Category: MagAO-X

The best way to start this blog is being thankful for the paths that lead me to Tucson, UofA, XWCL, MagAO-X and professor Laird Close. I had an great experience as a visiting postdoc in this academic and cultural very rich enviroment. Of course, none of this would be possible without the generous support of professor Claudia Mendes de Oliveira, PI of the Brazilian participation of the GMT consortium (https://www.gmt.iag.usp.br/en) and one of the founders of the Steiner Institute (https://instituto-steiner.org.br/), actual home of many talent engineers which are in a joint effort to contribute to the GMT instruments and push foreward the astronomical instrumentation in our country. A special mention to my colleague and new friend Rodrigo Pereira, who also take a part in this adventure.

My naïve ambition of contributing with such group of talent people, composing the XWCL, started acknowlodging that much efford and study would be necessary to keep it up with the group fast pace. Every story has a begining, and mine started studing the works of Warren Foster and Maggie Kautz, which were from the onset very kind and generous to me. While I live, I will never forget.

Slowly, the MagAO-X instrument concepts stated to grow up in my mind, all that fog that you face when fall in a new subject was becoming less and less obscure, up to the point I could see some light from beyond. In the mean time, during this prossess, I could contribute with some engineering in the reflective Lyot manufacuting, adjust and fixation mount. It is indeed exciting to realize that some of your ideas are part of a such complex instrument.

However, the cherry of the cake is about to come. There was this one time Laird calls me in his office to discuss his vision for a new module for increasing the MagAO-X capabilities. Simple, inexpensive and powerful! Just with the addition of a few elements, the MagAO-X would be able to perform polarimetric mesurements using AO correction. Such measurements are nowadays only possible in a few other instruments in top notch telescope. Laird asked me to assist him with the implementation of this project, and then, with a polarized beam splitter cube, a quarter-wave plate, and a linear and rotational translation stages, the polarimeter saga has begun.

With comercial off the shell and a few home made part, we came out with the right concept to install a rotation HWP in front of the instrument interface, fundamental characteristic to remove the maximum of induced instrument polarization using the Differential Polarimetric Imaging technique. From the mechanical project to the prototype lots of discutions and attempts have being made. In the end, we have got satisfied with the result. The main challenge were to mitigate whatever could possibly go wrong, because the instrument were located far away on the Clay Telescope, in the Cerro de Las Campanas, and if something does not fit, it could jepardize the whole project. Lesson learned, do not fully trust on your CAD model, you must try as hard as possible to antecipate preventive ajustments!

In the end, we did our best and took our chances. The day to commission the polarimeter was approaching.

The implementation and alignment of the polarized beam splitter cube was a pain for Laird and Sebastiaan, though no task is too difficult for those guys. Recognize, they are good! The artificial star spot were centered in both cameras.

OK, time to install the polarimeter support on the instrument interface, but not before some adjustments…it is a dirty job too.

In the meanwhile, I could practice photography (new hobby) and enjoy the company of wonderful colleagues.

Inrespective of the unfavourable seeing conditions of our commissioning night, we successfully have implement the brand new MagAO-X polarimeter mode. Certainly, a step foreward on the upcoming marvelous astronomical experiment to come from the minds of these talent astronomers of the XWCL.

Along with this last result, I can come back home, carrying all accumulated experience developed to share with my peers, and with the feeling of mission accomplished.

Song of the Day

This song is an ode to intergalactic astronomer, who in their search for exo-planets found a curious signal, using their alien coronagraphs, nearby a typical G2 star.

I intended to write a beautiful entry in the blog someday but Joseph intercepted me emerging upstairs to the control room and decided that I could start writing at 3 am, in our shift of 24 hours on a row, so let me invite you to enjoy my tiredness. Hello everyone 🙂 You can María everything but these days especially me!

The morning went by slowly, as we lifted MagAO-X to the Nasmyth platform. Us, happy minions, were busy hooking screws onto the instrument, crawling around the platform floor, and running back and forth with the ultra elevator. Time froze, as we slowly realised that only a few of the many hours we still had to stay awake had actually passed. The polarimeter almost gave us a hard time, but in the end, it’s installed and working.

We started cabling around noon, right when they decided to rotate the telescope and lower the secondary mirror so Parker could put his accelerometer in place. I got to enjoy riding the platform once only the DM cabling was left though, and they let me move the elevator down (happy potato). As dinner time rolled in, us minions waited for the supervisors to give the okay—though the second we got the green light, we sprinted to the cars… just in case they changed their mind.

But all the hard work had its reward and we could start observing this same night. Let the first night of observations of the 2025A run begin!

I did some photography today, enjoy the Viscachas and the Milky Way 🙂

I keep discovering short stories about the observatory, but in my only two and a half days here I have already learned the basics of the singing rocks, the favourite spots of all our fauna and who are the crazy drivers I should avoid getting in the car with. I am still confused about who shall I talk to in Spanish though…

I haven’t watched any worth it movie lately tbh, but we have been talking about The Sword in the Stone, which reminded me of my other favourite Disney movie, Atlantis, and its most famous quote, only for those of you literate: “Ki-Ki-Kidamaschnaga”. While the rest figure it out, enjoy the song of the day (and night), which according to Joseph we can reclaim from the other MUSE – Starlight.

Before we shut MagAO-X down to prepare it for the summit, we had some last-minute tests to do. Over breakfast, Laird and Jared kept talking about “doing the green laser”, which I assumed was some kind of dance move and/or illicit drug. It turns out they actually wanted to send a green laser through the instrument to identify which optical surface was killing green light throughput, which is also cool, I guess.

This run will also involve commissioning a new polarimetry mode, thanks to our Brazilian colleagues. Here’s some colorful cubes inside our instrument, one of which splits polarized light.

As you know, MagAO-X is famous for its detailed procedures, always followed to the letter. Today’s procedure is called “Installing MagAO-X on the Telescope”, the title of which may fool you into thinking we installed MagAO-X on the telescope.

While we always follow our procedures to the letter, we also change them all the time. Today we enjoyed what in the biz is called a “process improvement”. By splitting the installation over two days (just like last time), we add a bit of slack into the schedule and prevent premature derangement of students and Ph.D.s alike.

Today we de-cabled, wrapped, and moved half of MagAO-X.

The Isuzu flat-bed truck featured in many of our procedure documents is, alas, no more. I think it’s been set free to roam the Pan-American highway for the rest of its days. Fortunately the new(-ish) Hyundai Mighty rose to the occasion.

That means we’ll start tomorrow with the optical table already staged at the summit. There’s still plenty left to do tomorrow (starting with section 6.3.6 of the handbook), but we’ll be better-rested and make fewer mistakes.

Not that we ever make those.

This means we had an evening “off”. (The final evening off for several weeks, for some of us.) We had to make the most of it.

Nature

The most unexpected wildlife of all was a spotting of Felis catus.

Billiards

A few of us were not ready to turn in after sunset, and went in search of other amusements.

Even when given no tasks, the physicists find a way to do physics… for fun.

How disgusting.

Blog Rules Compliance Certification

I only see movies because my friends drag me to them. One exception is airplanes, where I’m forced by circumstance to do nothing for an extended period. There’s also nobody around to incredulously yell “You’ve never seen Alien?!” which is a definite plus.

On the flight to Santiago, I watched Wicked (Part I). It sure was… something. Kind of an odd addition to Jon M. Chu’s directorial oeuvre; I’d rather have Everything Everywhere All At Once (2022) or Crazy Rich Asians (2018).

Anyway, where’s part two of that, Jon? We’re all waiting.

Song of the Day

Bet you thought it was going to be from Wicked, but no! It’s an anime opening theme.

Wait, where are you going? Come back!

It’s really good, I promise! It’s critically acclaimed!!

I frequently find myself running low on energy transiting Santiago’s airport, but the last two times I’ve been saved by Yoko Kanno’s soundtrack to the award-winning show Cowboy Bebop. 10/10.

The Leiden team is so back! It is now the Europeans’ turn to tell you about their magical journey to LCO. Throughout the full blog post, we will also play a little game: Find the differences!

We left Amsterdam without delay and got to Madrid 6 hours before our next flight. Plenty of time to waste and not check properly our next gate yeyyy! To pass the time, Eugenia and I went on a mission: Getting to the medical center of Madrid’s airport because she had to get an injection done. We left Sebastiaan working on a proposal due literally one hour later, and he barely realized we were gone, so we set sail for an incredible adventure. You might remember from the past run how intricated Madrid’s airport can be. If you don’t, I suggest to check it out here. After asking a bunch of people and mistaking our way a couple of times, we found the way to get to the medical center: We had to go through passport control machines, go to floor 0 (basically a basement), then come back up, go through passport control again but in the opposite direction (the policeman had to let us through manually) and then go through a security check (??) to be able to go back to the cafe’ where Sebastiaan was waiting for us. Pretty scary that the medical center of an airport is so inaccessible, right?? Well, and then people ask me why I hate Madrid’s airport. In my favorite movie ever, Donnie Darko, Gretchen asks Donnie “What if you could go back in time and take all those hours of pain and darkness and replace them with something better?”. Well, I know which hours of pain and darkness I want to replace in my life: All the hours spent in Madrid’s airport. With what? With a group of happy viscachas chilling in the sun.

Anyways, let’s bring in some fun: Find the differences between these two pictures of Sebastiaan before we left and when we came back (hover on the pic for the solution).

We then had a relaxing dinner, since there was so much time to go to the wrong gate afterwards. Let’s continue to play with another before-after spot the differences game.

We then proceeded to gate S16 and waited to board. Eugenia even gave us the idea to make an April’s fools joke to our fellow Leiden people saying we have lost our plane. Ah ah ah! So funny! We then tried to board the plane but our tickets didn’t work for some reason. That’s when the Iberia lady at the gate looked at us and said “You are flying with LATAM, gate S44, RUN“. Now, can someone please explain why two airlines that are partners have two flights to Santiago from a same airport at the SAME EXACT TIME (23:55)? In our defense, yes, we knew we were flying with LATAM and not Iberia, but they are partners and also our tickets were printed by Iberia so they had their logo on it. I am honestly surprised we were the only people who were deceived by this badly designed schedule. After running for our lives, we were the last people to board the flight. Pretty scary. So, this is the story of how we were about to loose a flight while chilling for 6 hours at the airport.

The journey proceeded smoothly and we got to Santiago surprisingly rested after a lot of sleep on the plane. Again, try to find the differences between our arrival in Santiago for the 2024B run (on the right) and this run (on the left):

A few hours later we got to La Serena safely together with Joseph and Jeb. Laird was right after us, coming up with the following car. Not tired enough from our long trip, we headed right away to the clean room to (successfully) install new PIAACMC and align new prisms for the Self-Coherent Camera. Laird was also working with Tiago and Rodrigo on the polarimeters.

Right after, we have witnessed not one but two (!!) incredible events: One of the best green flashes ever seen in history – which we have slightly captured in a picture as well – and three foxies together!

Finally, I want to leave you with this hyper-memeable picture that you didn’t know you needed. Simply replace “ribs” with something else. You can thank me later.

The song of the day is a song that a random dude on my last plane made me listen to with his headphones. I don’t know if he stalked me and so he knew my name or if it was just a funny coincidence… But the name of the song is Helena. Enjoy or be creeped out. Cheers! I am going to sleep.