MagAO-eXtreme Posts

The XWCL had a rather successful day up here on the mountain, even considering the Covid-mandated limit of 4 people in the control room (including the telescope operators). The team adapted and built a mega-desk ‘junior’ in the kitchen/lounge area of the telescope, wherein the remaining members of the group could stay well connected to ...

Full disclosure: empanada Sunday is not going anywhere – that was just clickbait to lure in readers. However, this is my last empanada Sunday since I leave the observatory in just a few days. I think the chefs knew as much because they baked an enormous party-sized empanada for all to enjoy. And all of ...

When installing an instrument on a research telescope, the astronomers and opticians must transition from a day to a night schedule. This happens with an early start and a very (very, very) long day. 09:15: Crane operations begin at the cleanroom building 10:00: Bubble-inhabitants go to get nose-poked in exchange for their freedom 10:30: Formerly bubbled individuals encounter ...

As Avalon so illuminated in yesterday’s post, she and I are the last group members to arrive and bubble at LCO. Today was the last full day of our bubble. Tomorrow is the big day: moving MagAO-X to the telescope and finally going on sky! Tomorrow morning we will get our brains ...

Yesterday Logan and I arrived here to LCO just after sunset to a group of familiar and friendly faces. The lengthy travel day (well, 27 hour day if you came from Tucson like me) was as enjoyable as one could argue for, especially considering the potential hiccups that can come with international travel in Covid ...

This picture is to show you that some work happened today: Dr. Sebastiaan Haffert, NASA Sagan Fellow, hard at work flattening MagAO-X. Flat means “optically as perfect as our system is capable of”. The problem is that in this research group “we have standards”, and they are hard to meet. So we do ...

I was mistaken, but now I’m not: Sebastiaan, Avalon and I are the only team members on this run who haven’t been to Las Campanas Observatory (LCO) before. However, perhaps situation this extends to at least some of the avid blog readers, so I’d like to share what some of my experience has been like ...

So for the last 48 hours Justin Knight and I have been busy working hard at the optical alignment of MagAO-X. On Saturday, after 30 hours of travelling we arrived at LCO, and had a great dinner (delivered to our door here at LCO as we are in the bubble for the next 3 days). ...

My day started with a classic LCO breakfast. A perfect way to start the day. After that we ran up the hill and cabled our 2040 actuator MEMS DM. We got it on the first try! We are getting better at this procedure. Sebastiaan and I cabling the tweeter. Photo by Joseph Long. Sebastiaan is testing ...

We’ve got MagAO-X mostly re-cabled in its temporary home in the LCO cleanroom, and Doctors Close and Knight are fresh off the plane and working on the optical alignment. But, earlier, we had a fun discovery: the instrument control computer (ICC) was getting almost no coolant flow. Yesterday, we did some brain surgery on the real-time ...