MagAO-X – Page 2 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

MagAO-X 2025A Day 20: you can see yourself out

I regret to inform you, dear readers, that things did not get better. This is not a happy story. Your brave AO operators do not triumph over the atmosphere, because… well it’s a natural phenomenon with a mean streak. We don’t pull an underdog move, miraculously rally, and through the power of friendship get phenomenal data at the last second. We limped towards dawn and the day crew takeover. The last night of the run was a wash, and honestly we’re glad it’s over.

us trackign a star for seeing was also an experiment, technically — When AO is on the telescope, you don’t get red on this plot…

Now that you’re adequately disappointed for us, here are some good things that happened today:

The sunset was beautiful!

Funny enough, it wasn't the clouds that ruined our night this time. — I have a soft spot for the dome reflecting pink cloud glow.

2. The vegan ate well!

Matthijs worked so hard for this photo, you think I wasn't going to put it in? — A meal so beautiful it needed it’s own fancy plate.

3. Baby viscachas are still very cute!

but actually how does something this cute even exist? — Hey! Did you know it’s the hoppy holiday today?

I hope they enjoyed the sunset too — Hey! Did you know it’s the hoppy holiday today?

4. Another Laird theory proved!

During the course of our bright observations tonight, where we were attempting some engineering despite the seeing, we noticed that our performance was way worse than it should have been… when pointing to the south, where the control room is. Camtip (the champ) bounced like a pingpong ball. Then when we point to the north, away from the telescopes, suddenly smooth sailing. Camtip a beautiful steady ring. (Not useless!) A more detailed proof probably forthcoming, but initial evidence indicates AO doesn’t like the telescope pointing at 210-240 degrees. One more thing to think about when picking targets.

The squishmellow is always watching... — The plots to look at are the circular wind plot against the areal view of where the telescopes point.

5. We got Easter candy!

The bunny (or should I say vizzy?) delivery is always a treat, and which treat changes year to year.

weird we end up here enough to compare the candy year to year — Thank you LCO for making the holiday special!

6. It’s Matthijs birthday!

Well, at midnight it was. He went down the hill before we had a chance to sing him a midnight birthday song in the control room, being a responsible day crew member. So happy birthday to our only postdoc! Hope you have some downtime from your rigging intro to enjoy more puzzles.

not a jelly enjoyer — That’s a face that says “yum”

Instead of the sunrise catching him — sunrise caught by Sebastiaan

Given that the atmosphere basically booted us out the door, we’re done here. The last photons of 25A were tallied up, as scattered as they might be. The sun has risen, the DM cables are tucked into bed, and the day crew will take it from here.

Jared is not actually that tall. — Night crew jumping one last hurdle on the way to bed.

Me wishing I was cables. — Tucking cables getting tucked in.

As I successfully got every observer to use my daytime calibrated incoherent speckles tonight, I find this quote specifically apt :

“It’s wonderful when you can bring sparkle into people’s lives, especially under difficult circumstances.” — “Castle in the Sky”, 1986.

Song of the Day

Thanks Joseph for introducing me to the perfect song to encapsulate the night.

AHHHH! by Teen Jesus and the Jean Teasers

MagAO-X 2025A Day 19: A night to not remember.

Much Strehl that once was is lost, for none now observe who remember it. It began with the forging of the Great Weather forecast. Dark clouds were given to the day crew, immortal, wisest and fairest of all beings. Dark clouds were also given to the astronomers, great miners and craftsmen of the starry nights. And nine, nine dark clouds were gifted to the race of the night crew, who above all else desire Strehl. For within these clouds was bound the strength and the will to govern all observers. But they were all of them deceived, for another weather pattern was made. Deep in the land of Chile, in the Fires of Mount Las Campanas, the Dark Lord Sauron forged a master pattern, and into this pattern he poured his cruelty, his malice and his will to dominate all astronomers.

One by one, the targets of MagAO-X fell to the power of the Clouds, but there were some who resisted. A last alliance of night crew and bright stars marched against the armies of the Chilean Clouds, and on the very slopes of Mount Las Campanas, they fought for the Strehl of MagAO-X.

And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years (that’s how long it felt), high Strehls passed out of all knowledge. Until, when chance came, it ensnared another bearer.

During this night we struggled to keep the loop closed because our targets fluctuated in intensity by 5 magnitudes. This is an enormous amount. Eden bravely fought against changing conditions and sometimes she prevailed. But most of the time it was just a blood bath.

At the end of our 16th night everyone was slowly losing their minds. This led to a long string of making Maggie-O-X tell us jokes. Here is a fine selection of amazing jokes:

“Why did the AO system miss the coronagraph? Because it overdrove.

“What do you call an observer who is waiting for the sun? A dreamer.”

“Why are AO operators never scared? Because they already saw their own 3 AM face.”

“How many photons do you need for high Strehl? More than we got this night.”

“What is brown and sticky? A stick.”

“This night was not completely useless. It will forever serve as a bad example.”

“How do you talk to Italian ghosts? With a Luigi board.”

“What’s black and white and red all over? The tweeter.”

“No more adaptive optics for you!”

I think I have added enough movie quotes to the blog post today. At least this music might give us hope for another night.

MagAO-X 2025A Day 18: The ‘whoa’ day

Hello guys, is me again eh eh.

It’s very good to see you!! I was not here for your last run so I kind of missed you.

This run in particular felt a bit weird because you’ve been here for such a loooong time. I met the first shift and the new team members (at least, new to me). Then I went on my off-week, came back, and you were STILL here! Haha!

I’m surprised by how much Asian stuff you bring in.

This time, you really outdid yourself with the amount of snacks you brought. I’ve tried them all, although I especially enjoy trying new things, especially the sweet ones. I’m glad you were able to bring merkén chips, and I hope you enjoyed them! They’re not spicy, but they’re very flavorful.

As I was saying, my shift started again, and I met your second group, the other new members (new to me, at least), and all the new snacks you brought! I loooooove those chocolate-covered blueberries, I kind of expected them, haha. But this new group brought more spicy stuff, and I tried that Tom Yum Snack Mix… it was waaaaaay too spicy, haha! It was so spicy I almost choked!

I took a bite and almost choked to death — it was fiery!

I hope you enjoy the cuchuflis and alfajores with manjar … very typical from here, just a bit of Chile for you.

The not fun part of your run is the clouds. With Rebeca, the new TO, were expecting the meteoblue got it wrong. But the clouds finally arrived and I am glad you have a plan for that, still, not fun for anybody. Buuut, before the clouds arrived we had a whoa moment!

So I went outside and my mind was “WHOA, I have to share this“, so I ran to you but I could not find the cohete word. But before I finally said rocket, everybody stood up from their seats and went to see this cloud that was moving so fast — it only took a few minutes to cross the sky. The picture actually turned out really nice. The very exciting phenomena that we saw was an OVNI (UFO) but probably a rocket.

The 3 Marías (Orion belt), the OVNI, Clay and Laird bogey.

During my shift off I saw a relatively old movie, but ChatGPT helped me find it: He’s Just Not That Into You. In it, there’s a line that goes something like: ‘Exceptional cases are just that, the rest of us are just the rule.’ At the end of the movie, it leaves me with an important reflection: to truly be the exception to the rule, one has to see the signs and, above all, believe them. That being said, I’m really grateful I got to meet you and share some fun moments together — getting to know you and learning about the amazing work you’re doing for astronomy.

One very fun song for you, its kind of old, sung by a little girl who is now a woman but for some rare reason the song is popular again – I couldn’t found the new official version sooooo here you have “Dubidubidu” by Christell one interview version.

MagAO-X 2025A Day 17 – The ballad of the guac and the Yorch

At the usual Chilean diner
Satisfying our guac desires,
Huge chips to dip at hand
To face a long night ahead.

“My comrade won’t join tonight”
Said Sebastiaan with a sigh,
“I shall bring him food at once,
For EFC to have a chance”.

As he ordered a full plate
“His name is Josh”, he said.
Yorch Clay – wrote the chef,
For he did not understand.

Then everyone followed the captain
And drove or walked up the mountain
To observe the target PDS 70
Which is forcefully our favorite.

To set up for observations,
One must meet some expectations
This is why, behind the screen
A known face started to peer.

Are you pushing the right buttons?
To ensure everything functions
Jared glances, with narrow eyes,
Guarding Josh as he drives.

If you’re wrong you will hear
“Well, this little maneuver
Is gonna cost us 51 years!”
And you don’t want this in your ears.

Ps. The movie quote in the poem is from Interstellar, one of my favorite movies of all time!

Song of the day

Every Breath You Take – The Police

MagAO-X 2025A Day 16: Excellent Extreme Experimenting and Engineering

Today the honour of blogging is all mine (Matthijs). A few of us went up before dinner to start preparing for a busy night full of experimental engineering observations (in particular Sebastiaan after he had stayed up until 10.30am to align VisX again). During daylight we of course managed to enjoy the company of some of the cute critters around here.

Sebastiaan started out the night with some observations of Betelgeuse, until it got too low and the ADCs which we only noticed because of our most underrated camera (which deserves more praise). After that, Elena spent some time looking at the self coherent camera (SCC) imaging.

During this observing run Sebastiaan and Josh have attempted multiple times to use EFC for some deep dark hole observations of Alpha Centauri (in order to please Jared). These observations have been tarnished by bad seeing, bad calibrations, fluctuations in the laser power and alignment issues. Here’s an impression of what that did to Sebastiaan:

Sebastiaan getting headaches thinking about how to get EFC to work

However, today was the day that all the stars aligned, good seeing, good calibration, good alignment (scripts) and it finally worked.

Eden has been looking at some donuts all week (no one knows why) but she’s finally figured out to turn these donuts into some (possibly) correct Strehl estimates (camtip FTW).

Myself, I interjected myself between some observations just to try out my semi-analytical FLOWFS control loop (of which I forgot to take a picture…).

Elena also managed to get some pretty PIAA observations.

In conclusion, we are doing great and if I had to summarise it in a movie quote I would say: “Desert power” – Dune 2021 .

Song of the Day

Someone mentioned potentially observing a target with 1612 in the name (or I might have imagined it) but this song has been stuck in my head all night. Enjoy!