MagAO-X 2022A Day 12: Second First Light – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

When installing an instrument on a research telescope, the astronomers and opticians must transition from a day to a night schedule. This happens with an early start and a very (very, very) long day.

09:15: Crane operations begin at the cleanroom building

10:00: Bubble-inhabitants go to get nose-poked in exchange for their freedom

10:30: Formerly bubbled individuals encounter Gary Guanaco on their way back to the lodge

10:32: MagAO-X gets reacquainted with the Isuzu flatbed for its ride up to the telescope

12:00: Top Gun theme plays

Technically, since they were riding down the lift, the theme should be reversed:

12:40: Hunt for wild viscachas at the summit

You'd think with that much desert you'd have at least one

(The hunt was unsuccessful.)

12:45: Boldly push the envelope and go to lunch with less than covid-mandated one hour offset from the crew (in the interests of getting back to work faster)

12:45 – 13:15: scarf down your lunch and get back because the crew’s lunch break is long over and they’re lifting the instrument already

14:00: Crane operations continue, now with a different crane

astronomy with hard hats II: return of the hard hats

14:30: Crane operations conclude, alignment team springs into action. Meanwhile, MegaDesk is reassembled in the telescope control room.

It's not well known but viscachas cannot resist singing along to Cardi B, which is how that middle desktop photo was captured

14:35: MegaDesk experiences intense jealousy when confronted with UltraDesk, the Telescope Operator’s workstation. P.I. immediately orders more monitors.

14:35-17:45: Fine alignment proceeds

No grad students were harmed in the making of this photo (only postdocs?)

17:45-18:15: Dinner

18:37: sunset

It's sunset but the auto-white-balance did too well. Just trust me.

Apparently "AO" on our hoodies was enough to convince everyone we were actually MagAO... with potentially disastrous consequences. Read on.

18:43-23:51: cabling

22:00: Deformable mirror cabling begins

22:33: Deformable mirror cabling ends

00:01: Opening the dome

Taking some infrared astronomer data.

00:41: Light down the pipe, kinda

And Yet a Trace of the True Self Exists in the False Self

00:41-5:15: “For technical reasons it is not possible to determine all possible error causes”

No pictures exist of this inauspicious time. However, Laird did borrow my tripod and later send me this photograph, which he called “possibly the only data we will take tonight.” We at MagAO-X would like it to be known that, this time, it was no fault of our own.

how do I import this astronomical observation into iraf — Meteor over Magellan Clay by Professor Laird Close. 48.02 second exposure, 1/1s shutter speed. After integration ended, the tripod fell over.

05:16: Light down the pipe

Hey, time to start our night!

5:53: Loop is closed with 1000 modes

eps Sag

06:58: Sunrise

telescope above a sea of fog by caspar david friedrich

08:06: Going to bed

Song of the Day

I’ve been waiting a while to use this one on a blog post. Vaguely Depeche Mode-y, but contemporary. Song of the day is “Dot in the Sky” by Drab Majesty.