I suspect all of our readers will be aware that last Saturday there was an eclipse event over the US. At 9:30 am Tucson Time was the peak of the annular eclipse, an eclipse where the moon is at the furthest point on its orbit, called apogee, so the disk of the moon is a smaller angular size on the sky than the sun (where normally they are essentially the same size) so it doesn’t block the whole disk and you can’t see the corona. Instead you get a “ring of fire” caused by the moon’s antumbra on the Earth’s surface.
Tucson was not in the area of max shadow, it only got about 80% coverage. So some XWCL members traveled to regions getting the full antumbra effect.
I met up with XWCL alum Lauren Schatz and UA OpSci grad Silvana Ovaitt. When Lauren was at XWCL she was my hiking and camping buddy, so we reunited for more L&L adventures by camping in Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park!
Campsite cookin’The view from The View CampgroundHey look it’s Lauren!SunriseEclipse!Early morning after a cold camping night!
We also went on a backcountry guided tour off the public access road and led by a local named Larry
Tour timeLauren and Silvana climbed this crazy high dune!1300 year old petroglyphsApparently this was the hole they used to film Indiana Jones going down into the tomb in Raiders
The MagAO-X team is also fully engaged in preparing for the next big thing in telescopes, the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT). GMT is one of the ELTs (extremely large telescopes) being planned for the next generation of ground based science, along with the Thirty Meter Telescope and the ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope (yes, ELT is an ELT). GMT is currently being built near our MagAO-X home at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. Our group is knee deep in planning for GMagAO-X, the extreme adaptive optics coronographic instrument for exoplanet science on the GMT.
So we made a big showing at the GMT Community Science Meeting this week in DC. These meetings are run every year with a rotating science focus, this year was our time to shine with the Exoplanets meeting. The idea is to get future GMT users together to talk about the exoplanet science they want to do with this powerful exciting new platform. Jared gave an invited talk about GMagAO-X, while Laird, Jay, Maggie, Eden, Sebastiaan, and I presented posters about our current and future science. MagAO-X collaborator, super star, and blog alum Alycia Weinberger was there as well. There was an opening reception Tuesday night, two full days of talks and posters, fancy pantsy meals provided (and open bar!!), ending with a half day wrap up on Friday. All in a super fancy hotel in the middle of DC. I had a great time, this was maybe the first time I’ve been to a conference where every talk was something I was interested in (my optics colleagues may have felt differently).
Pics for your viewing pleasure.
Laird spotted a GMT in the Natural History MuseumOptics kids take DCFancy snacks! Candied bacon and chickpeasFancy pool! Washington Monument views
Posters! One of these things is not like the others…
Mine came with bonus blinding sun!
Poster Pops! Little 1-min advertisements for your poster.
Our fearless leader gave a talk all about GMagAO-X
Jared volunteered me to chair so I volunteered me to chair his session.That damn viscachaWater wheel wackiness!The tweet with the most engagement won a piece of glass from mirror 6!Jay and Alycia hard at workOur group discussion’s opinions about what’s needed for the future of ELT scienceWhat we’re excited about for the future of ELT science. ELTs in space!!HiPoster tube engineering
I’m writing this from home the day after the conference utterly exhausted! Tons of fun, tons of travel, and the open bar didn’t help things.
I’ll end with the super fancy conference group photo!
You didn’t know that that’s what DC looks like? You need to travel more.
The song of the day is Science Is Real by They Might Be Giants
Back in Tucson the XWCL team has been very busy hosting some exciting visitors! Teams from the Giant Magellan Telescope Organization and the Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory made their way down south to integrate a natural guide star wavefront sensor prototype (NGWS-P) with HCAT and MagAO-X. To put it simply:
“The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) Adaptive Optics (AO) systems feature a single conjugate natural guide star based AO system using the 7 deformable secondaries and a post focal wavefront sensor named NGWS (Natural Guide star Wavefront Sensor). The NGWS has two different channels: one featuring a high spatial sampling pyramid sensor dedicated to the fast frame rate correction of atmospheric turbulence and a second dedicated to the correct phasing of the 7 segments of the GMT telescope.”
Plantet, et al., SPIE Montréal 2022
Essentially, they want to use our GMT simulator (HCAT), and functioning ExAO system (MagAO-X) to validate their prototype wavefront sensing channel (PyWFS) and prototype phasing channel (HDFS).
NGWS-P table and control system set up in MagAO-X lab
I want to impress on everyone reading this blog what a complicated setup this actually is. We are simulating the GMT on the HCAT testbed, feeding the GMT pupil into MagAO-X through a hole in a wall, and feeding the NGWS-P testbed through the MagAO-X eyepiece. That is not easy to do…but we did it!
Lab layout
The team started by using the HCAT lab as a staging area where the teams could integrate the two channels onto the NGWS-P bench. Laird and I were busy inventing new novel optomechanical mounting strategies (AKA zip tying a camera to a ladder) so we could view the focal plane the NGWS-P will be receiving.
Basler to see what we are delivering to NGWS-PAlfio successfully getting control system up and running
Once the dress rehearsal was over, we rolled the NGWS-P into the MagAO-X lab and the team went quickly into alignment.
Adding the dust coverAnne-Laure working on the periscope
As the life-long learners we are, when plugging in the NGWS-P cryocooler we unfortunately tripped a circuit breaker and MagAO-X went dark. Duh, duh, duh…Luckily we called our most recent alum Dr. Joseph Long to the rescue!
Don’t worry, it’s all fine. We learned the lesson: if you ever want to force-quit MagAO-X, simply plug in a cryocooler on the same circuit.
Two less dark screensA significantly less stressed PI and a helpful Joseph
The software gurus started to make some quick progress once the whole system was finally in place. Alfio (Arcetri) and William (GMT) were poking away at the MagAO-X DMs using their own wavefront sensor.
Beautiful flower petal pupilDMs in motion
Ultimately they were able to close the loop using the NGWS-P modulated PyWFS and the MagAO-X Woofer DM with 30 modes! This was a fantastic first run and there is much more exciting work to be done in our subsequent two runs coming this fall. Looking at you parallel DM.
Sharing this musical experience that the GMT, Arcetri, and Arizona teams got to enjoy at Hotel Congress last Friday evening.
I’ll try to make up for my clickbait title by starting right off with the secret ramen seasoning that I’m uniquely suited to identify.
The last supper
It’s apparently very rare, but chefs from select regions of Japan will season tonkotsu (pork) flavored ramen with peanut dust or peanut butter to impart a special nuttiness to the savory soup. As many of you might guess, this didn’t turn out well for one of the resident peanut deniers in the group. But hopefully those who read this blog will help spread some awareness since, in general, Japanese food restaurants have been a very safe haven for peanut allergy sufferers…! And no, the restaurant made no mention of this additional ingredient anywhere on their menu :-/.
After a quick brush with my kryptonite, we were back the next afternoon exploring the surrounding Chicago area to seek out the healing properties of a slice of deep dish. Although the weather was less than ideal for most of Wednesday with a slight chance for multiple tornados.
Selfie with all the Tucson kids! ft. Vikram (Steward) and Edgar (physics) and Gemma (Spain)
As for the workshop, we (Jialin, Gemma of España, and I) shared a brief eureka moment when we successfully created and pip-installed our very own open-source Python package on our computers! To get everyone else up to speed, we utilized this workshop to get a head start on a collaborative, bright, most-likely-to-be-single star catalog for AO calibration purposes! All that’s really left to do is streamline the catalog querying and crossmatching functionality and then actually make the SQL database prior to our next observing run.
Big thanks to Logan for helping us refine this idea and make it happen in such a short timespan!
I always worry my posts end up evolving to be too too wordy so please enjoy a photo dump of the social activities that took place for the rest of the workshop and afterwards before flying back home to Tucson :-).
Running around downtown Chicago and crossing off items from Jialin’s bucket list. Thanks Jialin for doing your research!One of the many museums we had the chance to visit was the money museum.
This is Ben from UC San Diego. We ran into Ben serendipitously and after some small talk he confessed to being a fellow Jared fan after seeing Jared’s talk at AO4ELT. Astro is such a small world.
Song of the Day
We had a Lyft driver who was literally the city of Chicago anthropomorphized. dApparently in his youth one of his favorite pastimes was staying at the bars in Downtown Chicago until closing. Well so, around last call, when they played this song at the end of the night it was his cue to antagonize the bouncers and convince them, as best as he could, that he makes his own rules, he owns this bar, they’d have to use force to get him to leave, etc. On more than one occasion he got the bouncers grinning and giving him the stink-eye while cracking their knuckles at ten minutes to closing. However, as soon as the clock showed 30 seconds to official closing time he was already 100 ft away from the building and power walking his way home. In between belly laughs he exclaimed “I was young, dumb, and I’m *still* only 5’5″ on a good day so what did you expect? I knew my limits!”
It was way funnier with the thick Chicago accent and euphemisms than is probably coming off typed out here.
Both the non-Ph.D.ed KLIPers convened at O’Hare and ready to create a catalog of non-binary stars for the next MagAO-X run, we enjoyed the mild (relative to Tucson) sunshine on the Northwestern Campus. We spotted a nice garden with some cool spiders and Northwestern viscacha enjoying its nutritious meal.
Ready to explore the campus while it’s sunny!Photo of Jay taking a photoWeird looking viscacha
We visited the old astronomy building on Northwestern Campus, which is also the site for the Dearborn Observatory completed in 1888. The 18.5″ refractor inside the dome as well as the entire building was closed to visitors during our visit on Sunday.
According to Wikipedia, this telescope was used to discover Sirius B!
In addition to the OG KLIPers or KLIPistas of MagAO-X, Gemma Gonzalez-Tora from ESO joined the team. We have made a decent amount of progress on making a code to find single stars within a given coordinate. Stay tuned for Jay’s post later this week to see our final product!
Cheers to our amazing team and congrats to Gemma on obtaining her Ph.D.!
We also spotted the third MagAO-X team member on Zoom! Hello Eden!
Oh yes, the title can very deceiving, but the rest of the post contains only Jialin’s review of the Chicago/Evanston food. Chicago deep dish is of course a must try for first timers. Jay and I stopped by the famous Labriola on our half-day off for a 12 inch Danny’s Special Deep Dish Pizza, which contained Russo Sausage, mushrooms, green pepper, and onion in addition to lots of mozzarella cheese and tomato sauce. (And half the pie is about to head back to Tucson!)
Look at that cheese pull! Thanks Jay for insisting on trying this place!
The Chicago Style hot dog is on par with the Sonora Dog, with fresh tomato and a good thick slice of dill pickle!
Portillo’s Chicago Style Hot Dog: Beware of the hidden picked peppers, they can really burn!
If you can’t wait until SPIE 2024 in Japan to try the famous Omurice or Japanese omelette rice, you can find a pretty good substitute in downtown Chicago. (Don’t bother getting the ramen, you can find better ones in Tucson, shhhhhh….)
We ordered the curry sauce instead of the more traditional option.
And I won’t be myself if I don’t recommend a good boba or bubble tea place.
Yes, this is indeed the third boba I’ve had since arriving and there will be more…
Song of the Day(s):
I wanted to catch a musical in Chicago Broadway during my time here, but unfortunately, July is the month of nothingness. Thus, I feel inclined to share one of the most famous numbers from the musical Chicago!
