Hardware posts

  • MAPS 2023A Day 3: MIRAC-5 has entered the chat

    2023-06-05

    Jarron Leisenring

    MAPS 2023A Day 3: MIRAC-5 has entered the chat
    After some berating from @jlong, here is my inaugural post! First, an obligatory observatory picture. The MMT at sunrise with the full moon on the horizon The MIRAC-5 team arrived Friday, June 2nd to prepare for installation of the latest iteration of the instrument. Originally conceived in 1988 by Bill Hoffmann at the University of Arizona, MIRAC ...
  • The SAO phasing prototype visits MagAO

    2015-12-25

    Derek Kopon

    The SAO phasing prototype visits MagAO
    “Without phasing, there’s no real reason to build the GMT.” -Andrew Szentgyorgyi The biggest optical/infrared telescope in world will be the Giant Magellan Telescope, which will be built on a nearby mountain peak within sight of the Clay and Baade telescopes at Las Campanas.  The telescope will have 7 primary mirror segments and 7 adaptive secondary mirrors, ...
  • 2015A Day 21: Insusceptible to Shame

    2015-05-18

    Kate Follette

    2015A Day 21: Insusceptible to Shame
    If you read carefully between the lines of yesterday’s blog post (which were mostly complaints about me trying to do science – hmph!), you may have noticed that we didn’t say anything about using Clio. Because we didn’t. At all. All night long. We didn’t want to panic any of our upcoming observers, but Clio was ...
  • Getting ready for MagAO 2014B — spare Clio solid nitrogen pump

    2014-09-12

    Katie Morzinski

    Getting ready for MagAO 2014B -- spare Clio solid nitrogen pump
    We’ve had a few meetings lately to prepare for our upcoming 2014B run in Oct–Dec. This will be our second regular science run, and our operations are becoming more smooth and efficient, so we are going to have a more streamlined personnel plan. It will also be our longest run yet (37 nights!). We ...
  • MagAO Commissioning Day 9 – Nighttime Edition: Incorporating Clio

    2012-11-22

    Katie Morzinski

    MagAO Commissioning Day 9 - Nighttime Edition: Incorporating Clio
    Today was a busy day, and we began splitting MagAO’ers into day and night crew.  See Derek’s awesome post for the bulk of the day’s tasks: aligning the CRO and ASM. The next major happening was mounting Clio to the NAS.  Even though we didn’t play the theme from Top Gun as we did it (sorry ...
  • Turno

    2012-11-11

    Jared Males

    Turno
    Manny and Richard are on their way home. Clio2 survived shipping, and is ready for MagAO to send it some flat wavefronts. The last thing the guys did was train the LCO staff on how to keep Clio cold. The next MagAO detachment leaves Tucson today. We’re on our way.
  • Clio2 Gets The Freeze

    2012-11-08

    Katie Morzinski

    Clio2 Gets The Freeze
    After shipping, unpacking, and verifying that everything still works, the last step was for Manny and Richard to cool Clio2 down. Then they took some pictures. Since it works in the IR, basically detecting the heat of planets and brown dwarfs, Clio2 is kept very cold. This is because a blackbody at room-temperature emits most ...
  • It Begins: Clio Unpacking

    2012-11-05

    Jared Males

    It Begins: Clio Unpacking
    The invasion of LCO has begun. A scouting party consisting of Manny Montoya and Richard Sosa arrived this weekend and began unpacking the Clio2 infrared camera. Here is their report: Day 1: “Clio was unpacked yesterday morning and we confirmed that nothing was damaged in shipping. Clio was put on the vacuum pump ...
  • Clio has arrived

    2012-10-25

    Katie Morzinski

    Clio has arrived
    Clio has arrived!  The shipment containing the boxes for the instrument, ring, and rack was delivered to the cleanroom unpacking area at LCO earlier today:
  • Tracking Clio

    2012-10-22

    Katie Morzinski

    Tracking Clio
    Our IR science camera, Clio, has arrived in Chile and is in transit to LCO.  Here’s a pic from last month in Arizona:  Stay tuned – more updates about Clio coming soon.
  • WFS Readnoise

    2012-09-10

    Jared Males

    While the NAS was mounted on the telescope we took a quick set of readnoise measurements with the CCD39. Here are the results. The only major caveat is that the telescope was not tracking, so we didn’t test whether the drives have any impact. Otherwise, this is the most realistic set of ...
  • Interlude: Installing new cold stops and a J-band filter into Clio2

    2012-08-23

    Katie Morzinski

    Interlude: Installing new cold stops and a J-band filter into Clio2
    Meanwhile, back in Tucson… We interrupt the NAS Fitcheck program to bring you this update on the Clio2 infrared camera. After the Pre-Ship Review for Clio2 in Amsterdam in July, we have been completing preparations to receive diffraction-limited near-IR to thermal-IR photons from MagAO. Yesterday and today we installed the new J-band filter, and the cold ...
  • CCD Cooling Build

    2012-07-27

    Jared Males

    CCD Cooling Build
    Jason finished assembling our new CCD (and shutter) cooling system in the mirror lab yesterday. After several tries, and finally replacing the threaded cap that wouldn’t hold pressure, the system passed a pressure and operational test. It’s on its way to Pasadena, and from there to Chile.
  • Filter Update

    2011-10-09

    Jared Males

    Filter Update
    I have updated our VisAO filter curves to now include the effects of 3 reflections from Aluminum mirrors (important because Al has a feature at 0.8 microns), the Clio dichroic, the AR coated surfaces of the VisAO Optics, and the protected silver gimbal mirror in the VisAO camera. Most of these are small losses, ...
  • Our Mirror is a Mirror

    2011-03-18

    Jared Males

    Our Mirror is a Mirror
    On March 10, 2011 the MagAO secondary shell had its frontside successfully aluminized at the University of Arizona, Steward Observatory coating facility in Tucson by Richard Sosa and Gary Rosenbaum. This also took a lot of hard work by Jason Lewis and Victor Gasho.
  • White light PSF

    2011-03-18

    Jared Males

    White light PSF
    After completing our work with the laser, we switched to a white light source to test the camera’s performance in broad band filters. This is our PSF in the Sloan Digitial Sky Survey (SDSS) i’ filter (a nice set of filter curves is here), which passes light from roughly 0.684 to 0.840 microns. ...
  • It’s Alive!

    2011-03-06

    Jared Males

    It's Alive!
    After a very intense couple of weeks, we have built up the nearly complete VisAO camera in the Magellan AO Lab at Steward Observatory. The images below show the hardware mounted on the board. Missing is the wavefront sensor (WFS) hardware, which is waiting for us in Florence, Italy. The numbers label specific components: 1: ...
  • The filter wheels in action

    2010-12-01

    Jared Males

    Here is a demo of our filter wheel assembly (designed by Kevin Brutlag and assembled by Jason Lewis) spinning under the control of the AO Supervisor software.