MagAO-X 2024Ab Day 1: Weather Vane

How windy is it?

This Windy

When the door to the Babcock lodge is held open by wind blowing through, you know the domes aren’t open. (that’s a day time pic, but you know what I mean)

Luckily Jay and I were snug in the cleanroom almost all day, getting MagAO-X setup for some alignment and calibration work. We started right after breakfast with Juan and Felix and Miguel, and got MagAO-X craned onto its air legs. We then spent the rest of the day connecting stuff.

View from astern
All the cables are cabled
Shortly after dinner we had a fully cabled and working instrument

At the end of the day we had the loop closed and the nice PSFs. Tomorrow we get to work on repeatable alignment procedures and more robust calibrations.

My favorite 15 minutes was after connecting the last cable for the 2K DM, and running the tests to verify that each actuator was functioning, and having it work on the first try – no re-cabling needed. The 1K worked on the first try too, but it always does.

The song of the day is “Act of Approach” by The Dead South.