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MagAO-X 2019B Unpacking Day 1: The Unpackening

So it’s finally time to write my first blog post! My name is Alex Hedglen and I’m a 3rd year Optical Sciences PhD student at the University of Arizona! I’ve been involved with MagAO-X for the past couple of years, mainly helping Laird with the optomechanical design and alignment of the instrument. My first year project was to design a compact K-mirror (A.K.A. “derotator”) for MagAO-X, which you may see a blog post for in the future!

This is my first time here at LCO, and so far I am loving it. Clear skies every day, mountains as far as the eye can see, telescopes, amazing food, and fellow astronomers to geek out with…you really could not find a better place to do astronomy. It’s “astronomy wonderland” up here.

Today we unpacked MagAO-X, and it went very well. All that engineering and planning really came into effect today. We started the day with a group meeting at 9:00am, with PI Jared Males going over the unpacking procedures for the day.

PI Jared Males going over the unpacking procedures with the LCO mechanics.

The first step of the day was to unpack the electronics rack, which we brought inside the unpacking room yesterday. Immediately after we started lifting the box, the crane broke down! But luckily the LCO mechanics fixed it within the hour, so we were right back on track.

The electronics rack was left in this position when the crane broke!
The electronics rack was successfully lifted upright after the crane was fixed!
LCO mechanics removing the electronics rack from the box.
PI Jared Males is happy to see his electronics arrive safely to LCO.
Electronics rack stored safely in the clean room to give space for MagAO-X.

Once the electronics rack was safely unpacked, it was time to bring in MagAO-X! The instrument was left outside overnight, so once the electronics rack was out of the way, MagAO-X was brought inside.

MagAO-X entering the unpacking room.
The front box panel was unmounted first.
The instrument was rotated and the box was lifted onto 4 dollies.
The MagAO-X cart was assembled around the instrument.
The cart was used to lift the instrument off of the wire-rope-isolators.
The legs were rolled under MagAO-X.
  • MagAO-X was placed onto the legs.
  • We used Laird’s guide pin invention to align MagAO-X to the legs
The cart was disassembled and taken away from MagAO-X.
  • MagAO-X was brought into the clean room!
  • Saran wrap cut off
Welcome to LCO MagAO-X!

With MagAO-X unpacked by 5:00pm and no optical damage noticed, everyone is feeling pretty good. PI Jared Males will sleep well tonight! Tomorrow we will start getting MagAO-X up to speed. Kyle and Jared will work on the electronics while Laird and I work on the optomechanics.

Another beautiful sunset with the MagAO-X shipping crates.
Viscacha also watching the sunset.

Since the song of the day has to relate to the previous blog post’s song of the day, we’re gonna hit it one more time with Britney Spears:

MagAO-C 2019B Day 4: ExoSagan

Today was our first science night, with visiting observers Jayne and Ben from Amsterdam in collaboration with Sebastian from Arizona. Jayne, Jared, and I were all Sagan fellows before becoming faculty, and Sebastian is a current Sagan(-Hubble) fellow at Arizona.

A picture of the 3 Sagan alums in the Clay control room. [Image description: Jared is operating his phone in selfie mode so he’s up close. I’m sitting at the VisAO workstation. Jayne is behind me sitting at the Clio workstation. There are around 20 computer monitors mounted to the desks and walls in the background.]

There were a few hiccups associated with trying to keep the rotator tracking like all other instruments at Clay, but Emily and Amali managed to keep the loop closed and we got great data all night long.

Sunset at Clay. The MagAO-C and MagAO-X teams participated in the tradition of hoping for a green flash. [Image description: Several people stand on a catwalk watching the orange sun set over the distant horizon. The horizon has a orange glow and the distant mountains are blurry.]

The song of the day is the Britney Spears classic “Oops I did it again”:

MagAO-X 2019B Unpacking Day 0: The Arrival

MagAO-X is now at Las Campanas Observatory! The truck finally made it up the hill at about 3 pm, and we got all of our boxes safely off.

The truck appears!

Approaching the saddle.

Coming up the hill towards the cleanroom!

This is an “air ride” truck. Look at all of our stuff!

MagAO-X with ultimate destination in view.

The big box coming off — I was pretty nervous during this step…

Things are pretty busy, with MagAO-C and now MagAO-X unpacking. There are lots more cool pictures, but not enough time to post them.

I spotted a viscacha hanging out on the ASB upper level.

I am bound by the blog rules to give you Brass Monkey, by The Beastie Boys.

MagAO-C 2019B Day 3: Closed loop Trapezium

Today was the super long day through night. Up at 7am for a quick breakfast, then hurried to the top for a day full of instrument removal and installation, then a full night of on-sky engineering tests. The crew removed MIKE, the MIKE guider, and the f/11. The crew plus the MagAO instrument team (including some Classico and some eXtreme) installed the Nas, the ASM, and Clio. I didn’t take many pictures, but I’m sure those will be coming once the new kids on the block start blogging. The live-view camera of the inside of the Clay dome was cool (see Jared’s MagAO-X post). Here’s what it looks like right now (while we’re still on-sky:)

Live view of the interior of the Clay dome while observing. [Image description: It is a black rectangle. A black rectangle with a border and official-looking timestamp that implies it could have come from a webcam.]

Then there was much cabling and testing of cooling, signals, connections, and functionality. This went on past sunset. Then through the night we further tested on-sky capabilities such as the guider, offsets, angles, volcanoes, scripting, focus, and modes.

A beautiful Clay sunset. [Image description: A horizon lit up with light blue and yellow. The yellow/orange sun is setting behind some low clouds/fog in the distance. In the foreground are some vehicles and gravel.]
We ironed out a few AO, telescope, and Clio bugs, and then were able to test some modes and do some engineering. Here we have closed the loop on Trapezium B. [Image description: A log-scale image of stars in the Trapezium cluster around Theta 1 Ori B. Negative star images are from where the sky was subtracted off.]

Turno changed over today too. Had another nice round of hellos with colleagues I haven’t seen in 18 months. It’s good to see everyone again!

The song of the day is a classical classic, Pachelbel’s Canon by the Canadian Brass. I really like their descant arrangement.

MagAO-X 2019B Unpacking Day -1: Almost There

Well we made it through customs, and are on a truck. We expect delivery of MagAO-X to LCO around 2 pm local time tomorrow afternoon.

Otherwise, it was all MagAO-C all the time.

I learned about the dome camera today. You can see Katie and Alex at the lower right, they’re working on Clio’s cables.

A cuddly looking vizcacha. They are almost tame this year.

If the drive goes smoothly tomorrow (which given recent luck, keep your fingers crossed), this is the last sunset at LCO without MagAO-X (for a while).

If you’ve ever been to an NBA game, you’ll recognize this song. If MagAO-X arrives safely, I plan to make Laird, Kyle, and Alex perform this dance to celebrate.