MagAO-eXtreme Posts

Tonight was split 50/50 between Dr. Weinberger and Dr. Haffert. Once Alycia’s observations were done, Sebastiaan started commissioning his extreme, visible, high-resolution, MagAO-X-fed, integral field spectrograph VIS-X. There was a little bit of panic initially when the laptop pinch-hitting for “VIS-X instrument control computer” wouldn’t talk to the camera, but Sebastiaan shimmied up the ladder ...

Late last year, we surveyed the Magellan community about what was lost and what was gained from remote observing. 10/28 people who had used a new instrument during remote observing cited a downside as the difficulty learning to use a new instrument. Obviously, MagAO-X wasn’t on during the 14 months of remote observing to that ...

Today we got up early (3:00 P.M.) for a tour of the Giant Magellan Telescope construction site, arranged by our fearless leader. We met with architect Francisco Figueroa at the site, who was happy to show us around—as soon as we put on vests, hard hats, gloves, safety glasses, a high-visibility safety vest, and safety-toe ...

Whelp, here we are. After 20 days of the most excellent weather and 9 nights of impeccable seeing (last night was truly remarkable observing conditions!) we have finally hit a night with some clouds. We spent some time on a target for one of our collaborators and got her some good data, but ...

So today was day 9/14 of our on-sky run on the Clay telescope and it was a particularly awesome night! The seeing (how astronomers quantify the turbulence in the atmosphere) was very good all night. A great Easter Sunday treat (as were all the delicious empanadas). A perfect night, excellent conditions all night long ...

MagAO-X is proving to be a complicated beast. Just when we think we’re making progress at taming it, we find another thing that doesn’t quite work yet — or is just plain failing. Sometimes we need help from our collaborators working on similar AO systems. We’ve been getting really nice performance, but with a ...

It is quite a late morning while I am writing this blog post. We had a very successful first night of commissioning of VIS-X. VIS-X is the Visible Integral-field Spectrograph eXtreme (VIS-X). Of course everything we do is extreme. So the spectrograph also had to be extreme. VIS-X is the project that I have been ...

It finally feels like we’re starting to settle in here. We have begun doing hours-long observations of science targets for observers, and that means we can actually take a breath, catch up on email, and bond with our friends at LCO. While having our dinner we were graced by our friend the Burro who likes ...

To aid the MagAO-X team members I’ve left behind, I’m making a post of my transit from LCO back to Tucson, AZ. Here is a list of the necessary things to travel to the U.S.: A passport A credit card or other valid form of payment in Chile A valid COVID-19 rapid antigen test with a negative result The ...

Today was a great MagAO-X day. We had great seeing and things worked well, we were able to get a lot done today and make some nice science-y images! Engineering continued again tonight with a smattering of science. Tonight we worked on commissioning the non-redundant aperture mask (NRM), which is a technique for ...