Category: MagAO-X

Well I forgot to take many pictures today, and I forgot to motivate someone else to write the blog.

We got lots of work done today. Laird and Alex tested the alignment laser system. Kyle perfected a big part of our offloading system (where we send commands to the telescope from when our AO system needs help), and I got some closed-loop testing done. We also all worked on some conference abstracts that are due, and NSF proposals got some attention too.

Here’s a picture of a clean room viscacha:

Here’s What is Love by Haddaway:

Today we got our first proper airy disk at LCO!

This morning, Laird and Alex rotated the K-mirror to a more optimal position and re-aligned the rest of the optical train. I switched out a board in an ALPAO driver to one that lets us power the NCPC (non-common-path-corrector) DM remotely, which saves us many hypothetical trips to and from the Nasmyth platform. Jared did…well, a lot of everything.

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One tool that has proven useful in the alignment process is an “F”- and “X”-shaped pattern on the 2K deformable mirror (previously featured here), which we can view in high resolution on our LOWFS (low-order wavefront sensing) camera.

After Alex and Laird were happy with the alignment, I drove out (most of?) the remaining system aberrations with the “eye doctor” script, which attempts to find the combination of Zernike modes on the deformable mirrors that maximizes our Strehl.

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Reinforcements in the form of Joseph Long arrived this afternoon, although fumigation delayed his luggage in Santiago and left him (temporarily, we hope) dispossessed of his worldly goods (and a few supplies for MagAO-X). The MagAO-C team joined us after dinner for a tour of MagAO-X.

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After the tour completed and the crowds dispersed, Alex and Laird reinstalled the panels, shielding the instrument from prying eyes (and unwanted particles—of both the massive and massless variety). Jared installed the blower (the large white tube entering the instrument table from the left) to supply the optics with a soothing breeze.

After spying a guanaco in the far distance earlier in the week, I finally encountered two up close yesterday. They were surprisingly…pungent.

As always, we stopped to watch the sunset.

For the song of the day, I present “Stairway to the Stars” by the Queen of Jazz herself, Ella Fitzgerald.

MagAO-X is alive! After being boxed up, shipped from Tucson to Phoenix to LA (we think — a little fuzzy) to Miami, with a long pause, then to Santiago, braving the dangers of revolution (and customs (and customs strikes!)), and a trip by truck (always touchy, this time with road blocks!), and finally being craned out of its box and carefully reconstituted, we can still close the loop.

Needless to say we are happy, a little bit relieved, and excited to get our new instrument on the Magellan Clay Telescope.

Of course, it doesn’t always go exactly as planned. As the Captain said, “It never goes smooth. How come it never goes smooth?”

So here’s the big moment when we finally knew that we didn’t f it all up:

And here you can see our vAPP coronagraphs looking good in a deep exposure:

Tonight’s song is “Wanted Dead or Alive”, by Bon Jovi:

Well it was another long but successful day for MagAO-X. We fully integrated the electronics rack with the instrument and began the optical alignment! Impressively, the optical alignment looked almost exactly the way we left it in Tucson. After all that MagAO-X has been through on its way to Chile, we were worried that the inside of MagAO-X would be a mess. However this was not the case, and we were more than pleased by it. We are confident that we will complete the realignment tomorrow and close the loop!

We started the day with our walk up to the “halfway house” at 9:00 am. In the picture below, you can see Jared joined by a friendly goat. Then there’s Kyle catching up, and me not far behind taking the picture.

After some final glycol testing, we started cabling the system. The cables run from the instrument to the electronics rack to power all of our electronics (deformable mirrors, cameras, stages, actuators, etc.).

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We completed all of the cabling except for our “Tweeter” deformable mirror (DM), so Laird and I were able to start on the optical alignment.

Here’s a picture of me with the instrument (front view):

Here’s a picture of Laird with the instrument (back view). From this point of view it sort of looks like a “dollhouse” of optics. That makes it sound a lot simpler than it looks!

Finally, we began cabling the 2,048 actuator DM. This is the part that took us the longest, since cabling 2,000 wires is no easy task. This took multiple iterations in order to make sure all of the pins were aligned with the Samtec Connectors.

And so that marks the end of a long day for MagAO-X. Tomorrow we may finally close the loop for the first time in Chile!

The song of the day is going to be Moonlight Serenade, by Glenn Miller:

Unpacking Day 2 marks the 3rd day of MagAO-X unpacking activities, which only makes sense if you’re a computer scientist or you just try not to think about it too much.

Alex and Laird began the day by removing the teflon bars that had been installed in front of particularly expensive optics for protection during shipping.

Meanwhile, Jared pressure-tested the electronics rack coolant system while I set up the AO Operator Computer.

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We filled the instrument coolant lines with glycol and hooked the table to air, giving MagAO-X its first breath and drink at LCO.

After passing its pressure test, the electronics rack coolant system joined in on the activities. Things got a little out of hand when Jared fashioned a makeshift bong and started passing out mixed drinks (glycol and distilled water — not recommended for human consumption).

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And, most importantly, the goats made another appearance.

I present the MagAO-X song of the day: “Always Something There to Remind Me” by Naked Eyes (related to the most recent MagAO-C song by its year of release—a tenuous but legal connection) .