Well the system is back in storage, and we’re good and ready to get out of here.
The ASM heads around the bend after another sucessful MagAO run.
We couldn’t go even one last day without troubleshooting something. We did a bunch of testing on our recalcitrant “X stage” motor, including spending some time on the phone with an engineer at Copley Controls. It looks like we made some progress, but unfortunately we won’t know until November. One important detail is that it almost certainly isn’t my fault.
Last troubleshoot of 2015A
We also attacked our atmospheric dispersion corrector (ADC), which has been suffering from some mechanical interference (that means parts rub against each other and so it stops spinning). We figured out how to shim one of the motors, which made a big improvment. Fingers crossed for next time.
Maybe we fixed the ADC finally.
It felt really good to be awake with the Sun up. We got to see parts of LCO we had mostly forgotten about.
The was really cute baby burro around this morning. It’s watching me take this picture.Is this really the first poop-covered mirror selfie of the run? I hear Alan is coming in a few weeks.Flowers are blooming all over the mountain
Today I saw: Laird going down. Jared going down. The sun coming up. Laird coming up. Kim and Katie going down. The ASM coming down. Jared coming up. Clio coming down. The NAS coming down. Laird going down. Jared going down. Jorge, Povilas, and Francesco coming up. The sun going down. Katie coming up. The moon coming up. Katie going down. Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn staring back at me. The twin Baade and Clay telescopes spinning silently on their mounts. The Milky Way streaming across the sky. The Magellanic Clouds shining with the light of billions of suns. Buenos noches.
Top: The Clay telescope with the MagAO ASM yesterday. Middle: The MagAO ASM today. Bottom: The Clay telescope with the f/11 secondary mirror.Juan led the crew in removing the ASM (top) and Clio and the NAS (bottom) from the Clay telescope today.Clio, the NAS, and the ASM parked in the Aux.I watched the moonrise through some clouds at the horizon from my cleanroom perch.The Clay control room was pretty quiet tonight. Good luck, guys.Condors always make my tail curl — but I think I’m pretty safe here.That’s what’s up.
Well, the last FITS data files of 2015A have been read out, and MagAO is in the process of being tucked away for a cozy rest until 2015B. I had the last night of the entire run, and just like back in November, we observed well into morning twilight — no photon left uncollected! I’m so excited to see what these data have in store.
Here are some highlights from the last science night:
– We finished the last night on MagAO with nice steady 0.5” seeing — really great conditions, especially at the end of the night. Cerro Manqui and its surrounding atmosphere continued to smile upon us!
– Pyramidal chocolate (Toblerone): the ideal confection to consume while using a pyramid wavefront sensor. Thanks Katie and Laird!
(most of) The chocolate pyramid. Not so great for sensing wavefronts, but significantly more delicious.
– I got to run Clio and the AO system at the same time! (briefly.) I’m not up to TJ’s triple-threat AO-VisAO-Clio skills yet, but hopefully next time I can learn to run VisAO too. 🙂
– Jordan learning to run AO with Laird, and running the system for my program (awesome tiger hat sadly not pictured), which was super helpful.
– Sniffles throughout the control room… Not a positive highlight, but since almost everyone caught the same cold virus, we did have quite the symphony of sniffles going on.
– Jared unwittingly demonstrates his VisAO spidey senses: To start putting everything away, the team had staggered waking shifts: Laird at 8 am, Jared at noon, Katie in the afternoon (after she ran VisAO and AO for me at the end of night). Therefore, everyone departed the summit at different times during the night. Jared went back to the dorms and to sleep around 3-4 am, but woke up spontaneously a couple hours later and asked us how things were going… precisely when we ran into some camera/GUI issues with VisAO. The uncanny timing can only be attributed to his innate connection — shall we say a sixth sense — to VisAO and subconsciously hearing its cry for help.
After taking the last dark frames of the run this morning, I went up to the chamber to see what Katie and Laird were doing to put Clio away and start taking off the adaptive secondary mirror. Many hot-pink zip ties were detached (the zip ties holding up wires/cabling are color-coded, so you know exactly which ones to remove at the end of the run — so clever!)
Katie and Laird produce a zip-tie battlefield as they get ready to unplug Clio.
I also got to see the telescope tip down, as Laird and the many amazing engineering folks started to safely remove the secondary:
A snug fit within the telescope dome. Notice the curved handrail for the secondary.
Then, well into the morning, it was time to head back to catch a couple hours’ snooze before taking the van back to the La Serena airport.
9 am, after a good night of data collection.
Jordan and I had the same flight to Santiago, so we had some extra time to grab lunch at the airport (best place to get gigantic sandwiches!):
This photo doesn’t do justice to the immensity of his club sandwich. We sadly missed empanada day, but the airport restaurant was surprisingly good!
As Jared and Katie mentioned in the blog, I arrived a few days early to help with observing before my night. Other highlights have included:
– The first-ever sunny day I’ve seen in La Serena (from the Las Campanas Observatory headquarters, where the astronomers wait in between landing at La Serena and heading up to the summit):
LCO headquarters.Sunny La Serena! Not so when we left.
– My first-ever Cerro Manqui viscacha sightings! So precious.
Lurking in plain sight…Aww! The noble vizcacha, also known as “wise, weird rabbits with cinnamon bun tails”
– Some fantastic sunsets (Venus too), though not given proper justice with only my cell phone camera:
This has been an really exciting opportunity for me to learn lots more about MagAO! And it’s been great fun to overlap and interact with the other observers on Clay and at Baade: Alycia, Amanda, Atom, Jordan, Dave, Nestor, et al. And of course, a great experience to learn some new skills from the resident AOistas. Thanks again for having me, and for providing excellent support during my science night too. 🙂
Many thanks to Hernan for taking this photo — and to both Hernan and Jorge for their great telescope operation support during my night too!
Time for music! It’s probably safe to say that MagAO+VisAO+Clio2 is one of the “pride and joy”s of Magellan/Arizona, and so I leave the last science night with an excellent blues piece along these lines. But first, you MUST listen to the wonderful cover, performed on nothing less than a child’s Cars™-brand guitar from Walmart:
And the original by Stevie Ray Vaughan:
Alas, no Daughtry or Weird Al covers were available in this case. But never fear! There’s always some of that Weird Al brand of magic to be found:
Home is where I want to be… Guess we must be having fun… Feet on the ground, head in the sky… Cover up and say goodnight… Hiyo… I got plenty of time…
I guess that this must be the place…
And the run is almost over… I think we’re going to make it! We’ve had some good guest bloggers lately so I’m going to be posting some new and old pics, since I haven’t blogged in a week.
Also, I’d like to shout out a happy 45th anniversary to my parents today! <3
Here we go:
Cerro Manqui delivered a gorgeous night to us tonight -- like a gift to Jared and me for these 6 weeks of hard work, we got some really good observations on some of the MagAO Team's top targets:
[caption id="attachment_7612" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Cerro Manqui delivered for us tonight — other than a few weird waves of seeings, probably caused by the low winds — the slowest turbulence we’ve ever seen making its way across the shell — no winds, no clouds, and amazing seeing for almost the whole night![/caption]
Jared made a video of the loop closed and then open again, also showing the visible-light PSF:
Laird taught Jordan how to close the loop on a pyramid wavefront sensor and adaptive secondary mirror, and I refreshed Kim on running Clio: The control room tonight — Laird was teaching Jerdun how to run AO, and Kim was running Clio
But just a few days ago, Kim was closing the loop, and Amanda and Atom were running Clio: The control room a few days ago — Kim was running AO, and Amanda was teaching Atom how to run Clio
It was a bit cloudy during some of Amanda’s time, so she suggested we lock on Saturn’s moon Rhea — here we are with the rings on Clio! See more of the planetary science we did in her post. Saturn! Amanda decided to try locking on the moon Rhea which you can see centered in the guider here. And were able to see the rings on Clio! A fun target!
Larid brought some treats: Laird brought me chocolate — thanks!
I saw Vizzy a couple days ago: Vizzy a couple days ago — still hanging out at the clean room
Sunset on one of Amanda’s/Alycia’s nights: Sunset a few days ago — no clouds in the sky tonight though!
Home is where I want to be… Feet on the ground, head in the sky… Cover up and say goodnight… Hiyo… I got plenty of time… Home – is where I want to be / I guess I must be having fun …blogging
Song of the day:
Music Video:
Live:
Cover:
Home is where I want to be
Pick me up and turn me round
I feel numb — born with a weak heart
I guess I must be having fun
The less we say about it the better
Make it up as we go along
Feet on the ground
Head in the sky
It’s ok I know nothing’s wrong… nothing
Hi yo I got plenty of time
Hi yo You got light in your eyes
And you’re standing here beside me
I love the passing of time
Never for money, always for love
Cover up and say goodnight… say goodnight
Home is where I want to be
But I guess I’m already there
I come home — she lifted up her wings
I guess that this must be the place
I can’t tell one from another
Did I find you, or you find me?
There was a time
Before we were born
If someone asks, this is where I’ll be… where I’ll be
Hi yo We drift in and out
Hi yo Sing into my mouth
Out of all those kinds of people
You got a face with a view
I’m just an animal looking for a home and,
Share the same space for a minute or two
And you love me till my heart stops
Love me till I’m dead
Eyes that light up, eyes look through you
Cover up the blank spots
Hit me on the head, I got
Ah ooh
Imagine you’ve got an invisible treasure in a shopping cart with two broken wheels. You’re blindfolded, and you can only keep the treasure if you can push the broken cart to an exact location on a giant noodle flopping in the wind. That’s MagAO/Clio spectroscopy.
Since I want to take spectra of “faint” companions to nearby young stars, I have to carefully set the angle of my targets to be parallel to the slit. The slit angle changes a lot.
The slit position, angle and offset, is not repeatable
Throw clouds and power-outages into the mix, and suddenly trying to limp a star onto a moving target becomes quite the challenge.
I did get some good photometric data and perhaps some usable spectra. I’ll have to wait and see how the spectra turn out.
Maybe I’ll learn to compile target lists of 0th magnitude stars and observe without the rotator. But until then, I’ll be pushing instruments to their limits!
