MagAO-C 2019B

MagAO-Classic has landed in TUS. This is the last MagAO-C 2019B post. Here we are at the baggage claim in Tucson. We all made it and so did our bags! And I ...

If we got a Chilean peso for every time that phrase was used this run we could build a new ASM. From network ghosts and hardware bamboozle-ments to empty Chilean airports and Katie’s missing sandwich, we encountered a lot of new scenarios. The most troubling and only one unresolved – Katie’s missing sandwich. Last ...

Last night went great. Now today MagAO-Classic has been removed from Clay to the Aux and the clean room. Night schedules are switching to day schedules. It was a 3-viscacha day at the clean room and many NSF proposals have been worked on, and SPIE abstracts have been drafted and submitted to the extend possible. Sunset ...

Tonight was our last night on-sky with MagAO-Classic in 2019B. It was my telescope night, and Amali ran AO after Emily went to bed around midnight. Tomorrow’s the big day for removing MagAO-C from the telescope, so we always do these staggered bedtimes. It’s nice to have Amali and Emily here to help with removal. Emily, ...

Amali’s blog post about the saga of the Alpaca was another creative expository piece that tonight we had a ceremony to award her the 2019B MagAO-C blog award: Jared gives the citation and Amali graciously accepts the award [Image description: Amali and Jared stand on the Clay catwalk with the setting sun behind them. Amali is ...

Tonight was finally the promised night of relaxed AO operation after multiple nights of troubleshooting. It is much more to an AO operators delight to only need to open and close the loop for new targets with the occasional MatLab pop up forcing a reset on the tip tilt. Alberto, our telescope operator, was able ...

Tonight, gentle readers, a tale of drama and derring-do! A mystery was solved, a dastardly plot uncovered, an insidious impostor unmasked, several computers rebooted, a culprit nabbed, and, despite its most vicious efforts, the criminal’s final revenge borne without injury. I present: The Alpaca Saga! THE CASE Yesterday night the adaptive secondary — aka adsec, asm, shell, ...

I’m working on telescope domination this week. I started at Clay using MIKE (well, not really, I got clouded out). I moved to duPont using CAPSCam, I had a night off to visit with the MagAO team, and now I’m back at Clay using MagAO. Tomorrow I’m off to Baade with MagE. ...

Tonight was Alycia’s first night. I told Emily it would be more relaxed than last night with all Jayne’s weird rotations because Alycia’s observations are more in MagAO’s wheelhouse — Alycia is searching for faint companions; keeping the rotator off for ADI mode; and is a Clio and general observational expert. But… hah. So on the ...

Today was our first science night, with visiting observers Jayne and Ben from Amsterdam in collaboration with Sebastian from Arizona. Jayne, Jared, and I were all Sagan fellows before becoming faculty, and Sebastian is a current Sagan(-Hubble) fellow at Arizona. A picture of the 3 Sagan alums in the Clay control room. [Image description: Jared is ...

Today was the super long day through night. Up at 7am for a quick breakfast, then hurried to the top for a day full of instrument removal and installation, then a full night of on-sky engineering tests. The crew removed MIKE, the MIKE guider, and the f/11. The crew plus the MagAO instrument team (including ...

Yesterday was cooldown day; today was prep day; tomorrow will be the big day/night.Tomorrow we will be busy from 7am with removing MIKE, the MIKE guider, and the f/11, and installing the NAS, Clio, and the ASM.To prep today, we continued to test the Clio motors and code, and then we moved Clio from the ...

Today was Day 1 of the 2019B MagAO-Classic run. Emily and I cooled Clio all day, while Amali and Laird cleaned optics, and Jared moved motors. Amali, Emily, and I are also working on porting the Clio user manual to a new site, after the zero server died. Finally, I fired up the Clio computers, ...

Dear Reader, we shall try to be clear. Magellan Adaptive Optics a.k.a. MagAO shall now be referred to as MagAO-Classic or MagAO-C. This is due to the introduction of MagAO-eXtreme or MagAO-X on the scene. We are here at the same time for 2 different runs: MagAO-C 2019B Observing Run, and MagAO-X 2019B Unpacking Run Welcome. I arrived today ...