MagAO-eXtreme Posts

Astronomers are a fairly adaptable or masochistic lot. Regular switches between day and night are sought after, locations without much oxygen are prized, and network systems are designed around blocking communication with our own instruments. Observing runs are an oscillating balance between excitement and dejection, determination and delirium, and sleep and awakeness. In this ...

Yesterday I arrived with Eden and one way to gauge how chaotic the journey to LCO was is the level of shin splints experienced the next day. That is to say, the trek was not without some hiccups. From semi-justified TSA traffic stops… Your friendly Tucson TSA agents ensuring no rattlesnakes get through and onto ...

Day 8 saw the arrival of two colleagues and one hefty tarantula. Despite having to negotiate the Atlanta airport with speed, they made their connection to Santiago, where they obtained their Mountain Names: Iden and Jackke. Nobody captured the exact moment they alighted from their servicio especial van, and they’re extremely asleep right now, so you’ll have ...

Warren and I took different paths to Santiago but were able to meet up at the infamous Starbucks in the domestic terminal. The tradition of name swapping continues. We lost Warren today, but we are quite happy with his replacement Juan. We continued our journey onwards took the plane to La Serena and then the bus ...

I’m a C++ programmer, which means I’ve been here for a week. Consequences include I’m doing laundry already, and I have no idea what day of the week it is (that might be a memory leak joke). Sebastiaan and Warren arrived today, and immediately started tearing the instrument apart (as expected). The XKID crew ...

Today Laird and I continued alignment on MagAO-X with some frustration but ultimately success. The MKIDS team has provided us (among other additions) with a new dichroic that has made a nice addition to the instrument. Keeping up with MagAO-X fashion to consistently sneak new things onto the table in fun mechanical ways! Occasional robotic and sometimes ...

For better or worse, the original MagAO-X NSF proposal included funds to bring a brand new type of camera to the party – a superconducting sensor array that runs at 0.1 degrees above absolute zero. The big idea is that these arrays can tell you the energy of every photon that hits them, without ...

This blog post was titled—somewhat optimistically—earlier today, but rest assured, dear reader: MagAO-X is even more alive now than when I wrote that. There is a polemic I could write about the Linux kernel’s casual attitude toward hardware support, but the short version is: we got everything reinstalled and connected and closed the loop in ...

Today started auspiciously, with a double viz: A viscacha on the left And a viscacha on the right And there was a distant guanaco: A guanaco looking back at me Plus this little guy: A tarantula crossing the road to Magellan But alas, we ended the night with the decision to undo the last two days of Joseph’s hard work and abandon ...

We had a modestly productive day today. Our main goal during these first couple of lab days is to overhaul our instrument control computer (ICC). Joseph has been arguing with it all day, and maybe has it coming into shape as of sunset tonight. The day started with a Vizzy visit. Vizzy the ...