Category: MagAO-X

Maggie, Joseph, Alex, Kyle, Laird, and Jared arrived at LCO today to prepare MagAO-X for our first time on-sky.  We missed thanksgiving with our non-LCO families, but the chefs made us turkey so we got a good holiday meal (thanks guys!).

We’ve already started MagAO-X back up and are making a bunch of last minute tweaks to get it ready.

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MagAO-X 2019B Blog Rules:

1. There will be at least one blog post each day
2. The blog post of the day will have a song of the day

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The song of the day is The Thanksgiving Song by Adam Sandler

It’s an old MagAO tradition to take selfies for our moms in the mirror that gets you around the bend at the summit.  Long story, but it’s also tradition for it to be poop covered unless Alan is here.

Tonight’s song is “I miss the misery” by Halestorm. Since the casual reader of this blog hasn’t signed up for Lizzy Hale with the power on, here’s a “subdued” version of it:

And here’s the knob-at-11 version:

Also, the block editor in WP needs to die.

In the gym today I noticed a bunch of new trophies. Check it out:

This is the clearly the best observatory.

These guys agree:

I missed the sunset, but came out of the cleanroom in time to catch this:

Today’s song is Miley Cyrus’s version of Jolene (the Backyard Sessions one).

As Joseph reported yesterday, we couldn’t find any sign of our viscacha friends and we suspected it was due to the high winds and colder temperatures. Today I was able to gather more evidence. A correlation is seen between the local density of viscachas and the wind speed at their location. The following plot illustrates:

We establish a working threshold of 20 mph for vischacha absence. The nature of this transition is unknown.

It wasn’t all science today. We also fixed some calibration issues with our new setup in the LCO cleanroom. This took some remote help from our real-time software guru.

Today’s song is “You Could Be Mine” by GNR.

This was, incredibly, a zero-viscacha day. It was quite windy, a bit chilly, and there may have been a viscacha conference (¿visconferencia?) in the next valley over.

Meanwhile, in MagAO-X land, we continue pushing buttons on our computers and watching what happens. I promised a peek at the MagAO-X web interface, so here’s part of it… that no visiting observer will ever see!

While most of the web-based interface will be designed for the needs of guest observers, this screen is definitely an “authorized personnel only” deal. With it, you can remotely power on or off anything in the instrument! I was authorized by Jared to toggle the acquisition flip motor power on and off during testing.

While it was a zero-viscacha day, it was also a one-snake day! Jared encountered a juvenile Philodryas chamissonis on his run. This species is known locally as la culebra de cola larga. In a juvenile spirit, I feel I should share that this could be translated as either “long-tailed snake” or “long-butted snake”.

Following Emily’s theme of Firsts, and because I’m very unlikely to have the chance to attach this song to the actual first light post: “First Light” by Balmorhea.