- 2022-12-16
Avalon McLeod
Today the rest of the MagAO-X crew left LCO to return to our respective destinations!
Slightly sleep deprived and ready for 30+ hours of travel
Eden, Jared, and I got to visit the La Recova Market down in La Serena on our way out, where we found lots of fun Chilean items.
Alpaca memorabilia galore
We are now ...
- 2022-12-15
Jared Males
I first came to LCO on April 18, 2012, for unpacking the one and only original MagAO. It sounds sappy to say, but life was never the same again. Tonight marked the 453rd sunset I’ve been on this mountain for (I can’t swear that I saw them all).
You’re never gonna believe this (because ...
- 2022-12-14
Eden McEwen
Our 24 hour MagAO-X clean up effort has just finished up around dinner time. MagAO-X is off of Clay. After sleeping various amounts of not-enough today, the whole team is more than ready for some sweet sweet shut eye. Hopefully now unbothered by nightmares of 2.0 arcsecond seeing or cart assembly.
End of run crew ...
- 2022-12-14
Avalon McLeod
Tonight marks the end of our time on sky for the 2022B run. Though we have had a bit of a rough week of seeing, humidity, etc., tonight we scored some decent conditions and got to do some of the science we’ve all been eager to do.
Logan is hunting for white dwarfs, and may have ...
- 2022-12-13
Jared Males
Whelp, this run is old enough to drink.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo-NJMkOFzE
There is a peculiar thing about the way the Universe is constructed: it is nearly, but not completely, impossible for one civilization to detect another civilization (unless they want to be found). That parenthetical caveat is worth explaining up front: essentially all SETI conducted to date is predicated ...
- 2022-12-12
Alycia Weinberger
I’m baaaaaack. My last post on April 23 promised that if I got to come in person, I’d bring goodies. I tried to make good, but bad weather makes for a lot of snacking need.
Not shown: chocolate covered pretzels
The daytime weather has been lovely, for the viscachas and humans who happen to be awake then. ...
- 2022-12-11
Logan Pearce
So the last two nights have followed the same pattern: decent seeing and good images until about midnight-1am, then seeing creeps up and up and up and blows past the top of the chart, and we all slump around the control room and lounge in a funk. But tonight there is an added bonus ...
- 2022-12-10
Sebastiaan Haffert
Tonight started of quite well. We finally had average conditions, which much better than the 2 arcseconds seeing from before! The first target of the night is one from Logan. She is searching for white dwarf companions around main sequence stars. Stellar evolution tells us that there should be more white dwarfs than we can ...
- 2022-12-09
Avalon McLeod
Tonight we experienced seeing values that made certain lab members say “Oh lord!”, or “I thought we were taking darks”.
Seeing is -quite literally- off the charts
Unfortunately for tonight’s observers, we had to close the telescope early. Not only was seeing making it quite impossible to produce any useful data, but the TO went outside ...
- 2022-12-08
Logan Pearce
Hello! It me, back on the mountain finally. As stated yesterday, I arrived finally yesterday afternoon (after high-fiving the departing Warren and Joseph at the La Serena airport through the window). I managed to stay up for sunset, then quickly went to bed after sleeping not a wink on the plane the ...