Category: MAPS

We started the night with a group photo featuring the stars of the show: the 6.5-meter primary and our beloved ASM watching over us from directly above our heads. It’s a good thing Ruby, Dan and the MMT day-crew gang ensured its secure installation.

Bonus photo! Obligatory mirror selfie with the ASM, courtesy of Krishna. In retrospect, we raised our hands in victory too early, we didn’t yet know how the night would go.

We headed down to get work started and within the hour Grant, Oli and Maggie had aligned the dichroic. Amali’s judicious eye achieved us decent enough pupils that we could start looking for the culprit actuators keeping us from amazing pupils. Good progress so far!

But if there’s one thing I’ve learned on my handful of MAPS observing runs, it’s that the time equivalent of at least one night will be forced from our hands by adverse weather. This was to be our windy night, so around 7:30–a little over an hour after opening–we closed the telescope.

While we held out hope for the winds to wind down, Maggy, Oli and Grant kept us company. Manny found a floor heating pad to fight off the cold reaching up through the ground. Much to our dismay, however, a mouse had eaten through part of the power cable and after 7 glorious seconds of foot warming, the pad sparked and gave out. Thankfully, our boss was uninjured, our only misfortune being that our toes were none the warmer. Such is the price of commissioning magical mirrors.

Around 11 PM, Oli, Grant and Maggie called it a night and headed down the mountain. They made it back to Tucson safe, a testimony to our team’s spirit raging against the wind.

As we waged a war of attrition against the gusts, Amali trained Lauren and me to check how individual actuators respond to a “sweep” of current. 

Intermittently, Jorge kept our spirits up with Dad jokes, Manny made us popcorn, and Krishna read abstracts from the day’s arXiv feed aloud. (Yes, instead of doom-scrolling social media, Krishna scrolls through the latest astronomy and sometimes machine learning papers on the daily.)

Alas around 3 AM, the wind forecast pronounced we’d lost this battle and it was time to call it a night and head to bed.

WE INTERRUPT YOUR REGULARLY SCHEDULED PROGRAMMING TO BRING YOU THIS IMPORTANT MESSAGE: 

Krishna is looking to buy a car! If anyone is selling, any and all (legitimate and non-Craigslist-based) leads are greatly appreciated! He isn’t really picky so long as the vehicle is in good condition and runs nicely, but his top contenders are currently any model of the following makes:

• Ducati
• Kawasaki
• Indian
• Yamaha

Be present, enjoy nature

In keeping with Maggie’s blog rules, I give you a view of the MMT from the bowl dorms before heading up to the very same. Not only did this moment allow me to admire the mountain’s beauty, but it also made me wonder if the location of the bowl dorms along the winding road to the summit was determined by geography or by a thoughtful mountain road engineer who thought this vista would serve as the perfect inspiration for a night of hard work. Or, maybe some combination of the two.

Song of the Day

Before Jefferson Starship (“We Built This City”, “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now”), there was Jefferson Airplane. The song of the day is Planes, by Jefferson Airplane:

The duality of nature is something I’ll never stop wondering at: my first post came to you on a night so action-packed, I felt incapable of writing every detail down. Last night, however, we didn’t leave lightning shutdown.

To bide the time in hopes of some sky-time, Amali guided me through the MAPS CACAO simulation; from starting up the server, deformable mirror and wavefront sensor, to closing the loop with 20 modes, 50 modes, and finally 100 modes. Hopefully this means we’ll be able to reach 100 modes on-sky!

Next, Lauren was shown the ways of simulated CACAO. It was comforting to know we wouldn’t break the ASM since this was only a simulation, and it was alright to push the mock-ASM to its limits and discover what not to do to the real deal. Apparently, completion of the simulation means I am now prepared to operate the AO system on-sky solo. But, I still feel like a tenuous sapling whose very existence/job/ASM is threatened by anything stronger than a mild breeze.

Amali’s pedagogy then dictated Lauren and I teach Parker how to operate the MAPS simulation. Thusly, we discovered the gaps in our learning and may have unintentionally confused Parker in the process but, he did succeed in reproducing a 20-mode loop. Maybe we didn’t do so bad after all? Our next step towards becoming strong AOaks is to write the simulation steps in our own words. Gee, it’s a good thing lab classes were a requirement for graduation; who would have thought writing reports was so important? (I jest, I jest)

The word of the night is Arizona. Talking to Yoav, I was reminded that not only does Steward Observatory and the University of Arizona contribute significantly to astronomy and humankind’s exploration of space; but so does every University in Arizona. We are strengthened by our inter-university collaboration, now more than ever. In this sense, I dare to say Arizona means ad astra per intellectum et cooperante–to the stars through understanding and collaboration.

Now, I would love to explain the majesty of the storm that kept us from opening, but words would not do it justice. So I’ll let the photography of our talented telescope operator, Brian Pinault, speak for me. Ever the diligent guardian of our invaluable tools, Brian captured this moment of volatile yet sublime nature while visually surveying the storm’s trajectory.

In honor of the storm, the song of the night is The Tempest, Op 18 by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.

I’d like to add a bonus to tonight’s post. If you don’t already listen to Ologies, the science podcast by Alie Ward, then you are missing out. Let me present to you one of you new favorite listening experiences with the episode on Fulminology, the Study of Lightning. Check it out, or your chances of being struck by lightning may increase! (again I jest, I jest)