Home of MagAO and MagAO-X.
I popped down to LCO from Tucson for a quick visit to fix some cooling issues and test some new cables. I left 40 C in Tucson and arrived to 40 F at LCO.
On my flight down I was somewhat surprised to see that Laird was coming with me.
There are blog rules. But since I’m the only one here I’m keeping them to myself. Don’t worry, I’ll follow them.
At risk of not being able to show my face in Eden’s upcoming quals study session, I hereby present to you the Sagan Summer Workshop 2024–a journey through space and time .
But first, here’s a clip of the Journey cover band that blessed my ears on my first night in California.
We began our week with a professional development workshop where we learned about large-scale mission planning. We also learned to appreciate the full breadth of NASA’s acronyms.
It wouldn’t be a direct imaging conference without HCIPy! Sebastiaan masterfully guided the workshop attendees through a tutorial of everyone’s favorite high contrast imaging simulation framework.
Unfortunately, some of us skipped the workshop, thinking that they already knew HCIPy. These individuals in question came to regret their decision while going through the tutorial a few hours later (It was me…I was the ‘some of us’).
Workshop highlights from those who did attend:
Day 2 featured lots of disks. Unfortunately, we were too captivated by the talks to take any photos, so here is a picture of the Philz Iced Mint Mojito (the coffee not the cocktail) that kept me going throughout the week.
Day 3 featured a coronagraphic imaging talk from Professor Haffert. It also marked the triumphant debut of MagAO-X at Sagan 2024.
Around this time, Pasadena attempted to do its best Tucson impression, becoming unbearably hot. Luckily, we have a former chef to teach us how to make Queen’s Coffee.
But wait? Where is our advisor you ask? Let’s take a look:
I would be remiss without showing some exciting, direct imaging results at a high contrast imaging workshop. Our friends in UASAL imaged Eps Ind Ab with James Webb!
Sebastiaan directly imaged PDS 70b and c (at one point) with VLT!
I directly imaged this corporate office building with my Samsung Galaxy S9!
On the final day of the workshop, Jared arrived to give his signature talk on GMagAO-X and it did not disappoint.
Following Jared’s talk, the Arizona contingent gathered for a group photo:
Finally, we wrapped up the workshop by presenting some of our group projects:
And thus concludes a successful workshop!
Gojira made history, becoming the first metal band to perform at an Olympics opening ceremony.
On Friday last week (07/19), Maggie of House XWCL, first of her name, phaser of segmented apertures, protector of 1/4-20 drivers and the first piezoelectric motors, breaker of drywall barriers, the aligned, enthusiast of The Expanse and master of optical waterwheels made Tucson a little brighter that day with the successful defense of her dissertation!
Maggie’s talk took us on a journey through the world of extreme adaptive optics (ExAO) instrumentation and revealed what is coming next for the development of the MagAO-X successor, GMagAO-X, slated to be installed on the upcoming Giant Magellan telescope. If you’re like me, you were mesmerized by the complexities of GMagAO-X’s parallel deformable mirror design and learned a lot about the optomechanical specifics of MagAO-X and the HCAT testbed.
It came to the surprise of no one that Maggie emerged from the closed-door session of the defense victorious and ready to take on the post-student world like an absolute boss. To celebrate, we all convened in the Steward Observatory 3rd floor Interaction Area to sample some celebratory bubbly and treats. Thanks to Jialin, Eden, and Josh for helping me supply some Maggie-approved sweets including coffee cake, jelly empanadas, cookies, and peach melba-flavored macarons (a reference to the sci-fi show ‘The Expanse’).
If you have a spare moment and you’re in the Steward Observatory building gaze upon the new the cork-shaped hole in the ceiling at the 3rd floor Interaction Area [edit: kidding].
Maggie has accepted a job offer to work as an optomechanical engineer as part of the staff at the Center for Astronomical Adaptive Optics here at Steward Observatory where she will put her talents towards the latest space-based telescope projects. Though she is moving to a different office space, we’re all super thankful she will stay close to the group both professionally and physically.
We capped the day off with a fun celebration comprised of family and friends. Congrats again, Maggie!
The song of the day is Death Cab for Cutie’s “Transatlanticism” which is also the title to the album which Maggie, Eden, and I saw them play live, in its entirety, last September in D.C. completely serendipitously. This also just happened to be the first show of the nationwide tour…!
It’s a long track with a dramatic build-up, but think I speak for Eden and Maggie as well when I say that this song captures very fond memories that we share together.
For a little while in June, the gang was all back together for SPIE Tokyo. Almost felt like an observing run, but in Japan, and every telescope team you ever heard of was also having their reunions at the same time.
Here’s a round up of all the MagAO-X and friends talks, posters, and proceedings. (Check out Katie’s MAPS blogs for some of the real time updates during the conference.)
MagAO-X: Commissioning Results and Status of Ongoing Upgrades
arXiv:2407.13007 [pdf, html, other]
Not the proceeding, but some of the work done on this project can be found here:
Closed-loop demonstration of neural network wavefront reconstruction with MagAO-X
arXiv:2401.16325 [pdf, other]
Challenge of direct imaging of exoplanets within structures: disentangling real signal from point source from background light
arXiv:2407.13756 [pdf, html, other]
On-sky, real-time optical gain calibration on MagAO-X using incoherent speckles
arXiv:2407.13022 [pdf, html, other]
More data than you want, less data than you need: machine learning approaches to starlight subtraction with MagAO-X
arXiv:2407.13008 [pdf, html, other]
MagAO-X Phase II Upgrades: Implementation and First On-Sky Results of a New Post-AO 1000 Actuator Deformable Mirror
arXiv:2407.13019 [pdf, html, other]
Analyzing Misalignment Tolerances for Implicit Electric Field Conjugation
arXiv:2407.13199 [pdf, html, other]
Improving coronagraphic performance with active atmospheric dispersion control on MagAO-X
Stay tuned for the proceeding!
High-Contrast Imaging at First-Light of the GMT: The Preliminary Design of GMagAO-X
arXiv:2407.13014 [pdf, html, other]
High-contrast imaging at first-light of the GMT: The PDR optical and mechanical design for the GMagAO-X ExAO system and results from the HCAT testbed with an HDFS phased parallel DM prototype
Stay tuned for the proceeding!
High-contrast imaging at first-light of the GMT: the wavefront sensing and control architecture of GMagAO-X
arXiv:2407.13021 [pdf, html, other]
Did you see that, the golden ticket on Sebastiaan’s poster?
If you recall, the Dutch have a history of bringing out the Lego big guns for SPIE. (See: lego JWST at SPIE 2022). This year they’ve gone even bigger with scale Lego models of the ELT! But, instead of the first 200 interested parties, these were exclusively given out to participants with stunning social media posts. Or very good persuasion skills.
Turns out we had an in with a sympathetic ear. And I got to make up for my lack of Lego two years ago:
In a fairytale ending, the ELT has made it home to Tucson and is in good company with our GMT model.
Of course, we are lucky to also get to see our office neighbors and collaborators present at the conference too! We did not capture them all, but this is a conference that scientifically feels like home (maybe too literally).
Cheers to a good conference and good work by our team!
As a thank you gift for Jared’s advising throughout my grad school experience, I wanted to give a knockout gift. Sebastiaan once offhandedly mentioned a useless box. Now, I LOVE useless boxes. When I was a teacher I stumbled across a useless box video which made me cackle; two years later my coworker gave me one as a christmas present on the staff work day before winter break. I showed it to everyone and wore the battery completely down that day. So what about a MagAO-X shaped useless box?
I’ll begin this post at the end with the final reveal. Behold, the MagAO-X useless box. Turn MagAO-X on and who is that turning it off?
Here is the original sketch from my notebook. Except for the location of the switch it came together mostly as originally planned.
I took inspiration for the vizz from this little tiger version. For the mechanism I used the one from a build-it-yourself useless box kit.
Sebastiaan helped me break into the lab (jk I know the code!) and measure everything so it can be perfectly to scale.
It is 1:10th scale.
Design for the legs:
And panels:
The box is made of wood panels and sticks you can get at any hobby store. I used a hobby knife the cut the panels and sticks, with lots of sanding to get them smooth. I didn’t get too many fabrication pics at this stage, which is a bummer. But once all the panels and pieces were glued I used wood filler to fill joints and places where the wood wasn’t flush. I bought a hand sander from Harbor Freight ($10! Bless Harbor Freight) and sanded everything smooth and flush.
I then glued on the wood panels and the little wood stick pieces around the top of what is supposed to look like the air table. The thinner panels tended to curl with the moisture from the wood glue so here I am using the glue to hold it down while drying.
One thing I wish I had pics of was that the DIY kit mechanism required me to buy a soldering iron and learn how to solder!
Because of the design of the DIY box kit, putting the switch on the front panels as originally planned didn’t work, because the gear box would have to positioned in such a way that the lid wouldn’t sit down all the way. So I improvised by cutting the lid and placing the switch so that it opened to the side. Here is the video of the first operational test of the mechanism.
You can’t see it here (but you can in later pics), but I put little hinges on the lid with the switch to enable opening it, and I used the hinges from the DIY kit for the side of the lid that needs to open. I also cut a door out of the back panel to enable changing the batteries.
I then set up a makeshift spray booth in my back yard. I removed the mechanism and gave it many coats of black, sanding in between to make the wood soft, and finished with a sealer.
Here is the assembled painted product. Notice the box of tiny gold hinges and the brand new soldering iron in the background!
Here is the mechanism from the DIY box kit. It’s mounted the bottom of the lid so that it rests down flat when not on, then pushes up the other side of the lid when turned on. There is a little reed switch behind the arm which opens the circuit, and a little wood protrusion from the back of the arm which depresses it. When the switch is flipped on, the current turns the motor to raise the arm up, the protrusion releases the reed switch. When the arm flips the switch, the current reverses and brings the arm back down until the protrusion depresses the reed switch again and breaks the circuit.
Here you can also see the battery door. I mounted the battery pack on the door so it’s easy to replace the batteries. I also put a fancy bead on the door as a fancy door handle, and a latch to hold the switch lid.
Next it was time for the details. I printed all the logos in secret using the office printer cause I don’t have a color printer. I painstakingly cut them out with an exacto knife trying to replicate the curves and white borders of the real stickers, then stuck them on with Mod Podge. At the time I was making this, the “Clean Top” sticker on MagAO-X was missing the e so I blacked it out with marker! (Now the whole thing is almost gone). I also glued little pieces of foil on the corners of the air table to mimic the corner bumpers, and cut circles out of gold craft foam for the eye piece port on the side.
Adding the stickers with a reference photo in the background:
For the panel clamps, I used beads. I found some large-ish black beads and small silver beads or close to the right size (I did measure them!) and glued them together, then glued them to the panels in the right place. This was a huge pain in the ass and I had to try a few different glues to find the one that made them actually stay stuck. I also used the small silver beads for the panel support screws.
For the handles I used a thick crafting wire, bent to the right size and shape, and covered it with electrical heat shrink tubing which shrinks to the size of the wire. I glued some black beads to the wire to help them stick to the panels.
Finally it was time for the vizz. I used brown and yellow fleece and sewed a little paw, which I stuffed a little bit and slid over the arm. I made toes by hand sewing little imprints with black thread. I had to make sure that the end of the arm still hit the switch, which involved moving the paw around a bit to find just the right spot. I then used fabric glue to glue the end of the fleece to the wood arm and used some yarn to tie it down for good measure.
The head took several tries. I got several rabbit patterns off etsy that had potentially suitable heads and tried to scale them to the correct size. It took several trial and errors on the best pattern and the right size. Once I had a suitable one I put little eyes and nose and whiskers, then made ears of just single pieces of fleece and hand sewed them on.
I put a little piece of velcro on the head and the bottom of the lid so that that head comes up when you activate the switch. I also attached a loosely stuffed fleece tube to the bottom of the head as a suggestion of a body.
Finally I sewed a little tail out of the brown fleece and glued a little strip of a darker brown fleece as the stripe down the tail. I glued and sewed the end shut and put a little piece of velcro on the top and under the hinge on the side of the box so it looked like a vizzy tail hanging out the side, but it won’t interfere with the hinge.
That’s it! All done. The MagAO-X Useless Box.
