MagAO-eXtreme Posts

According to wikipedia, there are 22 species of venomous snakes in Arizona. One of these snakes that is shared between AZ and my hometown in Texas is the Western Diamondback Rattlesnake. If you’ve never seen one in the wild, it looks like this: Image credit: me If you’ve never seen one in the wild, you ...

One of the things I have been pursuing with little success through my PhD is trying to keep plants alive to their first birthday (or sometimes their half-birthday). I usually do well enough in the cooler months, but with summer comes me traveling, intense heat, and the monsoons that months of progress go kaput. To ...

The days have cooled down a bit, no more peaking above 100F. I’m enjoying being able to keep my blinds open while I work in the daytime. Once it becomes consistent days of being above 100F, then the blinds have to be closed at all times. One of my quarantine purchases has been getting a bicycle ...

There has been a request for baby hedgehog update photos. The people want MOAR HEDGE. Here’s the glamor shots: This one is tough to photograph! She is very jittery when out in the open, and immediately begins to look for a place to hide. I hope she mellows a bit as she ...

You probably didn’t notice this post in your feed reader on Sunday. However, I urge you not to worry about timestamps. Time no longer has any meaning, after all. Even though Eurovision 2020 is canceled, you may still watch the entrants yourself. A couple of them are even worth sharing as songs of the day. (I’d ...

I give you a baby Javelina with the zoomies. You’re welcome. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unLTYV5CzcE Admittedly, it’s a mild case. But also the itchies. Wikipedia claims that the collective noun for Peccaries is “Squadron”. I’m going with it. Inspired by the grace and majesty of the Javelina, I give you Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Band”, performed ...

It’s been a week since I last blogged, and I’ve got an update on last week’s COVID-19 antibody test! The good news is: blood tests indicate I’ve successfully avoided getting sick. The bad news is, I’m therefore still at risk. Several other eXtreme Wavefront Control Lab students got tested and they had no evidence of ...

We’ve had a string of high-quality, high-effort posts recently, so it’s time to restore balance to the blog with a low-effort post. Other than my biweekly (in sense 1, not sense 2 ) visits to the grocery store ...

Hello! It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, last time was at the observatory using MagAO (Classic). Others have written about time spent on a submarines or in virtual worlds, which I think are excellent training for isolation, I’m going to opine a bit about the value of travel and particularly study abroad for ...

This week, MagAO-X was scheduled for its 2020A observation run at LCO. LCO is still closed according to recent updates, MagAO-X is still hanging out at the XWCL in Steward Observatory, and everyone continues to work from home. I decided to write this post about something that pleasantly surprised me when I visited LCO for ...