MAPS posts

Tonight we tested the new ASM-cooling fans for introduced vibrations: It was a great time to do this test since we were getting E-stops on the ASM from some overheating actuators. We found that the fans did not introduce appreciable vibrations that couldn’t be taken out by the AO, so we went ahead and turned the ...

Tonight was another beautiful clear night. Seeing ranged from around 1-3 arcseconds. At the start of the night we were confused why we were seeing very little AO correction — it turns out the TT mirror was not modulating, oops! After this we took several sets of AO-on vs. AO-off Pisces data. We also compared ...

The return of IR WFSing! After squashing some software bugs we closed the loop on 3 and then 20 modes with CACAO using the IR WFS: I’m back at home where I’m finding it brilliant, reliable, intelligent, diligent, glorious, exceptional, and troublesome. Thanks to the mountain team for enabling a good remote-observing session. The song of ...

Tonight after some daytime work on the rotator we tried the rotational centering again. Alas Brian saw that the star was still jumping when he sent the command, and thus we still couldn’t find the chief ray. We moved on and attempted a curvature wavefront sensing test where we defocussed the hexapod and that helped ...

Hello dear blog friends, I’m back after being away due to beautiful, robust, inquisitive, dynamic, gregarious, exuberant, thoughtful reasons. And here we are at the MMT to observe adaptive-optically again! The installation was more challenging than usual because both MMTO and MAPS teams were somewhat short staffed, but was still all done well by sunset. As per ...

Not a sunset picture. I took this earlier in the day (I actually went outside! It was not 100 degrees out, so I decided to enjoy the weather.) For the first time, Bianca and I are the only AOistas at the AO station for the entirety of a run. After last night’s work, we felt motivated ...

It is the start of the second run of the semester. The night was focused(pun intended) on alignment and understanding how each one of the movements of the telescope, science camera, and Wave Front Sensor. And what it comes down that each one affects the other and it takes a lot of abstract scratching of ...

Hey everyone, I realized I didn’t introduce myself properly in my last blog post, sorry about that. I am Krishna, 3rd year PhD candidate at ASU. I am working with Jenny and Katie to characterize MAPS AO performance 🙂 It was a night like any other except we started on a little bit of rough ...

Hello! I’m Alyssa, and I am new to this blog. I am a visiting grad student from the University of Michigan that joined the MAPS team on this 6-night run. This will be my second observing run ever! The MAPS team headed up to the summit tonight! The skies looked more promising than previous nights. ...

As much as I hate to report it, the MAPS crew is once again trapped in a cloud. For a few days now, the forecast has consistently predicted high cloud coverage for all of tonight. To be sure, we performed our own professional survey of the sky at sunset. Yep, those clouds look cloudy, and ...