This past week, the MagAO-X team attended the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation conference in Austin, TX. Here’s a recap of all of our presentations at the conference.
Let’s start off with the talks. Jared kicked off our presentation collection with a talk on the MagAO-X update:
![He advertised all of our talks and posters for the week!](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/JaredTalk0.jpg)
Laird gave an update on MagAO:
![Great talk, Laird!](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/LairdTalk0.jpg)
Kelsey gave a fantastic talk on the vAPP for MagAO-X and Linear Dark Field Control:
![Jared: This is a snappy talk](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/KelseyTalk0.jpg)
Lauren gave an awesome talk on her PyWFS PYRITE sims:
![Now I can follow Lauren's slides in research meetings.](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/LaurenTalk0.jpg)
Justin presented PIAACMC designs for SCExAO/GMT/MagAO-X:
![Justin: It only took me a year to get this from Olivier...](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/JustinTalk0.jpg)
The rest of us had poster presentations:
![Good job, Joseph!](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/JosephPoster0.jpg)
![It was also Maggie's first SPIE, good job!](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/MaggiePoster0.jpg)
![Great that you were able to make it, Alex!](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AlexRPoster0.jpg)
![The MagAO-X team loved meeting you!](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/RachelPoster0.jpg)
![It's the world's smallest K-Mirror!](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AlexHPoster0.jpg)
![With shiny new renders since the PDR!](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/LairdPoster0.jpg)
![Look at them RMS levels for those flats!](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/KylePoster1.jpg)
![Whoa I'm really tiny compared to my poster!](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/JhenPoster0.jpg)
![He mostly ignored his collection of grad students hanging out by his poster](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/JaredPoster0.jpg)
Here’s some shenanigans from the conference and in Austin:
Jared’s talk crashed several times once during his presentation. It turns out, LibreOffice and the SPIE talk upload system disagree with each other, particularly with how to handle Lauren’s 700 KB flaming logo. When transitioning to the next talk, MagAO-X refused to leave the screen.
![Jared, after his talk: Lauren, your logo broke my talk!](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/JaredTalkBroken0.jpg)
According to Laird, later in the week, Lauren’s MagAO-X logo came back to shutdown another talk. The computer tried to “recover” Jared’s talk and so the solution was to kill it outright. MagAO-X came back with a vengeance it seems.
![He has far more enthusiasm than the MagAO-X PI with his grad students](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/LairdAlexPoster.jpg)
In accordance to the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2016 conference, this time Jared and Olivier were sitting together as opposed to being in the same room at the same time:
![I know it's 2018 and we have better cameras with our smartphones, but my phone is 3+ years old already...](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/JaredOlivierSPIE.jpg)
Despite the heat and humidity, Austin was a great conference location.
![Thank you to everyone in Austin, TX for your generous hospitality!](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/texasLocals.jpg)
![The restaurant is named Abel's by the Lake, but don't be fooled by Abel, it's actually a river.](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/AbelLake.jpg)
![I'm certain I gained at least 5 lbs from all the food I ate in Austin](/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/avocadoToast.jpg)
And so concludes SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation 2018. It was a fantastic time seeing everyone, meeting new people, attending talks, and presenting research. To close off, here’s a quote from the MagAO-X PI:
Jared: “All deficiencies in your presentations have been noted and will be addressed in due course.”