Tonight both Clay and Baade belonged to astronomers from Steward Observatory. Bear down.
Over on the diffraction limited side, we had a great night. We observed some young low-mass companions to stars (later we can argue about labels like “brown dwarf” and “planet” – all I know for sure is that they were all bigger than Pluto). We can do this across a wide wavelength range, using Clio and VisAO simultaneously, letting us probe the atmospheres of these objects in a unique way. We’re all really excited about our results! Stay tuned.
Tonight was Vanessa’s last night. Safe travels, and go Bobcats.
Some quotes from tonight:
“You know why we did it in z prime? Because we’re HOT in z prime.” — Laird (we’re learning to talk like optical astronomers)
“I THINK we are in closed loop” — Alfio (trust me, if he says that, we are)
“That was very heroic.” — Katie (after Alfio closed the loop with approximately 0 photons)
“Apart from the hardware bugs, it was only 3 buttons!” — Alfio
“You could make it say ‘T.J. is amazing’ and it would be the same thing” — T.J.
“If we hated you we wouldn’t make fun of you.” — Kate
“That’s what I keep telling myself.” — Laird
“They can’t handle the truth” –Alfio