Category: MagAO-C

Mal Reynolds about sums it up:

Here we go.

So to kick things off, we got a good shake from a nearby 5.1 magnitude earthquake. For perspective, it was big enough that it woke me up rattling things in my room, but it didn’t wake Katie up right next door. That would probably take at least a 6.

Earthquakes make us nervous, because our delicate thin shell is at the top of a large tuning fork telescope, which means even a gentle shake like this one could give it a good rattle.

That’s important context for when the ASM electronics decided to be slow to wake up at sunset. Now, of course, our first thoughts were “the Earthquake!”.

Once we let the secondary think about it for a bit while we talked things over with Enrico “How Many Watts RMS?” Pinna and Guido Brusa (thanks for the help guys!), it eventually came up and behaved itself for the rest of the night. I think it’s because we told it that we would sick Anna on it again . . .

But of course, the clouds rolled in. So we spent lots of the night ducking in and out of “sucker holes”, which is highly technical astronomer speak for when you fool yourself into trying because “this one might last for a while.”

We did get a break from the clouds, though, when the network went down. As recently as two nights ago I declared “I think I’ve found all the places we use the domain name servers.” Umm, I was wrong.

Dr. Kate Follette, one member of the greatest class of PhD students Steward Observatory has ever had, arrived today and started her GAPplanetS observing program. [Notes: Kushal and Kyle, you guys need to get it together, it’s 2015, you could at least join Myspace. Also, this is not a MagAO endorsement of any of the advertisements on Kate’s website. You’ve been warned.]

We finally went more than 2 hours without troubleshooting something later in the night, and took a really nice deep astrometric calibration on Baade’s Window:

We’ve seen our friends at the cleanroom quite a bit. They seem happy.

I like seeing scorpions and other critters right outside a door, because that’s clear evidence that they could never ever ever get inside, where we keep our shoes, and where our beds are.

Sunsets like this never really get old, no matter how much work they mean for us poor AO operators.

“we have been threatened by the zombies…” — Roberto Biasi (referring to software zombies)

“I think I’m going to cry.” — Kate Follette (it was scorpion related)

“yikes that is close!” — Laird’s reaction to news of the earthquake.

To be honest, this run is starting to feel like an epic battle and at this point I don’t think we’d be surprised if real zombies showed up. I’m sure we’d find a way to keep the loop closed.

Remember Jared’s Trouble post from a few days ago? He offered a free MagAO sticker to the first person to email what was wrong with Fig. 1. We got a few submissions that noticed the repaired fiber cable — actually that was from a couple years ago — read Marco’s hilarious post about how we repaired it in a garlic-powered session. But no, the problem this time was the LC4 fiber connection was not communicating. Well, have no fear, MagAO’s favorite sister Anna saves the day. Not only did she email us to identify the problem, but she fixed it too! Now that is some initiative right there! A true engineer! Thanks Anna!!!

Related to Anna’s fix, Jared decided it was a good day to tear apart the computer that supervises all the processes going back and forth to the adaptive secondary:

He took out some RAM — apparently there were a few too many GOATS causing the Trouble — and tonight we had a much more stable AO loop!!

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LCO, sometimes you make me feel like I’m the only girl in the world.

As Rihanna says:

And LCO says back:

I was not expecting the majority of the top Youtube hits to be men/boys rather than women/girls covering this song… huh. Well, OK, Daughtry, when are you going to cover this?

This is the end of our three-night run with MagAO. We’ve seen a little bit of everything this trip: our first night featured high winds, while the second night contained several hours of thick clouds. These things aren’t unexpected in Chile in late autumn, but what is unexpected is to be visited by aliens during an observing run! We’re pretty sure that happened tonight, and the all-sky cam caught them in action:

 

The red dot shows where we were pointing, and the blue dot shows the Baade telescope. We had a visitor, and Baade was looking right at it! For some reason (definitely not because it was a moth on one of the filters), it only shows up on the red image and not the blue one. Our hypothesis is that it’s an alien spaceship visiting from a planet around a red M dwarf. We’ve been looking at these stars all week, so it’s only fair they come out and look at us.

Overall, this has been quite a run. We had the aforementioned weather and aliens, and yes, even the occasional MagAO software problem. However, the beauty of observing on a winter night is that even if you lose a third of the night to problems you still get 8 hours of data. Whenever any issues arose, Katie and Jared rose to the occasion, as did our TOs Mauricio and Alberto. With a team like this, there’s never any need to worry.

(Or, if you prefer Bollywood interpretations)

After a too-short time on the mountain (at least we got more than our share of empanadas) we’re headed back home tomorrow. Thanks to the full MagAO team for all the support this week, turning a possibly frustrating run into a successful one, despite the problems. I’m really looking forward to seeing the Nature paper on the close encounter!

I crossed the equator for the first time 3 days ago. In the Caribbean we were greeted by a magnificent light show in the distance — fireworks stochastically set off in a dense mass of ominous clouds. But by sunrise we have arrived in more congenial territory, mountainous country with a jagged horizon as far as the eye could see, whose majesty is paralleled by few sights on the planet. I had a good feeling — of my friends who hail from the southern hemisphere, all are extraordinarily hearty. Something about the down-under latitudes and the inversion of seasons. We took off in May and landed in late November. Lol Earth.

Chile is not exactly as I had pictured. This is not surprising considering outside of astronomy, my impression of this country has been chiefly fed by Alejandro Jodorwsky. The airport at Santiago is very modern and filled with familiar sights like Dunkin’ Donuts, apparently popular with the locals considering quite a few have transported boxes of donuts onto the next lag of the journey to La Serena. Prices are jaw-dropping before division by the currency exchange rate, and even then they are comparable with their American counterparts. The drive through La Serena gave a glimpse into town life — neat, bustling, and not impersonal. The road along the Pacific was oddly reminiscent of California’s HWY 1. At some point we left civilization behind to be engulfed by the endless desert, taking the fork away from the ESO site at La Silla, nearly running into road donkeys, and finally stopped next to the LCO lodging. Megallan just beyond on a local summit.

Life as an observer here is spoiling. The chefs and staffs are always eager to greet and help with any need one may imagine to voice. One can always count on learning some phrases in the Chilean style of Espanol during their stay. Be sure to order scrambled eggs in the morning — an absolute delight. In terms of local products, Ben and I are constantly imbibing Minute Maid peach nectar. I was sick of Empanadas after Sunday but this is apparently a very localized phenomenon (see previous posts).

The hike up to Magellan never fails to be a lesson in atmospheric scale heights. Ben says that up here the pressure is about 0.7 atm (hmm I should like to test the boiling point of water). My breathlessness at the top is grossly disproportionate to this claim. Nevertheless, the ascent beats having a Stairmaster in the basement any day! Our pilgrim every dusk is rewarded by a glorious sunset.

The remarkable things about the best sites for professional astronomy are the silence and darkness. The environment is so free of the white noise one is accustomed to in an urban settings, that it is at first startling but by no means unappreciated. The darkness is prerequisite — this is where you come to verify that there is indeed ‘milk’ in the Milky Way. When the moon is down, it is dangerous to navigate without a flashlight.

For somebody with minimal observing experience (but thanks to Ben this is now less the case!), Katie, Jared, and the operating team at Clay are perfect — alert, knowledgeable, easy-going, making these long nights enjoyable. In between buzz phrases like ‘probe is moving out’, ‘do you want Shack-Hartmann with that?’, ‘AO locked!’, clouds, winds, the collapse of Internet, and software issues, we are having decent runs of good fortune, even if it meant to chase a few sucker holes. I learned that aliens are very commonly sighted in these parts of the world. Seeing an AO system in action is also something. Some of the PSFs and angular resolutions are stupendously impressive. We kept on bagging clean  red dwarf binaries at sub-0.5” separations. Sir Wilhelm Herschel would have been proud.

Which is why symphonies composed by the father of stellar binaries capture the spirit of this observing experience well:

And a cover with slides of Uranus:

(I guess by definition symphonic performances are covers)

Look forward to being back in this beautiful part of the planet!

MagAO run all by myself, smooth and enjoyable week, despite the clouds the high winds and one (that could have been not so small) problem.

After 7 nights I’m ready to go home…  I gave some serious thought about a song that would express exactly how that feels, after a short search I found the perfect one, one that of course complies with all new blogging regulations…

its corresponding cover…

https://youtu.be/s0XGLnEhvwg

But then I realized that the AOistas have a whole bunch of days left, I did not want to cause a massive home sickness wave so I changed it, hence the title of my entry…

The full version…

https://youtu.be/3N5FwBIGLV4

and the cover in Spanish by a Chilean band, no rule against that !

https://youtu.be/eEUU2rtupc8

See you in one week !