MagAO-eXtreme Posts

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 ...

It’s officially May the 4th 2020, and may the Fourth be with you! The fourth of May is great because it’s an excuse for all of us to relive the fact that Star Wars is the greatest thing ever, even though it sometimes feels like it happened a long time ago, in a galaxy far ...

“There is nothing so American as our national parks…. The fundamental idea behind the parks…is that the country belongs to the people, that it is in process of making for the enrichment of the lives of all of us.” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt About a decade ago, I decided I was tired of not doing ...

When my friend and I are bored or need cheering we up, we send each other Star Wars prequel memes. As you can imagine during ‘these uncertain times’ we have been sending each other a lot of them. Here are some of my favorite ones so far. Starting with the obligatory coronavirus themed ones: And ...