MAPS posts

As a current resident of Arizona and a former resident of New Mexico, part of me must celebrate when water falls from the sky in these drought-stricken drylands or deserts. As an astroengineer and astrophysicist, it does make observing …difficult. Either way, it’s still beautiful: Afternoon at The Ridge. [Image description: A mountain scene straight outta ...

What’s this, another MAPS run? Yup, the moon is almost full, and here we are again! Unfortunately tonight we are 0 for 5 on AO engineering/commissioning productivity. Here are the 5 things: Can we safely open the dome? No, the humidity is so high that condensation could ruin all the sensitive equipment. Can we safely expose the ASM ...

The full moon is waning and that’s a wrap on the first MAPS run of 2023B! We have 3 more runs, on the full moons in October, November, and January. On this run we successfully closed the loop with our new software algorithms, which required taking new timing data and calibrations. We also got offloading within ...

Dear readers, we have no science news to report. It has been windy and has stayed windy, with a fresh splash of humid to boot. So unfortunately, we do not have new science content to report. The experts have already shared their knowledge of some of the instrument’s background so tonight we’ll take the ...

As was stated in the Mary Poppins Movie “Winds in the east, mist coming in, /Like somethin’ is brewin’ and bout to begin. /Can’t put me finger on what lies in store, /But I fear what’s to happen all happened before.” For us it has been out of the South with max of 60 ...

Tonight is our first *official* night on the telescope schedule, as last night was originally scheduled as an MMTO M&E night (maintenance and engineering) that the telescope ended up not needing more than we did, so they let us have an extra night to focus on our alignment. Thank you MMTO! Craig and Dan came back ...

Hello Extreme Wavefront friends, I’m back! Tonight was the start of our first MAPS run after the summer shutdown and it’s the usual packed control room, multi-tasking team, full moon, and beautiful mountaintop observatory! [Image description: Gallery of photos showing the MMT Observatory at the top of Mount Hopkins, the telescope overlooking the valley, and the ...

Manny caught an unsuspecting grad student sunset-watching. Well, the fun had to end sometime. This post marks the official end of the MAPS 2023A run, after a weather-ful last two nights. One of the big perks of mountain observing in AZ, especially in June, is replacing the 100ºF highs of the valley with mountain temperatures of ...

After the previous night’s untimely clouds, we were fortunate to have clear skies and moderate-to-good seeing all night. The MIRAC-5 team continued work on their instrument, which the adaptive optics operator Eden found extremely useful for its fast video feed showing how (and if) our adaptive optics experiments were improving their images. I, however, mostly spent ...

After some berating from @jlong, here is my inaugural post! First, an obligatory observatory picture. The MMT at sunrise with the full moon on the horizon The MIRAC-5 team arrived Friday, June 2nd to prepare for installation of the latest iteration of the instrument. Originally conceived in 1988 by Bill Hoffmann at the University of Arizona, MIRAC ...