Category: MagAO-X

We’ve really settled into a rhythm here on the mountain top. While our individual wake-up times vary, we all mosey on down to the lodge for dinner at around 6:30. After an unfailingly excellent meal (and perhaps a cup of tea), the first shift of AO operators make their way up to the summit and start aligning MagAO-X for the night. The TO opens the dome, we set up our observations, and then we spend the night doing cutting-edge science and engineering until the Sun threatens to peek above the horizon. It’s not without hiccups–the atmosphere doesn’t always behave and neither does your code–but it’s honestly impressive that we’re able to pull it off night after night.

Tonight had its ups and downs but overall fell nicely into that rhythm. While I revised my SPIE abstract downstairs, Parker and his crew did another round of Tau ceti observations. I made it back for Eden’s observation block, which was filled with complex coronagraphs, art criticism, and cat photos. We were also able to commission our Lyot low-order wavefront sensor (LLOWFS, pronounced yo-fuss), which uses rejected starlight from a reflective Lyot stop to control our non-common-path DM. The result is more stability in the coronagraph, which makes finding planets easier. Atmospheric seeing was … not great for the first little while, but our noble efforts to press through were rewarded with an incredible second half of the night. Our data were stellar, in both senses of the word.

At least to me, at this point in the run Tucson starts to feel a bit like a dream. Maybe it’s because I’m avoiding yet another controls assignment, but something about this mountain makes the rest of the world feel less concrete. You walk outside, and the moonlight illuminates the peaks in the distance; you walk inside, and you see a team of people all working towards the common goal of seeing things no one has seen before. Perhaps I’m over-romanticizing because I’m running on very little sleep, but you can’t deny that there’s a unique feeling here. It might just be the reason we come back night after night, run after run, year after year.

Fun fact of the day: the painting “Sailor Boy” by Columbian artist Fernando Botero hangs in the Tucson Museum of Art.

Song of the day:

Tonight started with Katie, Tiffany, and Josh as our dedicated graduate student MagAO-X operators. They were tasked with assisting Logan with her observing program in the first half of the night. While the conditions started out rough, they stabilized after an hour or two on sky.

When 1:30AM approached, it was time to switch to Eden’s observing program. She is on her second of 5 half nights during this run and is taking super interesting scientific observations using the newly commissioned PIAACMC which Elena has spent a lot of time getting to work on sky.

Exciting discoveries are already being made in our short time here at Las Campanas Observatory. Below are images in the z and r bands of two little guys hanging out around a star:

On top of spotting faint objects on sky, preliminary data reduction has shown there to be a super faint little guy hanging out near it’s host star:

Prior to the night beginning, our TO was nice enough to off to point the telescope towards the horizon so we could get some pictures with the primary mirror.

Miles was back at it with taking some phenomenal Chilean wildlife photos. Expanding our wildlife content beyond our beloved Vizzy.

While Miles was capturing amazing photos of the smaller animals, I was back with the burros. Most days, they are very welcoming when I come by, but this time was the opposite of welcoming. Let’s just say, this was the last face I saw before I had to pack up and leave:

I can’t believe it is already December, but the holiday decorations are starting to pop up to remind us of what time of year it is.

Fun Fact

Many people picture North Dakota as just endless farmland and cows, but here’s a fun fact: it actually has only 2.24 cows per person, ranking it as the third highest state for this stat. South Dakota, Jared’s home state, takes the top spot with an impressive 4.00 cows/person, while Nebraska follows closely behind at 3.31.

Song of the Day

If there ever was a day to wake up for lunch, Sunday is that day. While we all placed our much anticipated empanada night lunch orders, nothing beats the pastry goodies paired with the lunchtime soup choices.

Though delicious, the prize lunch came at the cost of some significant sleep debt for members of our crew. Nevertheless, we rallied, drank our little coffee drinks, and went right back up the hill for an afternoon of testing, bug fixing, and poking around on the internal source. I have no photos to show you the productive daytime endeavors, but I do have the motivational poster now stuck to the control room wall to sum up the energy of the participating members.

Turns out if you wake up early enough, you can have a whole day before your observing work day. Enjoy these vignettes from our afternoon on the mountain.

Our empanada appetites did not overwhelm our TO Rebecca, who was able to muscle our nighlunch up the hill. We arrange the spread to remind ourselves of the richness and abundance of life.

The first half of the night was shepherded by Parker, Katie, and Josh. We’re back on tau Ceti with the bells and whistles (iEFC dark holes and almost all the datastreams writing). The seeing gave us a good reason to work a little extra on internal source set up before it settled down to a fairly typical if a bit bumpy LCO night.

At 1am, Parker and I switched. This was actually a big night for me! Though I’ve assisted with observations at telescopes since I was 19, this is the first time I’ve gotten to take data for my own science on my own proposed-for time. I always try to be a diligent AO operator, but it feels different for your own data. (The difference is anxiety.)

Our time on Beta Pic is split in two goals, firstly to try to push into bluer wavelengths (r’ band) where the contrast of Beta Pic b depends on the kind of atmosphere it has, and secondly see if we can observe the closer in Beta Pic c at all. Thank you Katie and Laird for installing the ri beamsplitter cube that makes these goal somewhat simultaneous.

Since Beta Pic c is so close in, and given all the good PIAA work from yesterday, we used the PIAACMC to improve our inner working angles. Thank you Elena for her PIAA expertise, and Tiffany for sticking it out with us for the rest of the night. We wrapped up not too far after our TO gave us the 15 minute warning.

Miles did not lock in on photoshop for his masterpiece to fail to make an appearance on the blog. The whole team in one photo! How lucky to be planet hunting with them all.

Fun Fact: Pablo Neruda’s favorite soup

As Duo Lingo likes to remind me, I really need to work on my Spanish. As I was ordering my soup, the chef very excitedly explained something I only vaguely understood to be about Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet. I since learned, and now you will know this too, that the soup from lunch today was popularized by Neruda’s “Oda al caldillo de congrio” (Ode to Conger Chowder). The conger chowder is one of many everyday items Neruda romanticized in his series of Odes, among soap, socks, and salt. It is considered today one of the most popular Chilean dishes, partially because of his love for how it represents Chile.

“… deliver
the treasure to the flame,
until in the chowder
are warmed
the essences of Chile,
and to the table
come, newly wed,
the savors
of land and sea,
that in this dish
you may know heaven.”
– Pablo Neruda

Song of the Day:

Wait what do you mean Katie hasn’t used a Stroke’s song yet?

You wouldn’t guess it but it was already our third night at the telescope. Which means it was also my third day (night) here at Las Campanas Observatory. I arrived as an extremely fresh (and hopeful) astronomer on our first observing day. It was quite though to go through an almost 30hr journey to immediately observing. However, EFC duty called and I had to respond. I thought I would have been able to slowly ease into it, but I have been EFC’ing already for 3 nights straight. Luckily, the next 6 nights are also EFC nights. This means no breaks for me for at least the next week or so!

After two nights of great observations, it was time to do some engineering. This engineering block was all about commissioning our new Phase Induced Amplitude Apodization Complex Mask Coronagraphs, or PIAACMC for short. The PIAACMC is one of the most performant coronagraphs (if you can actually make it an align it). The PIAACMC has two sets of aspheric lenses that were designed by our one and only Warren Foster, MSc. These are mounted in only the most beautiful of optical mounts that one can imaging. They are also fully remotely controllable, which makes it possible for other people to actually use them. Since last year, Elena Tonucci has been working on getting the PIAACMC to work on-sky. One of the crucial missing pieces was the CMC (CM?) part of the PIAACMC. She uses fancy 2-photon polymerization additive manufacturing to make the focal plane complex mask.

All our troubles, or Elena’s troubles (I was just vibing along), were not for nothing. The new phase masks that were made resulted in much better performance! We were able to to get an order of magnitude better on-axis suppression than last year in the lab.

Our next step was to go on-sky. The first part of the night was great. However, just around the time of switching from Parker’s amazing Tau Ceti program to ours, the seeing started to cause problems. This was not great. We were going to try and image a challenging exoplanet target. Luckily, the seeing started to settle after about 10 minutes into our part of the night. We got really good data and I am excited to see some results.

It is not always fun to look only at speckles. So, our night ended with about an hour or so of imaging close binaries. This was to convince ourselves that PIAACMC actually worked.

At the end of the night, I was passing on my wisdom of observing as many photons as you can each night. No photon left behind! Every photon is precious! The TO was getting a little nervous and started to ask if she could close the telescope because the sun was rising.

Fun fact: “Moretta muta”, an oval mask that women wear for Carnival in Venice has no straps to be fastened to the head. Instead, it has a button on the inner side that is held in the mouth and with that mask is held to the face.

Greetings again from MagAO-X-ville! Us astronomers are equal parts wildlife and planet photographers, although today involved a strong emphasis on the former. Enjoying the beautiful sun over the Atacama and the lack of 2-legged individuals, the burros seized their opportunity to reclaim the mountain (one might call it a burrocracy).

Many a burro photo was captured today by our professional shutterbugs (yes, this is actually a word) so I have included a brief compilation below:

Our professionals also identified an assortment of smaller creatures including (but not limited to):

Birds:

Carloses:

Vizzies (vizzibility was high during both the day and the night):

And Hoomans:

After a busy day at LCO, both the hoomans and the animals must go to bed, assuming they have not already done so.

Song of the Day:

Fun Fact:

I once got attacked by a goose after feeding it a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.