The SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation conference is the main event for instrument builders world-wide, and this year is held in Montréal, Quebec, Canada. The conference is held every two years (because one year is nothing in instrument project timelines) and the last one would have been in 2020. (But then, the plague.)
Anyway, we have a lot of new stuff to report from MagAO-X, and from our friends in UASAL, SCExAO, and beyond. See the schedule at the end of this post. (We’re just jazzed to be here.)
Today, the first team member to speak was our fearless leader with a status update on MagAO-X Phase II and future plans.
Olivier Guyon gave us a version of his Spirit of Lyot talk, which was fortunate, because that gave some of us a second chance to absorb and understand it. (There’s a lot going on over at SCExAO!)
Sebastiaan was tapped to present as a substitute for a team member who wasn’t attending, and he gave us an overview of image quality calibration from WFS PSF deconvolution (work by Jacob Trzaska) and his own predictive control algorithm (Data-Driven Subspace Predictive Control—DDSPC).
Blog Rules
It’s been a while since we had a Blog Rule, beyond the compulsory Song of the Day. So, here’s my rule for the week: les chansons doivent être en français.
(The songs must be in French.)
Bonus points for chansons Quebecois!
Song of the Day
“Je Veux” by Zaz
Today when I went to get a coffee en route to conference registration, I opened with a “bonjour,” following the advice for anglophones in a francophone world. Then, I asked “English OK?” and the barista said “Yeah, sure! My French isn’t that good.”
Today was the last day of the conference! We saw many great talks (mostly about PDS 70 and HR 8799…) and many of us have left excited to get back to work and Reduce! That! Data!
Today was a half day and that meant we were finally able to roam free and see the beauty of the Netherlands. Logan, Joseph and I headed over to Den Haag to check out another city.
We saw beautiful architecture…
… gorgeous flowers…
And some authentic Dutch boba tea～～～！ ( ❛ ᴗ ❛ 🌸)
It wouldn’t be a trip to the Netherlands without seeing a Dutch art masterpiece so we went to the Mauritshuis museum of fine art…
…where we saw the famous painting “Girl with a Pearl Earring” by Johannes Vermeer.
Seeing the painting in real life fell a little flat. We much prefer our own take on the Vermeer master work, so we fixed it. “Jared with a Pearl Earring” belongs in a museum don’t you think?
Switching out the paintings caused such a commotion that a protest rapidly formed outside the museum.
Or, was it just a coincidental and totally unrelated protest? Who is to say, really…
Jared and Logan are heading back tomorrow and we wish them safe travels! Joseph and I are on to the next adventure in Belgium.
Today I presented Kevin Wagner’s talk about searching for planets in 10 µm light. I think I did an okay job talking about things I know nothing about, but then, I do have plenty of practice.
All questions about Kevin’s part of the talk will be answered with viscacha noises.
Incredibly, people did ask me questions. In this rare instance, “beats me, ask someone else!” was a valid answer. (Actually, I’ve been running audience messages back and forth to Kevin on the Steward grad student Slack. Just not on stage.)
The only MagAO-X/XWCL member officially on the schedule for today was our fearless leader Dr. Jared Males.
GMagAO-* is strictly an improvement over MagAO-X as the * means it can wildcard match all Giant Magellan AO instruments.
I can’t speak for Jared, but I’m happy to be free of any further obligations beyond listening and enjoying the rest of the conference.
Themed Gallery 1: Pictures of PDS 70 b from SPHERE
It’s their fave.
Themed Gallery 2: Food in hand
Li’l marzipan sandwichIf pound-cake were a cookieBalanced dinner of frites
Where are days 1 & 2 you ask? Um we didn’t blog those. *Sheepish grin*
Your favorite MagAO-X team is living it up in Leiden, Netherlands this week at the Spirit of Lyot conference – a conference devoted to bringing exoplanet direct imaging science and instrument builders together to unite the tech with the science. I’ve had a great time so far! This is my first astronomy in-person conference post-pandemic, and it’s great that every talk and poster is directly related to science I am excited about. I’ve met so many people both known and unknown to me previously, and am feeling re-invigorated and re-inspired about the work I’m doing.
Today was the first MagAO-X-focused talk by Leiden’s own Dr. Sebastiaan Haffert. He talked about his integral field spectrograph addition to MagAO-X, VIS-X. Here are some action shots:
Sebastiaan telling the audience about how VIS-X will blow this PDS-70 thing wide open. Peep the sweet sweater swag
MagAO-X team member Olivier Guyon and MagAO-X team friend Kate Follette also graced us with exciting science talks today. Additionally, I have a poster at the conference, which you can see here, and Joseph Long also has a poster!
Tomorrow will be action packed with talks by audience favorite Dr. Jared Males, and surprise special guest Joseph Long with an exclusive set delivering Kevin Wagner’s talk who is home with a surprise special covid.
Stay tuned!
PS – Please forgive any typos as they gave us all 8 beer tokens each and only two days to spend them, and I am feeling the effects at the moment… Cheers!
In honor of all the friends new and old, the song of the day is I Have Friends from the hit TV show Crazy Ex Girlfriend:
I can thankfully say that all of our LCO-going MagAO-X team members are back to their respective USA locations! I would say Tucson but Logan had to pick up her dog and car in Texas. Speaking of doggos, I know everyone was happy to see their loving furry roommates upon their arrival.
Alexander the Great a bit skeptical that he is willing to forgive roommate Joseph Long for his extended absence.Lani inspecting that ball thrower Logan Pearce has returned with all previous ball throwing capabilities still in tact.
As per the remainder of the team’s travels after yesterday’s post, it looks like the plane’s headrest flight tracking system was not fully functioning – but luckily it seems that the captains were aware of their final destination.
Maybe someday we will have to stop by f-square to check out the local architecture and scenery.Tucuman, home of the Tucumanians.
Now as per the title promises, I will outline the secrets behind the creation of MagAO-X attire for cool kids!
Some background: As we were in the midst of planning for the 2022A run, it became clear that the team would need some matching gear for the mountain. Having a background in shirt/sweatshirt production using my Cameo 4, I offered up my services to create hoodies for the team. However, the majority of my background in clothing designs is with heat-adhesive vinyl made for fabrics, whereas we were hoping for a more organic/distressed look for our team hoodies.
An example design from previous crafting. Black crew neck with white and sparkly blue heat-adhesive vinyl made for a friend who loves to spend time at her cabin in Big Lake, AK.
After brainstorming ideas with co-conspirator and long time MagAO-X digital designer Joseph Long, we decided that it would be worth a shot to do a test fabrication with a stencil + bleaching method. This would entail printing the MagAO-X logo in two sizes (small for front and large for back) on normal adhesive vinyl with the Cameo, which is normally used for adhering on smooth surfaces like metal/glass.
A (somewhat dirty) coffee cup being refilled by my trusty Keurig shown here to offer a glimpse of the versatility in crafting abilities that come with owning a Cameo. This is gold adhesive vinyl on a small tumbler, inspired by my late pups Ginger and Duke. A gold star for you if you can guess their breed!
Now to elaborate on the steps taken to create our team hoodies!
Step 1. Cameo design software Silhouette intakes the design as a binary png or jpeg and recognizes the edges to create the cut design file.
Step 2: Cameo cuts the design out of a flat piece of adhesive vinyl mounted on a sticky board for stabilization. I’m not sure my neighbors love my crafting hobby…Step 3: The letters of MagAO-X are pulled from the sheet of cut vinyl and the stencil is transferred to the hoodie with transfer paper (grid like layer seen being pulled off). This is how I was able to get the vinyl to act like a stencil; normally I would use heat-adhesive vinyl and pull off everythingbut the MagAO-X letters, transfer to the fabric, and then immediately press it with a hot iron so it would adhere to the shirt.An image showing the MagAO-X pulled design as it sits still on the page of vinyl that was sent in to the Cameo. Also imaged are some tools used for this process as well as my bottle of bleach and safety gloves used in the next step. Note that the vinyl here is black only because it was used on a different test subject than what is shown in step 2 and 3.Step 4: A bleached soaked cotton ball is used to dab within the lines of the stencil. This shows a test hoodie after a few rounds of bleaching – as you can see the process doesn’t provide a perfectly even application and requires several rounds to bleach out all of the fabric dye within the stencil. A piece of cardboard is placed inside the hoodie to ensure the other side is safe from the bleach. Once enough rounds have been applied, pull off the sticky stencil!Step 5. Fail a few times (:Step 6: Try, try, try again! Also find out that a fleece hoodie is more likely to survive a bleaching process, so decide to go forward with that test subject. No major loss for the team in that decision as fleece makes for much better mountain wear.Step 7: Finally calibrate the bleaching process enough to produce several hoodies for your awesome research team and kindly ask your mom to model one for you.
Now you are all pros at the Cameo stencil+bleach process! And now for the best part…
Step 8: Get to experience the joy (and warmth) the hoodies provide for your team while visiting the Las Campanas Observatory!
Thank you dearest blog readers for sticking with me through the step-by-step process needed for MagAO-X cool kid attire fabrication. As I arrived back in Tucson a few weeks before the others, I have continued to wear my hoodie to stay in the LCO spirit – and I hope others may do the same for those soon to be sparse moments of chilliness here in Tucson! As I believe these hoodies will return for future trips, I bid farewell for now and look forward to their use in many telescope runs to come!
Song of the day: Seasons in The Sun by Terry Jacks. This song has always reminded me of a farewell, so seems fitting to round off the tales of 2022A international travels of our LCO-going teammates!
