Category: MagAO-C

2015A Day 5: This Close . . .

We got this close:

This is how much distance is between MagAO and being on-sky in 2015.

We wanted to at least be testing the guider tonight, even if not closed-loop AO. But alas, we didn’t quite make it. The last thing we didn’t quite get accomplished was bolting the NAS to the telescope. It’s ready to go though, and we’ll be operating at the diffraction limit soon.

We, by which I mean Katie, did a little more last minute work on Clio today.

MagAO’s Instrument Scientist has been putting in endless hours in the cleanroom making sure Clio is ready to go.
Here’s another shot of the instrument scientist instrument scientisting.

Perhaps the biggest news is that our adaptive secondary mirror (ASM) is alive and well. It was mounted on the telescope this morning and tonight we powered it up.

Here’s the ASM coming up to the dome floor yesterday.
Look at the beautiful flat shell! The gap is 48-66 microns, unchanged since December. That means no contamination!
You have no idea how good this feels. The shell survived and is ready to rock and roll.
Let the record reflect: on this date the NAS mounting toolbox had a complete set of ball drivers in both metric and imperial units. Hands off Clio.
There has been a minor problem with birds in the cleanroom. This is a reenactment.

Some quotes from today:

“After I’ve been here too long I get kinda giggly.” — Povilas

“The problem with Povilas is that he’s almost always right.” — Laird

“You see Laird, this is why I don’t trust you.” — Povilas

“No, I did NOT ask for double onions!!!!” — Laird

Katie set a new precedent yesterday by posting a cover as the song of the day, but satisfying the 2015 A Blog Rules by posting the song being covered as the cover. See how that works? Well I’m going to follow her lead and start with the covers.

This is a MagAO blog first: the song of the day is by a group of people who have MagAO access — who knows, maybe they have time this semester. Stick around at least through the 3rd solo starting at 3:00, she absolutely KILLS it.

Like any other truly great song, Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” is just as amazing in many very different styles. Here’s a sampling:

And for completeness, here’s the one and only original:

2015A Day 4: Almost our turn on Clay

Laird and I buttoned up Clio and Gabriel and I started pumping it down.

Jared finished tuning the new X motor and installed it:

Jared holds the old X-motor and points at the newly installed new, bigger & better X motor.

And Laird and Jared are testing the motors in the NAS:

Here are Laird and Jared testing the motors in the NAS.

Johanna Teske is observing on Clay/MIKE tonight — see her blog post at Las Campanas Belles. It’s our turn, starting tomorrow night.

Johanna Teske (UA PhD 2014) is observing on Clay tonight, with TO Hugo Rivera.

Quote of the day:
“I know what they’re saying, but I don’t actually understand the words. Mainly because I don’t speak Spanish.” –Laird, after the meeting to walk through the procedure for mounting the ASM (our adaptive secondary mirror) and NAS (our Nasmyth ring with VisAO and the AO system inside it and Clio outside it), which will happen tomorrow. The meeting was in Spanish (although the written procedure is in English, which Juan Gallardo was projecting on the screen for those of us who don’t speak Spanish).

Well I’m doing this a bit backwards, but this is the song of the day:

which is a cover of the following 3 songs:


2015A Day 3: Boom Clap Clio

Ah Las Campanas The Bells. And here are the Belles of Las Campanas:

The Belles of Las Campanas, today. 🙂 Gwen Rudie, Jackie Faherty, Johanna Teske, Katie Morzinski

Our friends Jackie Faherty and Johanna Teske are observing on Clay tonight. We got to give them some various tours and they documented it on Twitter — follow the links of their names for their MagAO Tweets!

Long successful day. We finished all the Clio things. Thanks to all our support on email and Skype! Tomorrow we button Clio up and pump it down. Today involved a lot of good hard work by Laird, Jared, Manny, Juan, me… We inserted the new Brackett Gamma filter, removed some thermal mass from various parts of Clio, fit the APPs in, and documented lots of things. Here we go!

The filter wheels — we inserted the Br Gamma filter through the port (left), and put the blank in the open side in the wheel on the right.
The new vector-apodizing phase plates (right) in the pupil wheel (left).

My animal sighting was a pack of mules, at lunchtime and after supper:

A herd of burros! They don’t seem to like the car, or the cell phone camera.
I see you!
Our first blogged full sunset of 2015A!

And this song…

…so we can hear the cover:

2015A Day 2: Long Stressful Day

Today was a challenge on two fronts. Katie and Laird spent the day performing surgery on our beloved Clio camera. They’re doing some housekeeping and getting ready to install our new coronagraphs and Brackett gamma filter. It’s always fun to open a dewar and take apart a bunch of filter wheels. I spent the day trying to get our new (higher power) X-stage motor up and running. It should be noted that a significant fraction of the day on each front was spent solving problems that only Jordan Stone cares about.

Perhaps the biggest news is that we had our first Viscacha siting. On our last run they were very skittish, but they’re back to being the lazy sleepy grumps we have come to know and love.

Povilas wins the day for his practical joke. He talked Juan into coming into dinner and telling us that our schedule was wrong and that we are due to be on the telescope a day earlier than planned. Ha ha, good one Povilas.

Here’s Clio heading into the operating room.
Clio on the operating table. Think he/she/it will make it?
My day was spent cabling and uncabling this motor (and the spare), and tweaking parameters. I think I finally got it tuned up just before bed time.
Vizzy 1 and 2. No sign of Grumpy. look at those tails.

2015A Day 1: You Can Call Me Larry

Home at last. After our 24 hr delay in Tucson, and listening to all the horror stories from people who had been trying to get to Santiago for several days, as soon as our plane pushed back the pilot cut the engines and we sat on the runway for an hour to let a thunderstorm blow through.

But all’s well that ends well. We made it safe and sound to LCO just in time for dinner tonight. The first steps of preparations are done: dust covers off, some Clio mounting hardware replaced, some organizing, and we checked on the mirror — it survived. Tomorrow the real fun begins, with moving and then opening Clio to add our new coronagraphs and reorganize filters. We also begin work on our new X-stage motor, which is more powerful than the current one.

Larry got some tea at the Santiago airport Starbucks.
Here we are in the van, having just departed el Pino on our way to the mountain. It always feels good when you start this last leg.
The last glow of sunset.

And from the better safe than sorry department, this is not a cover by Daughtry, but it is a cover by a band opening for Daughtry.