Blog

Hi Everyone,

As is tradition I’m writing the last blog. This run has been a bit challenging due to mostly poor weather. For example, there were a few nights so cloudy that only photos we actually saved were of “Hedwig” the owl landing on our all-sky camera…. Hedwig is great but we really came to look at exoplanets! Anyways by the end of the run we did get some good datasets.

The run had a bit of a rough start with the loss of our main glycol (antifreeze) cooling pump.

The ASM puts out ~2KW of heat. All this heat needs to be removed by a liquid cooling system. So we had ASM cooling system in place that pumps about 11 liters/min of glycol through the ASM. But after more than 6 years of use the pump was starting to fail. Luckily LCO mechanical engineers Juan and Carlos realized this and I gave them the spare pump that I purchased 8 years ago (because eventually all pumps die). After a bit of engineering to make sure the pump pressure at the ASM was safe (we don’t want another leak inside the ASM), the happy final result was a new pump that works very well and keeps the ASM nice and cool.

Then on the first night on sky we had some issues with a bad capacitor (position) sensor (DSP 590) that was causing strange readings and leading to diagnostic “dumps” making the system hard to use. But, adding DSP 590 to the act_wo_pos array in the elec.txt file effectively added it to the list of “actuators that cannot read positions well”. Removing this sensor and replacing the pump allowed us to have a problem free run!

So it was great to see MagAO have such a strong run. The ASM, wave front sensor, VisAO camera, and the Clio camera all worked well for the whole run!

This was something of a relief after our tough run in Feb 2017 where we had 2 electronic cards in the ASM fail and our second fast tip-tilt mirror literally “burned up”. So it seems, for now at east, we are back normal science operations.

As usual the run was a success due to the hard work of Katie running Clio (and teaching the new astronomers how to run it), and Jared keeping all the complex software running excellently. This run we also had help from UA graduate student Jhen Lumbres who was a great help running the AO system (giving me a real break). Also Kate came with an undergraduate Clare Leonard. Kate (and Clare) ran the VisAO camera while she was here giving Jared a break. Also TJ and Alycia are expert Clio observers and helped out by running Clio during their whole runs. Ewan Douglas came from MIT and we also had some new observers too from Chile — everyone was great to work with!

And of course a big thanks to the entire LCO staff who keep all of MagAO running well!

I should mention that due to all the snow and rain this winter it is beautiful here –greener than I have ever seen LCO!

Inspired by the lovely green springtime the MagAO team (Jared, Katie and I) headed out for a hike after the instrument was completely packed away. This was, in theory, a hike to see the petroglyphs in the valley carved long ago. But we didn’y really know where to go. And so it was unclear if we actually went down the right valley — but we did find a nice “bell rock” (these “special rocks” that ring like bells) outcropping that had trees (well just two trees but that is a lot here)!

And then we looked more closely at the rocks

And we saw a interesting shape carved into the rock. Below is zoom into the carved region.

Could this be a petroglyph of the ancient viscacha ?? Only the wise viscachas know for sure…

It is that time, time to go back, back to our “shack” of a lab and dream up new AO systems to build…

Well that’s it. The system is completely off the telescope. The NAS with the WFS and VisAO is safely packed away in the Aux, as is our intrepid Clio. The ASM is all wrapped up on the floor of the Clay dome, ready to be trucked down the the cleanroom tomorrow.

If you’ve seen the last several night’s posts, you’ll be up to speed on the comings and goings of our new friend Hedwig, a Magellanic Horned Owl that has been using the all-sky camera as a night time perch. To try to make sense of the somewhat distorted perspective the all-sky gives us of our friend, Katie and I headed down to the area near the Swope telescope where the camera lives to check it out.

The all-sky camera sits on top of the pole you see above the building.

Hedwig has a nice view of the Magellan telescopes from that perch.

Jhen posted some pics from our GMT tour. Here’s another one, which captures the almost lush look of the place after this winter’s precipitation. Povilas is insisting that it’s just like Ireland.

Over the latitude > 0 summer, I’ve been listening to a band called “The Dead South” quite a bit. With a little editorial license, I think their eponymous song is a perfect summary of the run:

Oh pass the rum [ed: Pisco please] on down the line it’s getting pretty cold
It’s been nine [ed: 13] straight days of hell and burning fires in the snow
And I haven’t seen my baby since that old black ship [ed: the NAS]set sail
Still we’re holding out ’till winter dies and hoping our strength prevails

The full moon peaks around the clouds [ed: every night] as the grey wolves [ed: owls] cry
The hour’s getting late and we’ve drunk every bottle dry [ed: ummm….]
Just one more march [ed: flight] from dusk ’till dawn ’till we finally arrive
At the gates of those who long ago burned our houses and took our lives

And we’ll sing
“We are the Dead South who came across the sea
To take back our lives and leave this land of misery
Our will is our weapon our hearts forever bound
Come on now tilt your bottle back and let’s go grab another round”

The wind is at our back [ed: literally] the ground is shaking at our feet [ed: literally]
Marching for the gates we pray our lord my soul to keep
For if we ever get ourselves out from this mess alive
I’ll be singing this song for years to say I’m happy we survived

We’re now starting the long slog back to a day schedule. So here’s an encore from them, called “Delirium”:

A blog post mostly in pictures.

From yesterday:

Tonight was the last MagAO night of 2017B. The night was split between Matias Diaz observing for Blake Pantoja, and Amelia Bayo with her student Daniela Grandon. Mauricio Martinez brought us a giant chocolate bar as a welcome to the Turno and the End of Run gift. Thanks Mauricio! It was great working with him, Matias, Amelia, and Daniela tonight. Even though there were some thin clouds, we were doing mostly astrometry and the seeing was good, so it was a great last night!

When Amelia Bayo first got here, I was reading a paper about the Virtual Observatory by A. Bayo. So I asked her, “Are you A. Bayo?” (At first my English-accent ears heard her name as “Emilia”, but I knew “Bayo” was on the telescope schedule for tonight.) And she is! So it was great, because while I gave her a little tutorial on running Clio, she gave me a little tutorial on using the Virtual Observatory! 🙂

We were so happy that Hedwig came back tonight:

Loop is open.

Dome is closed.

End of night.

End of run.

This is the best — extremely accurate, educational, and fun!

If someone reads this before I wake up and has some spare time and doesn’t mind going down to the basement, would you please turn off the Clio pump? Thanks!

Update by Jared: If someone reads this after waking up, I went down into the bowels of Clay, into the deep dark tunnel, and I think I turned the pump off. But while I was bent over the pump, the door slammed behind me. It was probably gravity, but I didn’t take any chances and just ran for it. I’m not going back down there to check, so we’ll just have to see if the pump is off next time we come back.

Before dinner today, Jared, Laird, Alycia, and I visited the GMT site (thanks Dave!). I had been looking at GMT’s two weather towers in the distance from the LCO lodge since I arrived last week, so I’m glad the tour request went through. The site is still under construction, and it’s pretty much filled with rocks, construction equipment, two towers, and trailers.

As you readers may already know, “las campanas” translates to “the bells” in English. The reason for this is because the rocks here have a particular structure such that they make a bell-like sound when struck with a regular rock. The GMT site has many of these rocks present, even with the site cleared out. They did keep one rock for visitors to play with!

Giddy with glee, Alycia, Laird, and I went on complete exploration mode to find una campana de piedra. We managed to find small ones to keep. When we were leaving the main site, we stopped on the side for more exploring. Laird… well, Laird went all out and hauled a large stone.

Upon arrival back to LCO, Laird unloaded his new pet rock. He claims he’ll keep it by Jared’s hotel door and bang it in the mornings to wake Jared up. It makes me wonder if that’s a better sound to wake up to than the extremely noisy burros. Alycia claims that her campana de piedra will bless her with a night of excellent seeing.

I’ve been learning a lot these past 3 nights driving the AO. Katie, Laird, and Jared have been super patient with teaching and helping me through the whole task, even when I forget sequences and do the wrong thing. Shoutout to Alycia for her patience while I fumble around trying to reclose the loop and dealing with a ripped shell. However! Tonight looks super promising with clear skies, low wind, and seeing at one point dipped down to 0.6″!

Tonight has been going so well that I managed to get an awesome PSF on VisAO while driving the AO! (Michael, if you see this, can this get me an A in OPTI 528? kthx)

The winds were pretty insane yesterday that I was pretty amazed at how the ASM stayed in place. The idea alone for structural engineering astounds me. I have been listening to a lot of Broadway tunes while I have been working on the Fresnel propagation analysis for MagAO-X. So, after the howling winds of yesterday, this was the song that came to mind for me:

There wasn’t a quote yesterday, so I’ll include it now:
Jared: You can even choose the jewelry!

Today’s Quote:
Laird: The way these rocks work is like magic!
Dave: Yes but with science!

EDIT: Look who came back for a visit!

Another long night of high winds, high seeing, and generally no good for astronomy conditions.

Jennifer Lumbres is here learning how to run the AO system. Tonight she got to experience her first earthquake as AO operator.

I think this should count for quite a bit in the Adaptive Optics course she’s taking this semester (someone forward this to Michael).