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 the X-Y-Z stages. The system came right back up, with less than 5 minutes of work, after 3 months of down time.
The last two weeks have been mostly uneventful, consisting of a lot of software development and debugging. In preparation for the next 2 weeks of work on the ASM and the CRO tests we removed the NAS from the tower on Friday. The two videos below show the process of lowering, and then tilting the NAS upright on its handling cart.
While the NAS is off the tower we will be fine tuning the WFS and VisAO camera alignment, as well as testing the AO to Magellan software interface. In about two weeks we’ll reverse the process, and mount everything back in the tower for some more exciting closed loop action.