MagAO-Classic posts

We had another somewhat so-so night. Some high winds made it interesting, but there were few to no clouds and seeing was at least mediocre. But right at 4 am, when we switched targets, seeing blew up to more than 1.5 arcseconds. Sorry DZ — we aren’t doing this on purpose. There have ...

Today was our first official science night! The previous nights were engineering, but tonight we had a visiting astronomer here at the telescope, and he was calling the shots for his observations. He took logs while we helped him take data, and the operations went pretty smoothly. The night started out well, with Alfio ...

Hello everybody, I’ve been enlisted to write the blog post tonight. I take it that I’m supposed to post a picture of a horse: To get started, here’s a few images from last night’s engineering. The first is a VisAO image of Baade’s window. Check out all of those stars! Next, here’s  a picture of an asteroid ...

We spent almost the whole night with the loop closed, with a few exceptions. For instance, we had to open the loop during an earthquake! Not a big one, but the floor rumbled and the loop went a little crazy because of the vibrations. One of the fun things about observing with AO is ...

Today we went on sky and closed the loop! The first half of the night was cleaning up final guider problems, but then just before midnight we acquired our first AO setup star and were able to close the loop with an audience and everything! I’m glad we showed the GMT folk some ...

You may have heard that a magnitude~8 earthquake struck northern Chile after dinnertime. Thanks for all your checking-in emails, and we are happy to say that we did not feel the earthquake at all; it was up in way way northern Chile and we are approximately central: Our thoughts and well-wishes are with the people ...

Let me remind you of how cruel a mountain can be: “Caradhras was called the Cruel, and had an ill name,” said Gimli, “long years ago, when rumour of Sauron had not been heard in these lands.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring We may not have wizards against us, but when it decides to ...

First, an announcement: this is blog post #200! How long can we keep this up? Today’s big accomplishment was driving the ASM up to the summit. Best question of the day: “Is it still one piece?” — Juan Gallardo, after the ASM rolled off the lift. We also reorganized the cables and hoses in the W-Unit. ...

Today I worked with Mauricio and Laird on evacuating the air out of Clio’s cryostat, which involved cleaning the o-ring and then hoping for a good vacuum. Laird did some fixes to the ASM, removing the alignment laser and making an alignment fiducial instead, and fixing some of the protective covering on the back to ...

VisAO and the WFS got a much needed spring cleaning today. We also installed some new filters. Jared and Alfio installed a new more powerful Y-stage motor. This motor has to lift the W-unit against gravity, and the old one was under-powered and so was failing. These motors are very powerful, even the old ...