MagAO-Classic posts

MagAO won’t be back on the telescope for a year. That’s a long time. In the mean time, we have some amazing data to analyze, and we have some upgrades planned (which is why there’s such a long break). We’ll keep you posted as new results come out and our schedule progresses. ...

Today Laird, Jared, and I packed everything up in preparation for departing… and possibly not coming back for almost a year. Jared was in charge of backing up all of our computers and archiving the VisAO data. We have 5 computers on the mountain: The WFS supervisor, the ASM supervisor, the VisAO supervisor, the VisAO ...

Today we said goodbye to Alfio, Runa, Kate, and Alycia. Then we removed the ASM, Clio, and the Nas from the telescope. It went well. Exhausted though we may be, we will miss this place after we’re gone.

On our last night (last night) we had a spike of seeing up to 2” that gave our AO system a run for our money: Well, today we are taking everything off the telescope, it’s been a good run! Quotes: “But anyone could go in there and delete it!” – Laird, about doing the AO user’s manual on ...

      If you paid close (as the PI) attention to this blog, you probably understood that in AO you have to close (as the PI) the loop (as the PI did). The loop is a close (…) interaction between  a sensor, that reads something, and an object that does something in reaction. Here, the “thing” is ...

We were clouded out tonight: Also, a truck on the highway had an accident, which closed the highway, so the new turno couldn’t get here so the day crew had to also be the TO’s at night. We’ve been away from home for ~3 weeks and everyone is tired, but we stayed up all night in ...

We are pleased to announce that our very own Jared Males (VisAO instrument scientist and software engineer) has been awarded a 3-year NASA Sagan Postdoctoral Fellowship by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute to bring his PhD work to the next level. During Jared’s fellowship, he will design and implement sophisticated techniques for imaging exoplanets in the ...

Alycia says I’m spoiled. Fine. But when you’re used to half arcsecond seeing, one arcsecond seeing is a “disaster” (Alfio’s word, not mine). We did do some good science tonight. The AO system is running fantastically well now that we replaced the troublesome switch BCU, and our two cameras are catching all sorts ...

Tonight we had great seeing and also fixed a hardware problem, allowing us to practice operating the AO system, VisAO, and Clio under ideal conditions. In fact, Laird ran the AO system, under Alfio’s careful tutelage, and the loop never spontaneously opened the whole night! This is thanks to Runa who replaced the ...

I get to give an outsider’s perspective on the AO system as a guest blogger tonight. It’s incredibly exciting to be here and see the AO working. As best I can tell, the team was not intentionally showing off when just after sunset, Alfio flattened the secondary, Gabriel our TO brought up the primary mirror, TJ aligned CLIO’s masks ...