MagAO-C 2017A

  • 2017A Day 21: A Very Successful MagAO Science Run Ends

    2017-02-21

    Laird Close

    2017A Day 21: A Very Successful MagAO Science Run Ends
    It has been a great recovery for MagAO from the terrible glycol leak of last year. We have now completed our first science run and it was a big success with a completion of the February targets that we failed to get last year now completed. As readers of this run’s blog posts know it ...
  • 2017A Day 20: All packed up

    2017-02-21

    Katie Morzinski

    Last night was our final night on-sky in 2017A. Laird went down around 10pm — hopefully he got to sleep fairly quickly, as he had to be up at 7:30am for a long day’s work. Jared went down around 3am — and he had to be up around lunchtime to help Laird. I’m not needed ...
  • 2017A Day 19: La Grande, Grande Araña del Cerro Manqui

    2017-02-20

    Katie Morzinski

    2017A Day 19: La Grande, Grande Araña del Cerro Manqui
    We are still talking about spiders today because that thing was huge and scary. But Laird saved us from the spider… or the spider from us… First here’s Laird’s video he took this afternoon while he was trying to convince it to leave Clay: And then pix from Jared from last night and Laird from this afternoon: It’s ...
  • 2017A Day 18: Scary Spider

    2017-02-19

    TJ Rodigas

    2017A Day 18: Scary Spider
    When you’re on an observing run, the word “spider” comes up fairly often–usually people are talking about the support structures of the secondary mirror. Tonight, “spider” had a different meaning because THERE WAS A HUGE FREAKING SPIDER IN THE BUILDING. Here is a picture showing just how big this thing was: By the way, can you ...
  • 2017A Day 17: Multiple Suns and Planets in Dusty Disks

    2017-02-18

    Kevin Wagner

    2017A Day 17: Multiple Suns and Planets in Dusty Disks
    Las Campanas is my favorite place to watch sunsets. Unfortunately, we only have one star to watch rise and set each day–look how lonely it is. While we’re observing we are forced to fortunate enough to get to watch the sunset and sunrise before turning in for the day. If we lived on another planet, we might not ...
  • 2017 DAY 16: Good Luck MAGAO Team

    2017-02-17

    Angelica Leon

    2017 DAY 16: Good Luck MAGAO Team
    It is great to see you again, specially after last time… I hope you could get very good data on these nights, and weather helps for the time left, good luck guys, beware the moonlight And before leaving Chile, you should enjoy the beach!! Remember we are in summer And for these nights, when you are not working, ...
  • 2017A DAY 15: The Amazing Weather Predicting ASM

    2017-02-16

    Laird Close

    2017A DAY 15: The Amazing Weather Predicting ASM
    Tonight is my first calm night driving the AO system in 5 nights. It is great that everything in MagAO/VisAO/Clio is working well together again. Katie is getting great data and Kevin Wagner has joined us at Clay. I was having such an easy time running the AO that I was “volunteered” into ...
  • 2017A Day 14: Step On The Gas

    2017-02-15

    Jared Males

    2017A Day 14: Step On The Gas
    As Alex described yesterday, we had to make a major mid-run repair to our system. One of the most important components of our Pyramid wavefront sensor failed on Alycia’s 2nd to last night. So we had to light the bat signal, and, as usual, our Italian collaborators and the LCO crew ...
  • 2017A Day 13: Much excitement for first time users!

    2017-02-14

    Alex Greenbaum

    2017A Day 13: Much excitement for first time users!
    This was my first time at Magellan along with Felicity B. Hills, a grad student at U. Michigan. I feel like we’ve been truly inducted into the group of MagAO users, watching a very capable instrument team encounter difficult problems and solve them. Alycia graciously let us watch and follow along with her observations for ...
  • 2017A Day 12: Clio night

    2017-02-13

    Katie Morzinski

    2017A Day 12: Clio night
    Tonight Alex and Felicity got a chance to take some Clio data and calibrations. Alycia departs today — it was nice having her here — safe travels! The song of the day has embedding disabled: Lego Mariner’s Revenge
  • 2017A Day 11: Here We Go

    2017-02-12

    Jared Males

    Who’s up for a little troubleshooting?
  • 2017A Day 10: We Collaborate with Order and Workplace

    2017-02-11

    Alycia Weinberger

    2017A Day 10: We Collaborate with Order and Workplace
    It’s great to be back at LCO after a 15 month drought from observing here. That’s the longest I’ve gone without being here since 2009! All the same great people are still here, and it’s a pleasure to be back working with the staff and MagAO team. If you’re wondering about the title of the ...
  • 2017A Day 9: 10um

    2017-02-10

    Katie Morzinski

    2017A Day 9: 10um
    Alycia arrived yesterday and today was her first night. She brought a 10-micron camera to do some thermal imaging, including these pictures of me: Tonight went smoothly other than a brief power outage which meant Mauricio had to go turn the compressor back on. He also brought us some cake from Chef Andres! From last night which ...
  • 2017A Day 8: Vizzy day

    2017-02-09

    Ya-Lin Wu

    2017A Day 8: Vizzy day
    It has been a busy day. We were searching for planets hidden in young disks but suddenly got attacked by another DSP board failure. Luckily we quickly fixed the problem and closed the loop at an amazing 0.35 arcsecond seeing. Wonderful night. Let’s relax and see some viscachas.     I find this song quite interesting:
  • 2017A Day 7: Day 7

    2017-02-08

    Jared Males

    2017A Day 7: Day 7
    Astronomy happened. Stars were involved.
  • 2017A Day 6: Better than OK

    2017-02-07

    Laird Close

    2017A Day 6: Better than OK
    Hi all you MagAO fans, last night we had some excitement (which as long time readers of the blog know — that means something broke). After a fairly routine night we had just settled into a nice rhythm at around 3AM. Then the telescope rotator decided to stop rotating — which wasn’t a big deal, ...
  • 2017A Day 5: OK

    2017-02-06

    Katie Morzinski

    2017A Day 5: OK
    It was a 3-Sagan day: We’ve had lots of good food this week: And tonight at dinner Hector asked us why we hadn’t asked for empanadas in our night-lunch forms — well, we had forgotten it was Sunday! He sent up plenty of empanadas anyway — he takes good care of us! And Alexis made potato chips ...
  • 2017A Day 4: Settled In

    2017-02-05

    Jared Males

    2017A Day 4: Settled In
    The clouds stayed away tonight, and we settled in to our normal habits — it’s been over a year since we did that! As usual when left to ourselves, we spent 4+ hours on one target and let the Sun open the loop. Our friends were out enjoying the warm summer weather today.
  • 2017A Day 3: Umbrella

    2017-02-04

    Ya-Lin Wu

    2017A Day 3: Umbrella
    It was cloudy and windy and foggy, so we stayed in the control room waiting for the clouds to go away. Laird felt bored at the beginning of the night, but he immediately realized the adaptive secondary mirror was in danger. The ASM is very delicate, and even a single raindrop can potentially destroy it. ...
  • 2017A Day 2: Vizzyhog Day

    2017-02-03

    Katie Morzinski

    2017A Day 2: Vizzyhog Day
    Like the groundhog, 2 vizcachas decided to appear today — I guess that means we have 6 more weeks of summer (? since we’re in the southern hemisphere). Actually, it meant that we had a nice welcome to our first night on the telescope in 2017. We started with some guider engineering, then went on ...
  • 2017A Day 1: Ready

    2017-02-02

    Jared Males

    2017A Day 1: Ready
    MagAO is all ready to go on the telescope. ASM is in the dome, NAS is packed up, and Clio is cold (enough). Here are a couple of standard day before pics. A new feature at LCO is a crosswalk at the occasionally busy saddle intersection. Such things usually occur for a reason. ...
  • 2017A Day 0: Is this thing on?

    2017-02-01

    Katie Morzinski

    The 2017A MagAO team made it to LCO! It’s beautiful here on the mountain. Hector cooked us a delicious dinner of fish, potatoes, soup, salad, and pudding. I checked on Clio’s vacuum (which Victor started for me on Sunday) and it’s at $10^{-6}$ so it’s looking good to start liquid nitrogen cooling first thing ...
  • 2017A Day -1: Blogging Begins

    2017-01-31

    Jared Males

    2017A Day -1: Blogging Begins
    Well, here we go. Laird, Katie, Jared, and Ya-Lin are on our way to LCO. We’ve already not seen our first green flash. I’m a bit worried though. We’re not even a day into the run and Laird is already exhausted. So we’re bringing back the old “Telephone Game” rules. As usual, every ...