MagAO-Classic posts

We (Laird, Jared, Katie, Alfio, Armando, Marco, Runa, Enrico, Simone, Luca, Carmelo, and Alessandro) have been working hard all week here at Arcetri to prepare for the Pre-Ship Review. For today’s installment we have a video of the VisAO PSF as we test closing the loop and adjusting the gains.  Laird is narrating and Katie is ...

Due to the always too short amount of time we get to spend with our instrument here, we work some long hours. Late at night and on weekends the front gate to Arcetri is closed, so we have to go around the back way. It is actually a nice walk, and we discovered ...

Laird, Jared, and Katie (new postdoc) arrived yesterday for prep work and then for the Pre-Ship Review that will happen on the 23rd-24th Feb.  Katie is getting up to speed on MagAO while Laird and Jared verify that the system still performs as it did last Nov/Dec.  It’s chilly in Florence and we are running ...

The MagAO team (or at least part of it) has returned to Florence for another round of integration and testing. I (Jared) have been here for 2 weeks, and Laird and Derek just arrived. As soon as I arrived we successfully closed the loop again, with only minimal adjustments of the alignment using ...

I have updated our VisAO filter curves to now include the effects of 3 reflections from Aluminum mirrors (important because Al has a feature at 0.8 microns), the Clio dichroic, the AR coated surfaces of the VisAO Optics, and the protected silver gimbal mirror in the VisAO camera. Most of these are small losses, ...

Last week Laird and I had the pleasure of attending the Arizona Board of Regents meeting in Phoenix, and presenting a poster about the Magellan AO system and the VisAO camera. The session we were invited to was on the impact of scientific research on student’s education at Arizona’s universities. Click the image ...

Here is a short film of the VisAO camera at i’ (765 nm) in 0.8″ seeing (33mph wind) with the loop open (0.3% SR, FWHM~0.6″) and closed (55% Strehl, FWHM=0.027″) at 800 Hz (400 modes) in the test tower. This is a >180 increase in peak counts (and >20x gain resolution) obtained by turning on the ...

On July 21 we closed the loop again (but without wind on the outside of the tower). In these calm conditions we were able to obtain 55% Strelh at i’ (765 nm) which is excellent correction in 0.8″ seeing and 33mph winds. I attach a log10 stretch image below to show the very high contrast ...

Yesterday, in strong winds on the outside of the test tower, we closed the loop at 400 modes and 800 Hz for the first time. The results were very nice and better than expected. In simulated 15m/s winds with injected 0.8″ seeing we recovered 44% Strehl in i’ (765 nm) and 28 milliarcsec resolution (this ...

We are about to start posting some very exciting results, so I thought we should provide some information about our filter system.  We are using Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) standard r’, i’, and z’ filters as our main bandpasses.  These filters were provided by Asahi Spectra.  Our CCD47 has a near-IR coating to maximize ...