MagAO-eXtreme Posts

The SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation conference is the main event for instrument builders world-wide, and this year is held in Montréal, Quebec, Canada. The conference is held every two years (because one year is nothing in instrument project timelines) and the last one would have been in 2020. (But then, the plague.) Anyway, we have ...

Today was the last day of the conference! We saw many great talks (mostly about PDS 70 and HR 8799…) and many of us have left excited to get back to work and Reduce! That! Data! Today was a half day and that meant we were finally able to roam free and see the beauty of ...

Today I presented Kevin Wagner’s talk about searching for planets in 10 µm light. I think I did an okay job talking about things I know nothing about, but then, I do have plenty of practice. All questions about Kevin’s part of the talk will be answered with viscacha noises. Incredibly, people did ask me questions. In ...

Where are days 1 & 2 you ask? Um we didn’t blog those. *Sheepish grin* Your favorite MagAO-X team is living it up in Leiden, Netherlands this week at the Spirit of Lyot conference – a conference devoted to bringing exoplanet direct imaging science and instrument builders together to unite the tech with the ...

I can thankfully say that all of our LCO-going MagAO-X team members are back to their respective USA locations! I would say Tucson but Logan had to pick up her dog and car in Texas. Speaking of doggos, I know everyone was happy to see their loving furry roommates upon their arrival. Alexander the Great a ...

We did it, folks. We made it the full 29 days. (Maybe there will be a blog post from Atlanta for Day 30, maybe not. Depends how tired we are.) Jared had the presence of mind to take a group shot on our transport down from Las Campanas to the airport. The covid clinic we visted ...

After a grueling day yesterday we were all blessed with a full 12 hours of sleep last night. And it was long overdue, especially for our hard-charging PI and Post-Doc. So with a renewed spirit, everyone feeling much more themselves today, we joined the LCO crew in getting MagAO-X buttoned up and ready ...

We have waited a long time for a night like last night. MagAO-X had first light way back in Dec 2019. We had just 4 nights to get it aligned to the telescope for the first time, figure out how to acquire a star, and start testing and optimizing our control system. ...

Yes, Jared, it really is the last night! I wish I could send a supersonic shipment to the MagAOX team to sustain them while they quickly pack up everything in the next day or so. I’d include really good coffee and Coke Zero (“We’ve really disrupted the economy of Las Campanas” –Joseph on the ...

We thought that we would go on-sky with MagAO-X for 14 nights when we left Tucson nearly 4 weeks ago. However, after some heated debate we realized that we never checked the official schedule of the telescope. Well, we got another night coming up. Luckily we build in a day of contingency and we can ...