MagAO-eXtreme Posts

  • MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 5: Count Down

    2024-03-17

    Maggie Kautz

    MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 5: Count Down
    We are less than 24 hours from observing and it was crunch time today! We needed fuel so thankfully Sundays at LCO are empanada days! Chef’s kiss Laird and Jared were making bets on how long till we get a “grumpy cat”, ie an error message in our computer’s hardware tracking system, once we are on-sky. ...
  • MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 4: A day of firsts and lasts

    2024-03-17

    Sebastiaan Haffert

    MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 4: A day of firsts and lasts
    Today was an eventful day. Almost every blog post by me has mentioned VIS-X, the beautiful integral field spectrograph for MagAO-X. And, every run up to know had me doing optical alignment on the Nasmyth platform during morning shifts (after observing 🙁 ). This time the optical alignment finally did not drift during shipment! I ...
  • MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 3: Lights Out!

    2024-03-15

    Katie Twitchell

    MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 3: Lights Out!
    I hope you enjoy content from the newbies! It was Josh’s first blog post yesterday, so naturally it was my turn for a blog debut today. Actual footage of me when my alarm went off this morning Gary came over again to say good morning (and strut his stuff) With the loop having been closed at the end ...
  • MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 2: The stars are (almost) aligned.

    2024-03-14

    Josh Liberman

    MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 2: The stars are (almost) aligned.
    Gary Guanaco gazing into the abyss. Gary werkin’ it for the camera. Hello and welcome to my first ever blog post! Day 2 began with yet another Gary sighting–our good luck charm for the DM cabling and optical alignment to come. Following our daily dosage of guanaco, we got to work in the clean room. Me wearing sunglasses ...
  • MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 1: It lives!

    2024-03-13

    Eden McEwen

    MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 1: It lives!
    The sun rising on a day of unpacking. Is there anything more tantalizing than an fresh, unopened box of MagAO-X? This team just couldn’t resist. The unpacking festivities started at the first call of the returning night shift astronomers and did not finish until our good friend Orion had completely risen. The very first gift ...
  • MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 0: Why are you not making my salad?

    2024-03-12

    Maggie Kautz

    MagAO-X 2024Aa Day 0: Why are you not making my salad?
    It’s been a whole year but the team is back! The unpacking and alignment crew arrived at the beautiful Las Campanas Observatory this afternoon. Josh is there we promise! Fun fact: if you have items to declare upon arrival to Chile, your line takes you to a fun sign that only you and your advisor get ...
  • GMagAO-X’s first PDR

    2024-02-29

    Eden McEwen

    GMagAO-X's first PDR
    Maggie giving her HCAT talk, overviewing phasing on the testbed. GMagAO-X just hit another big milestone, we just finished up its Preliminary Design Review (PDR). If you haven’t been to one before, a PDR is a chance for a design to be critiqued and tweaked before moving on. If a project does well on its PDR, ...
  • 2024Aa Packing Party

    2024-02-12

    Logan Pearce

    2024Aa Packing Party
    MagAO-X is up and off to the great mountain in the south! As we are approaching our next great observing run, this time in two parts: 2024Aa in March (14 nights) and 2024Ab in May (10 nights). We spent the week packing her up and buttoning her down, and today saw her stuffed ...
  • CfAO Fall Retreat: high contrast chats in the hills

    2023-11-27

    Eden McEwen

    CfAO Fall Retreat: high contrast chats in the hills
    Hello from Arizonans in California! I just got back from the UC Santa Cruz Center for Adaptive Optics (CfAO) Fall retreat, where members of the AO work through some of the pressing problems in the field. This year was focused on High Contrast imaging testbeds, lessons learned from Magellan’s MagAO-X and Subaru’s SCExAO and what ...
  • Annular eclipse of the heart: L&L adventures reprised

    2023-10-18

    Logan Pearce

    Annular eclipse of the heart: L&L adventures reprised
    I suspect all of our readers will be aware that last Saturday there was an eclipse event over the US. At 9:30 am Tucson Time was the peak of the annular eclipse, an eclipse where the moon is at the furthest point on its orbit, called apogee, so the disk of the moon is ...