MagAO-Classic posts

The Clay telescope’s 6.5m primary mirror is getting a bath tomorrow. So today it was lowered out of the telescope, and moved into the aux. building. Not something you see everyday. Alan and Tyson did some guider housekeeping today, covering up some pesky LEDs. I turned the W-Unit on and made sure everything ...

The “advance team” arrived at LCO today to begin preparations for MagAO commissioning run #2. Alan, Tyson, and Jared made the long overnight journey from the USA, accompanied by Povilas and Mark Phillips who were returning from the Magellan SAC meeting. After a delicious LCO supper I went up and looked everything over. ...

MagAO fans:  Did you miss AAS?  Or did you see our poster at AAS and want to see it again?  Kate had a lot of great conversations at the meeting (ADS link), and she has now posted her AAS 2013 poster as a PDF to our publications archive.  Here it is: Well, we can’t believe it, ...

Hi MagAO fans, it’s been a while since we’ve updated our blog. After we recovered from our month on the mountain, and got through Christmas, New Years, and the start of the new school year, the team has jumped into processing all the fantastic data we got from MagAO, Clio, and VisAO. In one month, we’ll ...

Well, we are almost home… we made it to the Dallas airport. When we left in early November, the election had just concluded and I was still eating Halloween candy. Thanksgiving has come and gone. And now that we are back in the US, we are hit with the usual full-blown American Christmas with music, ...

We’re off the mountain! Laird, Katie, Jared and TJ finished putting MagAO to bed yesterday, and made the journey down to La Serena. We spent one night there, and with Laird’s folks took some time off to celebrate. We have a long overnight flight to Dallas ahead of us, but we’re almost home. Some quotes ...

The last of the MagAO team left LCO today. So long and thanks for all the spatial resolution! Since we didn’t all overlap, here are the 3 group pictures we took that captured everyone who came on the commissioning run:

Hola, it’s Vizzy!  I work hard to keep my fur fuzzed, so I was asked to do a special guest post on LCO style.  MagAO has been immersed in the culture of LCO for a month, and they are a stylish bunch indeed.  Here we go! LCO is a pretty stylin’ place. What with the jumpsuits, clean room ...

This is my least favorite part: packing everthing up, getting organized, finding all of our lost allen wrenches, and taking a zip-tie inventory. The ASM came off the telescope yesterday, and rode down the hill first thing this morning. The last major operation was to unbolt and crane the NAS off the telescope. Once the NAS came off, ...

When you bring an expensive, delicate instrument to an observatory, you want there to be people like Juan Gallardo who put their full attention and serious effort into the procedures and operations for mounting and dismounting your instrument. Yesterday evening, we all met in the library/conference room, and Juan briefed us on the procedure ...