2017B Day 12: Arcseconds Chocolates Owls Earthquakes

A blog post mostly in pictures.

From yesterday:

Dave shows Alycia and me how to find the local Chilean site for earthquakes that are too small for the USGS earthquake mapper. Foreground: Dos Huevos Fritos y Jugo de Frez. Bottom: Two earthquakes, two nights apart, at different solar and sidereal times… both caused when we locked on the same star.

Tonight was the last MagAO night of 2017B. The night was split between Matias Diaz observing for Blake Pantoja, and Amelia Bayo with her student Daniela Grandon. Mauricio Martinez brought us a giant chocolate bar as a welcome to the Turno and the End of Run gift. Thanks Mauricio! It was great working with him, Matias, Amelia, and Daniela tonight. Even though there were some thin clouds, we were doing mostly astrometry and the seeing was good, so it was a great last night!

Daniela (left) and Amelia (right) smile as they operate Clio. Notice the giant Toblerone bar on the shelf above them. Below: The contents of the giant Toblerone bar.

When Amelia Bayo first got here, I was reading a paper about the Virtual Observatory by A. Bayo. So I asked her, “Are you A. Bayo?” (At first my English-accent ears heard her name as “Emilia”, but I knew “Bayo” was on the telescope schedule for tonight.) And she is! So it was great, because while I gave her a little tutorial on running Clio, she gave me a little tutorial on using the Virtual Observatory! 🙂

We were so happy that Hedwig came back tonight:

Hedwig surveys her territory.
Hedwig does a little dance on the all-sky cam.
This plot is for Alycia to show her that the Clay seeing tracked the Baade seeing pretty well tonight, even with our non-flat ASM it its best attempt at open-loop flat.
We looked at Theta1 Ori B again. This image is to save on the blog so I can find it next time we do Trapezium for astrometric calibration. It is the guider image to help us lock on the right star,
“B”.
End of night. End of run. Top: I came here to collect data… on owls. Middle: Clay at the end. Bottom: A full parking lot to remove MagAO from Clay.
Jhen got this great picture of a Wild Vizcacha this afternoon. It was great having her help on this run. She goes back today. Thanks Jhen!

Loop is open.

Dome is closed.

End of night.

End of run.

This is the best — extremely accurate, educational, and fun!

If someone reads this before I wake up and has some spare time and doesn’t mind going down to the basement, would you please turn off the Clio pump? Thanks!

Update by Jared: If someone reads this after waking up, I went down into the bowels of Clay, into the deep dark tunnel, and I think I turned the pump off. But while I was bent over the pump, the door slammed behind me. It was probably gravity, but I didn’t take any chances and just ran for it. I’m not going back down there to check, so we’ll just have to see if the pump is off next time we come back.