I think I’ve had observing time at LCO in every month (though I’m unable to figure out from the records I have on my laptop if I’ve actually physically been at LCO in every month), but this is the best November that I remember. The days are warm and lovely, the nights are clear and crisp with good seeing. “These are the days to hold on to” and “this is the time to remember.” I’m busy using this run to forget the 2024Ab weather.
This is the time to remember
‘Cause it will not last forever
Even though I never forget how beautiful it here, I can’t help taking more photos of lovely sunsets and Venus next to the dome.
Oh LCO, [you’re giving] me the best of you
A lot of Magellan observations are done remotely now, but I continue to think people ought to come and experience the Observatory and learn the instruments in person. There are no shortage of students on this run, of course, given that MagAO-X is so hands-on. And I admit that I am remotely observing on two separate nights in the next month alone. But I hope some others see these photos and want to come. I fear a future when we’re all just looking at screens of telescopes.
Our Telescope Operator, Roger, doesn’t have to walk into the dome to look at the telescope. “time is gonna change”
On a different subject, I have to say that for something not very funny to 9 people sharing one bathroom in the dome, our clogged baño caused a lot of hilarity. Thanks to the heroic efforts (though I will spare you the photo) of Roger, Laird, and Parker, the situation was resolved. Now we “look back and have to laugh. We lived through a lifetime and the aftermath.”
Thanks to everyone (including the missing Jared) for their help in making this a great MagAO-X run. “You’ve given me the best of you”
Song of the Day: Anyone my age knows the song I’ve been quoting as it was absolutely unavoidable in 1986-87 and possibly the prom theme for every senior class in America in 1987. Magellan wasn’t my first love, but “I’m warm from the memory of days to come.”
It’s time to finally call off the searches everyone. Tie up your bloodhounds, turn off those spotlights, and park your helicopters. That’s right, the mountain’s most infamous instrument has been located after eons of searching high and low.
There were fears that MagAO’s near-IR camera, Clio, had been sentenced to the boneyard to peacefully decay as the many instruments before it. However, despite being undoubtedly still weary from her travels, Alycia generously gave the students a nice tour of the DuPont telescope (a.k.a., the 100″) just down the road from the Magellans where they found our Clio and drew collective sighs of relief from all who were around during the golden MagAO days.
Day break, too much light for sleepy eyes
And here it is! The Great Clio! Ready to be born again on another 6.5-meter telescope…!
A special thanks to Prof. Ewan Douglas of Steward Obseratory’s UASAL who was a critical part of Clio’s rediscovery. No need to be humble, Ewan.
Yeah, man. So, after the tour, some of the group decided to make use of some extra time before dinner to prepare for the MagAO-X telescope removal. This Chilean iron is extra dense, I’ll you what. But this dry air will make you soft, so we push on.
Thanks, Elena for serenading us during our workout. Those high notes absolutely helped us push out a couple more reps!
After dinner, Laird, Alycia, and received a nice tour from the LLAMAS team who showed us how the instrument was mounted and talked a little bit about how it all the various systems and mounting fixtures work. 1700 kgs of pure instrumental awesomeness.
The underside of the LLAMAS instrument showing the complicated, but organized network of glycol tubes responsible for the temperature management of the cameras. They use a glycol concentration of 25%, and claim that the glycol should never need to be changed. They also allegedly add a biofilm inhibitor of some sort. Maybe we should try that out?
Some of us got heartier meals for our night lunches than others. Parker’s Pro Tip of the Day is write “extra everything, times ten” on the comment section of your night lunch form to get the homie hookup from the kitchen.
A major milestone in MagAO-X’s career as an extreme AO instrument, Sebastiaan et al. have successfully implemented wavefront sensing and control using a neural network on-sky…! We’ve been learned, people.
In other engineering news, Jared and Eden and I got a 5kHz LOWFS loop locked on one of Sebastiaan’s target for some kick-ass vibration control. Whatcha know ’bout jitter?
Ok, there was actually a lot more that went on tonight, such as Team Jaylycia getting some pro-level data on an edge-on disk. Again, testing the altitude limits of the telescope and the instrument. And probably even more to report on, but we’re pretty…
In a daydream until darkness falls
…sleepy. However, I’ve got one more moment to highlight, as it was the sweetest gesture and gift I’ve received as a direct result of being peanutted. Yeah, somehow peanuts got into my tuna + rice tonight (it was literally just some rice and tuna/shrimp in a white cream sauce) and I took a nasty hit to my health bar. However, one Zyrtec and a bunch of crackers and soda helped me recover enough HP to make it through the rest of the night. Because of this experience, Johnson “The Hook” Johnson crocheted me a “J” protection charm to wear to commemorate my survival. Thanks, man. I owe you some milk.
Song of the Day
I’ve been really into this song during this run. This one really deserves a listen, not only because you all need to see that Warren’s long lost twin brother is a guitar virtuoso, but this guy also pairs one of my favorite music genres (percussive fingerstyle guitar) with a killer voice. Some lyrics found in the body of the post above.
I could feel it from the start: This night was going to be a success. Despite the haze that we could see in the horizon during sunset, the night gifted us a stable seeing and what was cloudy now is clear, baby. Can you believe we are only already at half of the observation run!? Me neither, in fact days and nights are starting to merge in my head by now, and time has turned into a meaningless, fleeting concept. What’s more is that we are really close to a full Moon. Might not be a blue Moon, but the light it reflects still allows for more vitamin D in my body than the one I would get in the Netherlands at this time of the year. Moon, you’re the light that I needed.
Before starting our observations, the pneumatic seal on the secondary mirror had to be fixed, so we had to lower the telescope to 1 degree of altitude to reseal it. You don’t see a telescope do such a big tilt every day!
Tonight was again all about Laird and Jialin and their observations. The driver of tonight was mainly Parker, who was tutored by the more experienced grad students.
We were all really excited about digging digging dark holes, until we realized Laird was using the Lyot mask, but not the Lyot stop. Sebastiaan was very displeased about this. I am therefore obliged to call it control region, and not dark hole, from here onwards.
During the first half of the night we looked for young planets that still have residual formation heat in the iz band. Afterwards, we focused on protoplanets that are still accreting in H alpha. In the meantime, some other folks were working (or testing launch trajectories) on their laptops downstairs.
Finally, I want to acknowledge and thank one of our most affectionate blog readers. Your message really warmed up our hearts today. As a gift, I will show everyone a new animal I spotted today: Carlos!
And you, dear reader, if you are enjoying this blog, spread the word: tell your mother, your brother, your sister, and your friends, don’t let them lose the chance to discover our new song of the day every day.
With us finally getting used to working on the night shift, it sure feels like we have been racking up the overtime hours. However, we still find time to get our daily Vizzy content. I have decided to start this blog post by giving the people what they want…Viscacha’s and behind the scenes footage.
After capturing the cutest photos of those little guys, we continued our content creation with some beautiful photos of Clay. Thank you Jialin for taking this timelapse!
Prior to making our way up the mountain we spent some time pondering the great science advancements we are all going to make.
Alright, now onto the actual science. Tonight was dedicated to Laird and Jialin. The setup went smoothly, and we were quickly ready to start collecting data. The primary science goal for the first half of the night was to search for binary stars and planets in the i and z bands. We began with a target that has been indirectly observed to host a ~5 Jupiter-mass planet. With this data set, we hope Jialin will be able to confirm its existence.
The second half of the night transitioned into H-alpha science targets. This allows us to observe specific emission of ionized hydrogen (around 656nm). This is particularly interesting as it provides valuable insight into accretion activity in binaries or planetary systems.
While we captured some excellent observations, the highlight of the night was pushing the telescope’s limits. As morning approached, we continued observing a target star as it reached an altitude below 23 degrees—remarkably low, considering our telescope operator had previously noted that the scope is not designed to operate below 21 degrees.
We had an all-Laird, all-Hα night. With everything working so well, the most exciting thing going on instrument-wise was the initial setup, which I was able to get in on.
From our control workstation, I dutifully applied the “F-test” (which displays the letter “R”, for reasons lost to history), applied the “J-test” (works as advertised), performed the 253-click process to satisfy the prerequisites for the automated alignment loop, and then performed the other remaining steps when the automated alignment loop ran away. (“Apparently it’s shy and only works when it’s just me and the instrument” — Jared)
Then, we went to look at a star, and instead found two!
Visible near α Eri at almost 12 o’clock, the companion (star, not planet) lies at about 0.25″ separation. Without an adaptive optics system and a decent-sized telescope, you’d have a hard time seeing it at all. With the AO correction, we get diffraction rings around the stars in the scene. That means we can’t get any sharper—or resolve any more details—without a bigger telescope.
Speaking of binaries, we also imaged Mira (ο Ceti), a red giant star with a companion star.
Hmm, one star has a nice core and diffraction ring, but Mira (in the center) does not look as sharp. Why does the scene look so different from the first binary? Baby, don’t you go over-analyze. No need to theorize; I can put your doubts to rest.
Mira is 400x size of the sun but approximately the same mass. So, a big puffball. But the reason for the fuzzy image is not (just) that the star is a puffball. It has to be a nearby puffball for our system to resolve it. We can actually measure half a dozen pixels across the star, though our choice of filter and telescope means that’s only two “resolution elements”. (That’s just physics saying you can use as many pixels as you like but you ain’t getting any more information.)
I regret to inform you that on this night, there were no viscacha observations recorded. But worry not, gentle reader: many graduate students have gone on to have perfectly good careers using only archivalviscachadata.
So, instead, I’ll share some computer stuff.
(Yeah, I know, I know. Just shut your eyes and scroll really fast to get to the song.)
It’s not entirely new this run, but I’ve been doing some shaking-out of the data pipeline feeding our dashboards (among other things). This is what a “normal” night looks like: most of the time we’re open, we’re saving data (that’s the “observing” row on the Observations chart). Since it’s a Laird night, it’s all Hα imaging, and everything’s colored red for our filters and beamsplitters.
Before an astronomer takes exception to me calling this a “normal” night when the seeing was hovering around 0.75 arcseconds, I should clarify that ≤0.5″ nights are the only ones worth seeing, the only place worth being.
Song of the Day
“Cold Cold Man” by Saint Motel
Bonus Literary Interlude
—No multipliques los misterios —le dijo—. Estos deben ser simples. Recuerda la carta robada de Poe, recuerda el cuarto cerrado de Zangwill.
—O complejos —replicó Dunraven—. Recuerda el universo.
“Don’t go on multiplying the mysteries,” he said. “They should be kept simple. Bear in mind Poe’s purloined letter, bear in mind Zangwill’s locked room.”
“Or made complex,” replied Dunraven. “Bear in mind the universe.”
“Ibn Hakkan al-Bokhari, Dead in His Labyrinth” by Jorge Luis Borges (1949)
