MagAO-Classic posts

Another eventful day here at Las Campanas. Some more of the team arrived: Richard Sosa from Steward, Tyson Hare from Carnegie (Pasadena) and Mario Andrighettoni and Frederico Piccin from Microgate (Bolzano Italy). We unpacked the flipping bench, and even more exciting was the first mounting of our 4 electronics boxes on the ...

We kept at it on our 2nd day (our 1st full day). Today we unpacked the NAS, installed the guider in the NAS (for the first time), unpacked and tested our computers, and after dinner we unpacked and inspected the WFS. Some pix:

Today, for the first time, all of the MagAO system was on the same continent, and even in the same building. On top of that, after a 50 hour odyssey Laird, Victor, and Jared arrived at LCO to begin unpacking. MagAO is officially at Magellan! Here are some pictures from today. Meanwhile, somewhere between ...

The NAS and all the W-unit and VisAO electronics landed in Chile early on Tuesday morning. The first part of MagAO has now arrived in Chile! Our other big news is that the ASM – meaning the thin shell itself and the ‘unit’, which means the reference body and attached electronics – has left Arcetri ...

After our pre-ship review, we had a few things to fix – the only difficult one was a misbehaving actuator in the ASM. These have all been dealt with, and after a final review by the director we today received permission to ship the Magellan AO system to Chile. LCO here we come! Some packing pictures ...

The Magellan AO VisAO camera includes a novel system for performing “frame selection”, which is the technique of using only periods of good seeing and/or AO correction in the final science image. Traditional “lucky imaging” does this by reading short exposures and selecting in post processing. In our system, we use measurements of ...

This video demonstrates the MagAO high-level software GUIs used to acquire the star, set up the AO system, and close the loop.  The entire process takes about ~3-4 min. at this time. (Filmed by Alfio, narrated by Laird, cameo by Katie operating the VisAO camera) Go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSiFoG8qgKI to view the video in high-def. Description: After the telescope slews ...

The MagAO project hosted our Pre-Ship Review (PSR) last week at Arcetri Observatory in Florence.  The purpose of this review was to ensure that lab work on the AO system is complete and that MagAO is ready to move to the telescope for on-sky commissioning. Six external reviewers (4 in person and 2 by videocon) gave ...

Yesterday we tested closing the loop on a faint R=13 mag star.  Ambient light from computer monitors in the test tower was too bright and so we closed the loop from the “control room” in the chem. lab.  It’s a good thing we got all the computers, desks, and high-speed ethernet links so that our ...

Last week on Tuesday we closed the loop in the test tower, verifying our performance from the November run and validating our excellent wavefront control with MagAO. We simulated 0.8” seeing (~15 cm r_0) in a 33 mph (~15 m/s) wind and closed the loop on an 8.5-mag guide star running at 1000 Hz with ...