Things went pretty well tonight. Alfio called us to check in and we could proudly show him that his software is keeping MagAO running smoothly:
In fact, we are mostly keeping his chair empty for him:
Except for when things need attention:
Our friends over at Cerro Pachon are observing with GPI on the Gemini South telescope for the Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey (GPIES):
I was Skype-chatting with them a bit tonight:
We talked about astrometric calibrator fields, such as the Trapezium:
At the end of the night, seeing spiked up to 2” and we couldn’t keep a lock on our faint science target — it was the equivalent of clouds rolling in, we lost so much light.
So we tried an experimental target instead. Here is a quick snapshot of HD 269433 (all we could get before the loop opened again, as the Sun was rising too). It looks like this one, which is in the LMC and our WFS read as R=12.1 mag, will not work as a good astrometric calibrator for GPI.
Jason Wang is blogging about GPI this week and we tried to keep up with him:
Over at GPI, the GPIES team saw a vizcacha tonight by Gemini. I wonder if they stole ours, we have had so few sightings this run! But tonight, Jared did see one or two vizzies by Magellan at sunset:
Also, we also saw a herd of burros on our way up to the top tonight:
And we took a picture for our loved ones back home:
Finally, today is Jared’s mom’s birthday, so here are some pictures of her favorite oldest son for her to enjoy:
And finally, here is a beautiful song from South Africa: