Category: MagAO-X

Day 14 of this observing run marked my first full night and the first full MaxProtoPlanetS night. Despite having a few bumps, it was overall a 0.5″ seeing kind of night! This allowed us to take great data on a target without ADC tracking and driving the telescope to below 30 degrees, which I believe is the first in MagAO-X history.

There were lots of interesting conversations going on in the control room. Jared shared a sailor story beginning with the mandatory opening phrase of “so, there I was”, slightly interrupting the “Would you rather” game that was happening among the junior graduate students. Here are a few prompts that I overheard thought were interesting:

• No elbows or knees
• Cold spaghetti or the smell of cold spaghetti
• Receding or preceding hairline

When doing the customary “blinking” technique to see the small differences between two wavelengths in the data, the exoplanet imaginers and instrument builders in the control room turned into a group of paleontologists amazed by the recovery of a dinosaur skull.

Happy International Women’s Day!

As a celebration of International Women’s Day, the chefs surprised us with a decadent chocolate cake for dinner. A big shout-out to all the women (and girls) of the MagAO-X team, guest observers, and telescope operators!

Song of the Day

Song of the Day was a tough choice as there were so many great songs that are great representations of female empowerment. I have chosen the one that is considered one of the “fiercest female anthems” in the 2010s. Now comes the awkward part of me attempting to explain how I came to know this song. Truth be told, I do not recall when, where, how, and why. Whenever I think about the celebration of female strength and beauty, this first song pops up in my head.

One of the earliest memory I associate this song with is my schoolyard with the radio often blasting the hit songs. So I guess I know this song from the radio?

Last night was an exciting night! MKIDS was working really well and we observed the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b. This was one of the first directly imaged exoplanets and its quite well studied. The picture below shows an animation of the orbit of Beta Pictoris b during a 5 year period. Hopefully we can add some images from the MKIDS to this animation!

The New York Times also visited us to take some pictures of us in the control room. Luckily, we were not prepared at all and we will look like astronomers a week into their observing campaign. It did seem like Avalon was the main character of the photo shoot. The photographer left as quickly as he came, leaving us with some dread about what they are going to write about us.

While we are waiting for a new picture of Beta Pictoris b, MagAO-X was able to take an image of YSES-1 b. This planet is orbiting around its host star at a very large separation. YSES-1 is a star in the Musca constellation. Today I learned that that is the Fly constellation. I don’t know why anyone would ever make the Fly constellation but we have the people in the past to thank for that. Okay I looked it up: https://www.maas.museum/observations/2008/08/18/who-named-the-southern-constellations-is-it-time-for-some-new-ones/ Apparently we have the Dutch to thank for the Fly constellation. I apologize for the crime on astronomy of my fellow country man.

YSES-1 is a solar mass star and has two know companions orbiting around it, YSES-1 b and c. We could not image c because it is outside our field of view, which already tell you that it has an enormous orbit. The inner companion orbits the star at 162 AU, this is 31 times the orbital radius of Jupiter in our solar system. At such radii an orbit will take 2051 years. That means it completed 1 YSES-1 b year since Julius Ceasar was killed!

Song of the day

For the song of the day I chose Per Spoor from Guus Meeuwis, who is a Dutch pop/carneval singer. He became famous in the late 90’s and my mother was a big fan of his at the time. My mother took me to a concert of his in my hometown when I was 5 or 6 years old. This was my first concert ever! He mainly makes very festive music.

In the beginning, Guus is disappointed that the train was delayed by no less than 10 minutes, because he would prefer to spend this time with his girlfriend. Several things happen to him on the train. For example, he is addressed about the fact that his feet are placed on the couch, which, although Guus had the entire couch to himself, is not the intention. From the train he discovers the world and places that are new to him. Guus is impressed by the train’s discipline and hard work. He is also offered something to drink, which he did not expect at first. Although he is thirsty, he does not take anything to drink because the train arrives at its destination. From that moment on he already lurks outside, looking for his girlfriend. Once at his destination, he expects his sweetheart, his girlfriend, on the platform, but unfortunately she is not present, which leads to great sadness for Guus. At least, so it seems. Soon enough, however, it becomes clear that his love was playing a trick. She had hidden behind a pillar for comic effect, to the confusion of Guus Meeuwis. Once reunited on the platform, the train departs again.

We’re only so many days in and the team has made leaps and bounds during both our engineering and science hours. MagAO-X has all its shiny bits and pieces working in one extreme(ly complicated) and beautiful orchestra.

A list of just a few things the team is celebrating:

• XKIDS first light – Noah’s blog post says it best, but today we were able to take even more exciting long wavelength observations with our inductance imager. Stay tuned for more results from the UC Santa Barbara team
• lowfs commissioned – Avalon can’t catch a break, everyone wants lowfs on their target! She’s bringing significant flux improvements to the table with her fancy loop. “Dreams really do come true” – Jared, probably
• PIAA upgrade success– If you couldn’t tell from Warren’s post, his long armed masterpiece has worked amazingly well with hardly a pineapple to be seen. He’s run off to the Chilean beaches, but we can safely say the PIAA trials and tribulations of 22B are a thing of the past.
• Stellar data! – After the abysmal weather of 22B, even just seeing the stunningly sharp X of a high contrast imager brings joy to our weary souls, plus all the companions we’ve seen so far!

Today Jialin finally joined us! She also had a close call with her layover pre-Santiago flight, and we’re so glad to have her here instead of her being stuck in Huston an extra day. It’s a momentous milestone of the run, she’s our last arrival. From here on out, we’ll just be losing members.

I know we seem extremely productive, but don’t fret! We haven’t forgotten to enjoy the finer parts of LCO living and loafing.

We’ve been enjoying cleanroom vizzy spotting, a staple of the uphill observatory hike:

Joseph brought out his IR camera to find out who’s the hottest in the control room:

Though it ruined our loop, we fell asleep to a fiery sunrise:

We always appreciate our TO Jorge and his whimsy:

Following direct PI orders, no one forgot about this past empanada Sunday:

We’ve been teaching the newer team members the finer arts of green flash catching:

And Laird caught a vizzy at sunset, the best of both worlds:

To top it all off, we got a NYT photographer poking their nose (and drone) around the telescope tonight, so keep an eye out for our very own Avalon to make the front page!

Song of the Day

My chosen song is “From Far Away” from a musician my mother raised me on. Jeff Tweedy, lead singer of Wilco but solo performer in his own right, has a voice so distinct it never fails to throw me back to long hot car rides and sleepy backseats. I’ve seen him three times, at a Wilco concert when I was 13 and then more recently twice at a small hole in the wall venue during his yearly winter LA visits. He can sell out stadiums for thousands all over the world but chooses the 200 seat Largo theater to host a weekend of shows in early January. My family went to his show this year, and his opener was none other than Fred Armisen, who spent the 15 minute musician-themed comedy routine parodying acoustic guitarists across the globe, playing a few tunes himself, and of course mocking his good friend Jeff. So please enjoy the soothing sounds of a man I’ve listened to most my life, as you look at our extrasolar companions from far away…

We weren’t allowed to take pictures inside, but here’s my silly family being silly while we waited for the doors to open:

So I’m still kind of reeling from and processing it because it’s been so long in the making but we got first light tonight with XKID (that’s the MagAO-X MKID Camera – don’t you just love an acronym that’s made up of nested acronyms? me too). We did it!

This doesn’t look like a whole lot, but that right there in the middle is the first starlight we ever put on our detector in this instrument. Things got better pretty quick.

Still not the best looking thing in the world, but we threw a corongraph in there, added a filter, and could actually see everything! After all the work it took to get the camera working, I’d say that’s pretty neat.

I’ll blog again, next time with more fun stuff, but right now I’m just riding out the emotional high of getting here to the telescope with this camera and actually looking at some stars with it. It’s not perfect but after all the twists and turns it’s taken to get here, all the times we had to perform surgery on the instrument that the manufacturers advised us not to (related picture below), all the modifications we made taking this part from that instrument, that part from this instrument, redesigning and refabricating parts until the last possible second, and all the times I really thought I (and the rest of the amazing team who has worked so hard on this) wasn’t going to be able to get it to work, I’m super happy about it.

Stay tuned, because it’s only getting better. We’re just getting started here at LCO with MagAO-X, but it’s going up up up. Gonna do some real cool science.

Song of the Day

I wanted to do a song about light because we got first light and there’s a lot of great ones, but as I was walking back to my room I realized that for all the ideas I had (and as tempted as I am to list a bunch of them because I’m indecisive and want to give a bunch of options), I realized there’s a better option.

It’s partially cheesy ham-fisted metaphor because doing science is challenging and getting XKID working and sent down here to use it is one of the hardest things I’ve done, but in a more literal sense we’re at the top of some mountains here and each day I’ve been walking up and down a bunch of different pretty damn steep hills (seriously, my phone had to die on this mountain so XKID could live and I could get up to the telescope)

and – last but not least – this song is just an absolute banger.

This song is never going to disappear from YouTube because it’s fantastic so I’m tempted to break the rules and not mention that it’s The Climb by Miley Cyrus, but there ya go. There’s a million and a half reasons this song is great, be it the fantastically campy music video, how it’s impossible not to sing along to, and that it holds up even if you haven’t heard it in years (but let’s be real, it’ll never be that long between times hearing it because it’s excellent).

I saw Miley Cyrus at Austin City Limits in 2021. I tried to get to her set early to get a good spot and even showing up a half hour before start I was still stuck 150 rows back because everyone there wanted to see her show – and for great reason, it was awesome. There were old hits, new hits, she covered Stevie Nicks and Dolly Parton (shout out Stevie Nicks and Dolly Parton), it started raining mid-set and the whole concert turned into a mud pit but nobody left because it was just. so. damn. good. The last song she played was The Climb and it turned into a giant sing-along with me and my thousand or so best friends in that moment, it was a blast. I’d post a picture from the show but there are none, I was too busy losing my mind. I don’t care who you are, if you get a chance to see Miley in concert, do it, you won’t regret it, not even when you lose your voice rocking out to a live version of the Climb.

Coda

Thanks y’all from the MagAO-X team for being so welcoming, thanks to everyone who has worked on XKID who made its first light possible, and thanks to the three of you who made it this far in the post and listened to my sleep deprived stream-of-consciousness ramblings. It takes a village, and what a great village this is.

Astronomers are a fairly adaptable or masochistic lot. Regular switches between day and night are sought after, locations without much oxygen are prized, and network systems are designed around blocking communication with our own instruments. Observing runs are an oscillating balance between excitement and dejection, determination and delirium, and sleep and awakeness. In this world of contrasts, resilience is honed and prized. There are some times where the hardened star dust of astronomical grit wears thin, however, and this usually comes on the second night of the run. Our circadian rhythms have not yet been forced into submission yet, and the long day followed by a bewildered sleep tends to run its course by 3am. The adrenaline rush of the first milestones have passed, and we aren’t yet settled into the comfortable routine of known problems and sandwich forms.

We will pass through the fire of the transition, and are looking forward to more coherent days to come. In the meantime, I am running out of writing steam and will follow the guidelines that Eden suggested when arguing why I should write the blog tonight.

“I think that you would do such a better job. Topics Warren can put in a blog:
“Him doing PIAA stuff”

“Him staring hard at PIAA stuff

“Him doing random walks and taking astrophotography”

“How he is leaving in two days and will miss Las Campanas“

“How Eden will be here for 14 more days and will have to write so many more blog posts than Eden“

“How much Warren cares about Eden and her mental health and how she has to stay up until sunrise”

As a group we made it through the night, and look forward to many more nights making progress and working together. See you all tomorrow.

Edit: Song of the Day

The carpool left promptly at 7am and, bleary from late night picture captions, I forgot everything about finishing blog posts with a song of the day. Tonight is filled with the nostalgia of being my last night at LCO. My fondest memories are filled with late night delirium and accomplished resolve. Laughter against the ever-present backdrop of the night keeps evoking the line:

The sunshine bores the daylights out of me
Chasing shadows, moonlight mystery

The memorable association of this song is from walking down the mountain amid the sunrise, squinting against the growing light and looking forward to the dark nights to come.

Edit²: the lost blog post

Eden and Jay convinced me last night to finally post the blog entry that I had started for the AO summer school. It is retrodated here:

AO Summer School Day 1: Closing the loop on California mysteries