MagAO-eXtreme Posts

We don’t want anyone reading at home (Katie) to think we’re slackers here. OK, actually, I’ve never actually found Slack useful except here. Basically, MagAO-X has just precipitated my mid-life crisis. First, having joined the observing remotely in 2022A, and maybe it was the effect of all these young people, I decided I wasn’t too ...

Just before sunset tonight we held an “enstickening” ceremony to officially add XKID as part of MagAO-X. We’re happy to have the whole XKID team become part of the MagAO-X traveling circus. Noah peeling the 2023A mission sticker, designed (as always) by Joseph. In which neither Ben nor I seemed to realize a photo was being ...

Clay with dome opened captured by Jared Day 14 of this observing run marked my first full night and the first full MaxProtoPlanetS night. Despite having a few bumps, it was overall a 0.5″ seeing kind of night! This allowed us to take great data on a target without ADC tracking and driving the telescope to ...

Last night was an exciting night! MKIDS was working really well and we observed the exoplanet Beta Pictoris b. This was one of the first directly imaged exoplanets and its quite well studied. The picture below shows an animation of the orbit of Beta Pictoris b during a 5 year period. Hopefully we can add ...

Everything working together We’re only so many days in and the team has made leaps and bounds during both our engineering and science hours. MagAO-X has all its shiny bits and pieces working in one extreme(ly complicated) and beautiful orchestra. Our very first PSF of 23A, from Friday A list of just a few things the team is ...

So I’m still kind of reeling from and processing it because it’s been so long in the making but we got first light tonight with XKID (that’s the MagAO-X MKID Camera – don’t you just love an acronym that’s made up of nested acronyms? me too). We did it! This doesn’t look like a whole ...

Astronomers are a fairly adaptable or masochistic lot. Regular switches between day and night are sought after, locations without much oxygen are prized, and network systems are designed around blocking communication with our own instruments. Observing runs are an oscillating balance between excitement and dejection, determination and delirium, and sleep and awakeness. In this ...

Yesterday I arrived with Eden and one way to gauge how chaotic the journey to LCO was is the level of shin splints experienced the next day. That is to say, the trek was not without some hiccups. From semi-justified TSA traffic stops… Your friendly Tucson TSA agents ensuring no rattlesnakes get through and onto ...

Day 8 saw the arrival of two colleagues and one hefty tarantula. Despite having to negotiate the Atlanta airport with speed, they made their connection to Santiago, where they obtained their Mountain Names: Iden and Jackke. Nobody captured the exact moment they alighted from their servicio especial van, and they’re extremely asleep right now, so you’ll have ...

Warren and I took different paths to Santiago but were able to meet up at the infamous Starbucks in the domestic terminal. The tradition of name swapping continues. We lost Warren today, but we are quite happy with his replacement Juan. We continued our journey onwards took the plane to La Serena and then the bus ...