Part I: At The Grand Canyon
Drs Males and Morzinski (and a little squirrel) just had the amazing honor of being personally shown around the Grand Canyon by the Grand Canyon Conservancy’s Astronomer in Residence.
Said resident astronomer is none other MagAO-X’s own Dr! Logan Pearce. After a pleasant road trip (via Nothern New Mexico) we arrived at the Grand Canyon visitor’s center just in time to catch one of her public talks:
Logan covered a wide range of astronomy, and the audience’s rapt attention was broken only by their laughs at all the astronomy humor. (well, and a briefly fussy baby)
One of the fun facts we learned from the AIR is that the #1 treated injury at the Grand Canyon is squirrel bytes.
The other fun fact is that there are no dinosaur bones in the Grand Canyon because the rocks are too old!
On our 2nd day we had another fun MagAO-X experience as MagAO-X superstar Dr. Alycia Weinberger and fam joined us. I think Logan even managed to keep it a secret until they were in line at the gate (when I texted Alycia to hurry up!) We had a great time catching up and had a wonderful sunset dinner outside of the Yavapai Tavern.
Part II: At LCO
It was implied but never stated: MagAO-X is off the telescope and set up in the clean room for remote ops. Thus endeth our first Nasmyth-West residency on the Clay telescope.
Not much to say other than “big success”. The jury is still out on whether it was actually better for our quality of life — no one cooks for you when you are just working late on campus, and other people expect you to be awake during the day.
Song of the day:
The cover band at the Yavapai Tavern played this while we were there. It reminded me of the time I saw John Denver live — and he refused to play this song. Actually shouted “no” back at the crowd. I guess he was sick of it.