MagAO-eXtreme Posts

It’s been almost two weeks since our first night started. We have been through many adventures and there are two more nights to come. Today was an eventful day and night. Today is our last night with an engineering block. Elena and I had to tumble out of bed to do some daytime engineering. Astronomical ...

Three observing nights left! Wait actually just two! We love it here, we really do. Our TO’s are lovely, the company is great, and the science is incredible (especially this run). But there comes a time in any astronomer’s trip where we start gazing wistfully out to the sunset horizon and thinking longingly of the ...

The first time I operated a professional telescope, I was 17 years old; I did it for 9 years at the Cerro Tololo Observatory. Later, I continued my professional astronomy career, traveling the world until three years ago when I finally landed at Las Campanas as an Instrument and Operations Specialist for the Magellan Telescopes. ...

This Sunday, we celebrate the triumphant return of the penguin seeker, Dr. Joseph Long, along with his bonus blog detailing his short weekend journey. On top of the cute penguin pictures, Joseph brought back lots of local chilean snacks that he sourced in supermarkets during his trip. As always, before the sunset viewing session, ...

It’s been a long-time dream of mine to see wild penguins. I have previously been thwarted by scheduling conflicts, pandemics, and the simple preference for being home after a month away rather than prolonging my travel further… but enough is enough. Once Maggie and Katie managed it, I had to get my act together ...

I think I’ve had observing time at LCO in every month (though I’m unable to figure out from the records I have on my laptop if I’ve actually physically been at LCO in every month), but this is the best November that I remember. The days are warm and lovely, the nights are clear and ...

It’s time to finally call off the searches everyone. Tie up your bloodhounds, turn off those spotlights, and park your helicopters. That’s right, the mountain’s most infamous instrument has been located after eons of searching high and low. There were fears that MagAO’s near-IR camera, Clio, had been sentenced to the boneyard to peacefully decay ...

I could feel it from the start: This night was going to be a success. Despite the haze that we could see in the horizon during sunset, the night gifted us a stable seeing and what was cloudy now is clear, baby. Can you believe we are only already at half of the observation run!? ...

With us finally getting used to working on the night shift, it sure feels like we have been racking up the overtime hours. However, we still find time to get our daily Vizzy content. I have decided to start this blog post by giving the people what they want…Viscacha’s and behind the scenes footage. After ...

We had an all-Laird, all-Hα night. With everything working so well, the most exciting thing going on instrument-wise was the initial setup, which I was able to get in on. From our control workstation, I dutifully applied the “F-test” (which displays the letter “R”, for reasons lost to history), applied the “J-test” (works as advertised), performed ...