This is the story of how The Book, which records the members of L’ordine, came to be.
The Magellan AO system was first integrated and tested in Florence, Italy, at the Arcetri observatory. This is where our Italian friends developed the Pyramid wavefront sensor, the software which controls the AO system, and the laboratory for testing the LBTAO and MagAO systems. From March 2011 to February 2012 Laird, Derek, Jared, and Katie (along with Laird’s family) spent nearly 6 months living in Florence and working at Arcetri.
One of the many wonderful things about Arcetri is that it is just a short walk to Galileo’s house.
In fact, were Galileo still living there today he would have a view of the test tower where MagAO first came to life from his balcony:
While in the test-tower lab at Arcetri, Laird Close purchased a telescope in Florence and modified the eyepiece to mount on MagAO. The eyepiece was used in the test tower to observe the AO corrected images in simulated turbulence, which provided a powerful demonstration of closed loop vs open loop performance.
After MagAO passed the pre-ship review in February 2012, the MagAO team visited the Galileo science museum in Florence and took pictures of a bust of Galileo.
Inspired by the laboratory success of the eyepiece, Jared purchased what would become the log book for L’Ordine.
The implementation of the book was a team effort of Jared, Katie, and Alfio Puglisi from Arcetri. Alfio provided the translation to Italian, with helpful stylistic advice. Jared and Katie converted an image of the bust of Galileo to an ink stamp, and Katie practiced writing the Italian provided by Alfio. Then, during the 1st commissioning run at LCO in November 2012, Jared applied the stamp and Katie wrote the words in the cover of the book.
Finally, Jared presented the book to Laird after defending his PhD thesis in May 2013.