Blog – Page 82 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

MagAO 2018A Day -1: Strike On The Way In

LATAM airline employees are striking. Luckily it didn’t affect my flight, but Katie had to take a different one (that wasn’t why she was late to dinner, that was an unrelated bus problem). Laird is now on a completely different airline, probably will get lost at sea. And our surprise mystery guest is completely hosed. So you’ll have to wait to find out who that is after he finishes the hike from Santiago.

East is always to the right, even down here. — This morning’s sunrise.

Vizzy with holes in its fur! — This is Patchy.

Song of the Day:

A better version:

MagAO 2018A Blog Rules

Hello MagAO fans! We’re back with the 2018A run. My trip started out with a swim workout in honor of the flag of Chile:

Thanks guys! — Master’s swimming gave me a great send-off workout this morning.
[Image description: Collage: An 8-lane, 25-yard “short course” competition swimming pool with a swimmer and coach getting ready to start the workout. Below it, a swim coach standing by her workout, which is written on a white board, and the white board is standing up against a deck chair.]

Viva la piscina — Chilean Flag Workout. I got off to a good start with the blue sky with white star for unity, and swam hard in the white snow of Andes, but I only made it partway through the red bloodshed for freedom before the hour was up and it was time to get going to the airport. It was a great swim and I learned about Chile’s flag!
[Image description: A close-up of the white board with the workout on it. The workout has 3 phases, first a pre-set with fins, then the first part of the main set is a ladder on fairly fast intervals, then the body of the main set is a sequence of 50s and 100s on varying intervals. The 3 phases of the workout are drawn as the 3 main colors in the flag of Chile. And the meaning of the Chilean flag colors are written in between the sets.]

Chilean flag research and workout development and presentation by Coach Janna at Ventana Master’s Swimming 🙂

I hope — A lovely day for a swim and then a 27-hour journey from Tucson to LCO.
[Image description: Another view of the competition pool, with the starting blocks in the foreground and the Catalina mountains in the background. A swimmer is swimming, the coach is engaging with the camera, and another swimmer is resting.]

Now the MagAO team is in various stages of travel. Time for the blog rules for 2018A.

There must be a post every day
Each daily post must include a song of the day
As well as the original song of the day, a cover version must be posted

[Song/Image description: The Chilean national anthem, with lyrics in Spanish and English written on the screen, and the Chilean flag in the background]

[Song/Image description: A pianist covers the Chilean national anthem]

Congratulations Dr. Wu — MagAO’s newest Ph.D.!

MagAO’s own Ya-Lin Wu defended his Ph.D. dissertation and is now Dr. Wu! Congrats Ya-Lin!

The King of MagAO! — Dr. Wu and his happy advisor.

Ya-Lin has used MagAO to study planet formation in many ways, most recently combining VisAO data with ALMA data to study circum-planetary disks. Check out all of his papers on our Publications page.

Ya-Lin is now on his way to the University of Texas at Austin as a 51 Peg b fellow. Way to go.

Greetings from LBTI AO!

UA’s fall semester is done and the campus is nice and quiet. This means… time for an LBTI run!

I’m posting from the LBTI AO remote room in Steward Observatory. I’m helping out with driving the first shift AO for 3 nights. LBTI has two eyeballs (to use Amali’s terminology), so it requires 1 AO operator per eyeball. Tonight, I’m on SX (left eyeball).

Yesterday was the first night of the run and we were closed out due to nasty humidity. The best value last night was 99.8%. There was rain over the weekend and the clouds didn’t clear out until today.

Tonight is the second night of the run and it’s been going pretty well (so far)! I’m pretty rusty with the AO, so Amali has been bringing me back to speed. Amali made a really awesome cheat sheet for AO operations, and it’s been extremely helpful. Data collecting began at 6:30 PM. It’s been a smooth run so far with seeing below 1″ and very few problems. Hopefully this sets the tone for the rest of the run.

The best part of observing is in the snacking. We have some fringe cookies as a good luck charm for getting null fringes. We also have these really good star sandwich cookies, just like how LBTI works!

I will gladly eat these cookies while studying for diffraction/interferometry. — Holiday cookies are best cookies.

We also saw something strange on the all sky cam!

That reminds me - I wonder how Hedwig is doing? — CIA UFO sighting?

Anyways, a Christmas post is not complete without showing MagAO-X’s festive cheer! We have Christmas stockings pinned up on the board in front of the MagAO-X PI’s office. Isn’t it super cute???

Laird would like to point out that he has been extra nice this year. — Next year, we’ll have a fireplace, too.

And of course, a quote for tonight:
Phil: What’s going to happen to the observation run when the fringe cookies are gone?

Good luck LBTI on the rest of your run! Have a very merry christmas, everyone! Until the next blog post. 🙂

2017B Day 14: Not the last blog post

Laird’s blog post yesterday was the last blog post, he said. But today was the day we departed LCO, so usually today is the last blog post. However, he also numbered it Day 15 but the previous day was Day 13. We’ll chalk that up to switching from a night schedule to a day schedule over the course of 6 hours (whereas I took a leisurely 30 hours to switch over… meaning I am still napping during the day, up during the night, and not really sure when the Sun is up or down). So anyway, here’s a blog post on our last day, but it is not the last blog post — that was Day 15. Got it?

Not the last sunset at the Owlery: