MagAO-eXtreme Posts

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 ...

Jared and I traveled to Las Campanas Observatory over the last 24 hours, and we’re finally ready to relax get things ready before the rest of the team rolls up. Also, the travel day blog has unofficially served as the repository for surprises, changed policies, and caveats for travelers in These Unprecedented Times—so I better ...

As we wait for the first members of MagAO-X make their way to Chile for 23A, we bring you a holdover over from the 22B run, an extensive review of food at Las Campanas. When we live up on a mountain for weeks on end with the same folks day-in and day-out, we start to get ...

MagAO-X and the eXtreme Wavefront Control Lab are affiliated with the Alien Earths project, an interdisciplinary collaboration led by Dániel Apai. I was going to list off the disciplines that they are inter-ing, but they said it best on their website: Our Alien Earths team includes experts in planet formation, exoplanet detection and characterization, planet formation, ...

This year has been a wild ride, which is to say, kind of on par with a normal pre-pandemic year. Conferences were held, telescopes were observed through, new people joined the program in real life (rather than Zoom™) and it wasn’t a big deal. This post is not a retrospective, however. This post is to document ...

Today the rest of the MagAO-X crew left LCO to return to our respective destinations! Slightly sleep deprived and ready for 30+ hours of travel Eden, Jared, and I got to visit the La Recova Market down in La Serena on our way out, where we found lots of fun Chilean items. Alpaca memorabilia galore We are now ...

I first came to LCO on April 18, 2012, for unpacking the one and only original MagAO. It sounds sappy to say, but life was never the same again. Tonight marked the 453rd sunset I’ve been on this mountain for (I can’t swear that I saw them all). You’re never gonna believe this (because ...

Our 24 hour MagAO-X clean up effort has just finished up around dinner time. MagAO-X is off of Clay. After sleeping various amounts of not-enough today, the whole team is more than ready for some sweet sweet shut eye. Hopefully now unbothered by nightmares of 2.0 arcsecond seeing or cart assembly. End of run crew ...

Tonight marks the end of our time on sky for the 2022B run. Though we have had a bit of a rough week of seeing, humidity, etc., tonight we scored some decent conditions and got to do some of the science we’ve all been eager to do. Logan is hunting for white dwarfs, and may have ...

Whelp, this run is old enough to drink. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo-NJMkOFzE There is a peculiar thing about the way the Universe is constructed: it is nearly, but not completely, impossible for one civilization to detect another civilization (unless they want to be found). That parenthetical caveat is worth explaining up front: essentially all SETI conducted to date is predicated ...