MagAO-Classic posts

You might have noticed that our server redirected you to https. This will help ensure that MagAO continues to be a source of good, clean, family-friendly fun. Thanks to Paul Hart for helping Jared get a certificate set up. Thanks to our loyal readers, Jared has found a new source of funding for Arizona’s various AO ...

Well the Wildcats lost to the Buckeyes this evening, but take heart, Arizona, things are looking up for us MagAO’ers down here. The main highlight of today is that the AO system is running closed loop on 0.8″ simulated seeing at 1 KHz sample speeds (where we were at the end of Comm 1). We have ...

Today is Alfio’s birthday. As you can see in the above picture, we have a new minimum-force basis set to try (thanks Fernando!). As soon as we get everything lined up, we’ll test it on the CRO. Speaking of the CRO, yesterday was crazy. So crazy that none of us had much energy ...

Today we installed the NAS (the metal ring that mounts to the telescope and holds all our instruments) and the CRO (the calibration return optic, for internal alignment and calibration). We also said goodbye to Tyson — thanks for everything! It was a long day and I’m tired so this will have to be quick, ...

Today we said goodbye to Alan. Thanks for all your help getting us up and running! Even with Alan departing, the mountain is full to the brim with personnel, and we need all the space we can muster for the President of Carnegie’s visit later this week. Today the crew installed the ASM. First they had to ...

Today was the first full day for our expanded team. After a long 2 days of travel, we got a lot of good sleeping and working accomplished. Oh, and Laird’s suitcase arrived — it’s nice to have toiletries! Today Marco and Alfio checked that the ASM cabinet powered up and that the system looked ...

The MagAO team got a lot bigger today. Laird, Katie, Alfio, Marco, and Vanessa arrived at LCO today. Marco took some pictures after they all met up in Santiago. Katie sat in the front of the bus, so she took some pictures of the drive. No rest for the weary. After dinner we charged ...

Congratulations to the Harvard NCAA men’s basketball team, who today upset #3 New Mexico (as the #14 seed – wow!). This makes things in the Aux building at LCO a little interesting: #6 Arizona and #14 Harvard square off tomorrow afternoon. Bear Down! The Clay primary mirror got a bath this morning: Here is the rinse ...

Today was somewhat eventful. There was some more guider housekeeping, and some work on VisAO software, and a few other odds and ends. We also saw a rare member of the LCO zoo today at lunch. A family of Guanacos came by the aux building today. There were a couple of little ones trotting ...