MagAO-eXtreme Posts

Thank you Carla for the wonderful blog post yesterday, and also for taking such good care of us. I of course really mean thanks for delivering our empanadas on Sunday. We’ll see you next turno! I know it looked like a lot of food, but I was actually somewhat disappointed in our team’s commitment ...

I am (Carla) so glad to be at the first and hopefully last night of this MagAOX run. I was here the last first night too (2022A) and both of them were very chaotic. To add one more word to your chilean vocabulary I hope that I am not the YETA one here. To be Yeta ...

After the embarrassing fate of only the 3 professionals at the helm yesterday, our elders decided that today was the day to teach the youth how to run things. So this post is by and for the young ones. I took the reigns of the AO correction Mega Desk and closed a loop on my ...

After an eventful 24 hour day, a record might have been broken at the Las Campanas Observatory; we have welcome 3 more University of Arizona scientists, making a total of 12 Arizonians on the Chilean mountains. Clay telescope with opened dome Second night on sky began with the customary group sunset viewing photo taken by UA ...

From the long days comes an even longer night with the first engineering night of the run. What follows is a brief recount of the 24 hours spent getting MagAO-X running. Today started bright and early with getting MagAO-X up the mountain. MagAO-X slowly moving up the mountain. Credit: Jared The final 200 meter climb resulted in ...

The long days spent waiting for a resolution to the trucking strike were unwanted but provided unusual tranquility on a mountain normally full of activity. Starting work yesterday morning brought welcome relief to have control back in our hands: turning wrenches and aligning optics was made sweeter by the ennui and uncertainty we had experienced ...

MagAO-X is here on the mountain, and we have been working to unpack it since its arrival at 10am. As such, anyone looking for coherent prose in what follows is warned to expect disappointment. We got pics tho. This is not a pic. Unpacking is dirty work, but it’s all worth it. Our hands look like this: So his ...

MagAO-X is coming to LCO! We received news late last night that the trucker strike that has left our team on the mountain with no instrument has come to a conclusion. MagAO-X is scheduled to arrive tomorrow morning/early afternoon wherein our team will be eager to greet it and start preparing for out first night ...

First post from Jialin, a new astronomy grad of the MagAO team! As a part of the Gen-Z crew that arrived yesterday, I spent today in my “bubble” keeping myself busy with work and olive counting while waiting for the arrival of MagAO-X. We should be freed tomorrow at 10am after our final COVID test. ...

Eden here, representing the three exhausted first year grads that just landed in Chile. This second wave of helping hands will get to join the great thumb twiddling. (We have also beaten MagAO-X’s shipping crates to the mountain.) There’s no new news regarding the strike, but kindly telescope-time neighbors have agreed to swap nights: time ...