s a pleasant surprise that this place isn’t *just* a bunch of old telescopes in an extremely arid desert. Actually, not only are the accommodations really nice but the food is also pretty memorable too. If you missed it, check out Eden’s food blog post here. But apart from the nice rooms and good food, I’m happy to see some thought put into various amenities to make life here a lot more bearable.

For instance, there’s plenty of space to exercise and even a well-equipped gym near our rooms to help offset the sedentary nature of astronomizing. I also probably speak for the students among us still taking demanding optics and astro classes when I say that the lodge and astronomer support buildings have super nice libraries and areas to study/read/work.

But back to the telescopes! We were all sad to say our farewells tonight to Dr. Alycia Weinberger (it was nice to finally meet you in person, btw!) because she, in addition to bringing us many tasty snacks, brought a great aura to the control room and we all enjoyed hearing about her colorful experiences over the years here at LCO. She also graciously brought the interested among us to tour the Irénée du Pont and Swope telescope installations. Jialin, Noah and I were captivated by the rich history contained within these buildings and got to see some seriously cool old school machines, astro almanacs, and photographic plates. Thanks again, Alycia!

Of course, nothing beats the Magellan telescopes in terms of splendor but it was still really cool to see how smaller, older telescopes still contribute significantly to science. One evening, seeing estimates from the DIMM and our sister telescope the Baade varied significantly which prompted the idea to go straight to the Baade telescope control system and look for ourselves to see if the online reports were accurate. It then dawned on me and Eden was that we had never seen what is was like in our sister telescope…! So, utilizing the cover of night, we executed a bit of a spy mission to see if the grass was greener or not. Dude, they have a full size fridge, bookshelves filled with actual books, and their living room is way cozier with barely-used furniture, what’s up with that?

I also can’t ignore the times when we have the opportunity to take a break and let MagAO-X do all the heavy lifting for a bit. Although this may come off as us being lazy, rest assured it’s a sign that things are going incredibly well for science.

Song of the Day

Back when I was just a crouton in a wide-open baguette world, I went for glory cooking professionally for a few years before deciding to go back to college and pursue a more technical career. Back then, one summerly tradition was to go with a large group of Arizona chefs to cook for a 3-week long event at a resort deep in the NorCal redwoods for members of the infamous and secretive Bohemian Grove. We Arizonan chefs went to chase those California wages and sweet overtime pay (…aaaand that juicy double-overtime pay for the inevitable 12+ hour days) so in a way, our long hours of observing and the remoteness here at LCO reminds me of my Grove days. Every year, we joined a literal army of chefs in a huge kitchen cooking daily, near Michelin Star quality breakfast and dinner for about 2000 members. This sounds grueling, but actually looking back I really only remember the fun times of the 7 years I returned as a chef at the Grove. (Ehhh, for the most part, at least… well, there *was* a particularly bad year with a couple of very, very catastrophic mishaps concerning 200 pounds of beets and 15 gallons of garden pea coulis that I’m convinced gave me PTSD for a couple of months afterwards, and I to this day STILL get occasional nightmares about this, but we’ll save that for another blog post.)

The song of the day has special meaning to me and my good friend Big Mike. One tradition at the Grove is an employee-only talent show held during the last weekend of the event. Historically, it was ALWAYS a server, or bartender, or valet driver or something who won every year; never any kitchen staff. I guess it was natural that chefs never competed, because we were always exhausted and generally always had too much to do to really find the time to rehearse. But one year Big Mike and I set out to with a plan to finally change that. That morning, I remember bringing my guitar with me to the kitchen and safely stashing it in the dry storage area upstairs during breakfast service. Then, during the small afternoon lull before dinner service where everyone was either putting the final touches on that night’s dinner prep or prepping for next day’s breakfast, we snuck out of the kitchen and went to a quiet corner of the redwood-shaded outdoor dining circle, acoustic guitar and hastily drawn-up lyrics in hand, and did a cold rehearsal for no more than 30 minutes still in our chef whites and aprons. I don’t remember much between practicing and actually performing our skit being that this was back in 2014, but I’ll never forget the assistant general manager on the mic during the employee dinner announcing the winners of that years talent show to hundreds: “And the winners for this years talent show… for the first time in Bohemian Grove history…. are from the kitchen!”

So the song of the day is House of the Rising Sun by The Animals, because this is the song we had performed (in this style) almost impromptu in front of the entire Grove workforce and somehow did it well enough to win the talent show that year. It wasn’t the original lyrics though, we had modified lyrics to describe that year’s experience of being a couple of sleep-deprived cooks surviving in that insane kitchen. I think it actually came out pretty funny, which probably helped our performance out a whole lot. I’m sure those lyrics are still in one of Big Mike’s old notebooks, I really should find the time to ask him to find those pages again when we return back home.