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2017B Day 3: So cold even Clio is trying to get warm

Kate and her student Clare arrived safely today. Their first night is tomorrow night but tonight they helped with trouble-shooting and ran VisAO.

At the end of last night, I was thinking, “Well, that went pretty smoothly, we got on-sky so fast, tonight we’ll finish our engineering early.” Hah.

Today Juan woke Laird up in the afternoon to come help with the ASM cooling pump, which the crew had to replace because when we powered it up yesterday, it was making strange sounds and on its last legs. But getting the new pump working with the proper pressure was not easy, and it took Juan, Laird, and the crew until a couple hours after supper.

Then we went on sky and closed the loop again. But the rotator stuck again as it had yesterday, so we finally decided we had to drag Pato and Felipe out of bed to come trouble-shoot that issue as their work during the day hadn’t yet solved the problem. They were able to fix it… and even said they suspected we would have to call them at night, since they knew that hadn’t been able to reproduce the problem during the day.

Laird, Jared, and Kate spent a couple hours getting the new SDI+ mode to work with the proper offsets and with the rotator to successfully place the star on the VisAO detector.

Meanwhile, about this time I noticed that Clio had warmed up from 54 K to about 67 K. Pretty alarming. So I went out on to the platform to investigate, and noticed the cork was missing. I surmised it had popped off while the instrument was upside down for the rotator tests, about an hour earlier. Oops. So I got out a spare cork (thanks Manny!) and popped it in, and came in and checked the temperature… good, it was dropping! Kate and Clare accompanied me down to the loud scary pump room to make sure the Clio pump itself was ok (since it was pumping on dome air for an hour or so) and it seemed fine.

The new cork at the end of the hose (upper right) for the vacuum pump that lowers the pressure to bring the 77 K liquid nitrogen down to 55 K solid nitrogen

But then I noticed, an hour or so later, Clio was warming up again. Again I checked on the pump (Clare kept me company again), but it seemed fine still. And everything on the platform looked ok. So I surmised that we must have dumped a lot of nitrogen in the initial instrument flip during the rotator trouble-shooting, so Jared came out with me to fill Clio with LN in the middle of the night. Then I put the vacuum pump back on and monitored the temperatures again… lo and behold now the detector temperature was dropping nicely!

Temperature vs. time for the Clio optics and detector (in K), as well as the heater level (in percentage), since yesterday. X-axis is in hours.

Clare and I were talking about swimming today. Here’s the 2012 US Olympic swimmers, I love this video:

2017B Day 2: On Sky!

In a new world record, the crew installed the ASM, the Nas, and Clio all in one day. After dinner we finished connecting and cabling everything. We went on sky and closed the loop around midnight. Clio is still getting down to a cool 55 K (-218* C or -360* F). It started out at 287 K (14* C or 57* F) and it was a long cold day for me yesterday:

Cooling down Clio. I am acclimated to temperatures like the 38* C (101* F) in Tucson yesterday, so I was wearing all of my wool and down to try to stay warm as I spent the day in a 56* F (14* C) room with a 77 K liquid.

Laird worked all day today with the crew, with Jared and I joining later so that we could sleep a bit during the day to be up all night. Pato Jones helped Jared and Laird cable the Nas, turn on the guider, and balance the rotator:

Here Pato and Jared are during cabling of the Nas. Good thing Pato is wearing his hard hat.

We had some trouble shooting to do after getting on sky and closing the loop. This included the Clio motors, nodding, rotating, and at the end of the night the ASM was complaining because it was too cold, so we were trying to let it warm up. We also had problems with X11 windows being too slow on one of the default computers in the Clay control room “Guanaco”, so we switched to a computer of our own:

Jared at the new AO work station with high-speed X forwarding. Meanwhile, Hernan edits the night report to notify the day crew of the rotator issues.

With the loop closed and before I tried to change any filters, I managed to measure the focus position in one Clio filter, 3.3um:

Closed loop image of a bright star at 3.3um with Clio, and a good focus curve

Well, we’re happy to have gotten on-sky in the fastest time ever, so we will leave it at that and head down to a delicious LCO breakfast:

Breakfast at LCO: Fresh squeezed orange juice, strong tea with heated milk, oatmeal with heated milk, and two fried eggs with avocado

2017B Day 1: Too Cold from The Old Pueblo

It’s not thaaaaat cold, just above 0C [32F]. But you have to remember we left months straight of 38C+ [> 100 F] in Tucson. Our blood is thin, you know?

MagAO is ready to bolt on the telescope tomorrow. We spent today unpacking the ASM, moving it up to the summit, cooling Clio, and doing startup checks and cleaning on the NAS. With no new things to install and test, and nothing broken* after the last run, it was an easy day.

There was a big snow storm a few weeks ago. Here are the remnants by the Clay.

Katie spent the day making it snow inside Clio, but this was already there.

I think Vizzy doesn’t remember me.

Vizzy scrambles across the clean room awning.

The real problem is the wind. James Herriot called it a lazy wind — it can’t be bothered to go around you, it just goes through.

*That we remember.

2017B Day 0: Arrived at LCO

Guess what… we’re back! Laird, Jared, and I made it safely to LCO after 27 hours of travel. Clio is already on the vacuum, pumping down since Tuesday thanks to Jorge Bravo. The sunset was cold and beautiful.

Top: At sunset time, a picture towards the snow-capped Andes to the East. Bottom: Clio is where I left it, and evacuating nicely already.

And by the way, Kesha’s back too. Hopefully our 2017B run will be just as powerful and beautiful as this new work of hers:


Short-and-sweet 2017B Blog Rules:

  1. There must be a post every day.
  2. There must be a song-of-the-day every day.

 

2017A Day 21: A Very Successful MagAO Science Run Ends

It has been a great recovery for MagAO from the terrible glycol leak of last year. We have now completed our first science run and it was a big success with a completion of the February targets that we failed to get last year now completed. As readers of this run’s blog posts know it was a tough run with losses of 2 DSP boards for the ASM and the loss of the PI TT mirror. But we fixed what was broken and carried on doing science. In fact, the last 5 days were straightforward with full AO uptime, and prove that MagAO is fully back in the science business.

So after 21 days and nights at LCO Jared, Katie, and I finally left LCO today. But first I got up very early because the most important piece of equipment in all of LCO is the 20 year old ISUZU flatbed truck. It spends its life running around the observatory and driving to La Serena and back. It is the only way to get the ASM from the Clay telescope to the clean room (some 500 years down the road from the telescope) where the ASM is stored when it is not used. The ISUZU had an hour free this morning to bring the ASM down the mountain! So I was excited to get the ASM down from the telescope.

It is easier to get time on the Clay telescope than the Isuzu truck…

Yesterday we had a super full day of complex crane and mounting and cabling work (see yesterday’s blog post by Katie). Through it all Juan Gallardo has overseen almost every single mount and dismount of Clio, and NAS, and ASM that we have done over the last 6 years! The safety of MagAO is in great hands with Juan. Thanks Juan!

Juan and Nelson secure the 1040 lb ASM to the Isuzu truck at Clay

I should note that the head mechanics Nelson and Felix are the key people that help Juan with all these crazy difficult tasks. Since Nelson and Felix work different tournos (week long shifts) you never see them together (except at the magical Tuesday morning when the shifts change) so here is the photo of these two amazing individuals below. These are the only guys I trust with wrenches and 5/8th bolts over my optics.

These guys at great
A rare photo of Felix and Nelson head mechanics from each shift -together

Now the ASM is all packed away till the next run. It is nice to being back to doing science with the ASM after all the repairs of the last year.

Here is the ASM packed away in the clean room with help from Charlotte.

Also the NAS was packed away by Jared in the AUX building

The NAS at rest in the AUX building

And Katie put Clio in its special office…

Clio in its personal office in the AUX building

Now Jared and Katie are finally getting some well deserved rest in the LAN VIP lounge (where I’m writing this post).

I remember that photo from the start of this run....
Finally some rest !

And last but not least in honor of our visit ending and going down to the airport the cooks made a going away gift for all…

Our ride….

also it is a well known blog rule that the last post of the run doesn’t need to include a song if posted by the PI (hence no song)