MagAO-X Takes Montréal: Days 3 and 4

*A new grad student has entered the chat.*

Hello Blog! I’m Eden and I’ll be joining the MagAO-X team this fall as an OpSci grad student. This SPIE I’m presenting my wavefront profiling work on imaka, a GLAO demonstrator,  but I’ll be joining the high contrast crew in no time.

Happy to report that I survived my Wednesday poster session.

This conference is much more exciting, informative, and thrilling than any of the online approximations the last two years. So far, as a first time SPIE-ian, I think I could summarize the experience so far as a mix of:

  • Cutting edge talks illuminating the future of our field and fully inspiring me to start over my research from scratch.
  • Celebrity Spotting:
Jared spotting Olivier Guyon in the AO session.
  • Stalking the exhibition hall for the elusive free coffee and rumors of the best freebies:
The Dutch booth had 400 units of a LEGO JWST model. They ran out in a day and a half.
  • Extreme pride at the progress of the field, the creativity of research, and my own ability to understand some of it.
  • Crashing at 3pm and making use of the food and resources in the community lounge networking space.
Leftover beads from diversity sessions means an opportunity.
  • Rallying for the 6-8pm poster session, and being surprised when the admin needs to increasingly aggressively flip the lights to force us attendees to leave.

Over the last two days, many MagAO-X talks have graced the stage of the the AO talk session. The group is looking very good up there.

Laird presents his talk on holographic dispersed fringe sensor.
Sebastian presents on behalf of Meghan O’Brien.

We’ve also had a fully stocked schedule of posters, some of which *cough Sebastian* had an ever present line.

Joseph explaining computer optimization to the next generation.
Maggie presenting on GMagAO-X’s DM optical design.
Noah Swimmer from UCSB presented an MKID camera for use behind MagAO-X 
Sebastian’s poster before the rush.

A very special session on Wednesday paid tribute to a titan amongst AO, David L. Fried of the Fried parameter and the Fried geometry who passed away in May. One of his close collaborators gave a history of his career which ended up being a historical overview of the field itself. As a younger scientist, it was humbling to see how much one man had contributed to the science I work with daily as well as how many around had gotten to work with him directly.

Of note, the memoriam presenter was just as excited as the rest of us to receive the speaker gift for the AO session:

“We r-not limited by seeing” with a back of the Fried Geometry

Hope everyone can stay strong through the last two days of this intellectual marathon!

Double french Songs for your double day blog:

Dream catching, aka its a dream to be at SPIE.
The title is English but the lyrics are mostly French.