MAPS 2023A Day 2: “Now we’re starting to look like an AO system!”

Hello. It is your local CACAO expert here, beaming to you directly from the beautiful peaks of the Santa Rita mountains. I am currently being not-paid to convince a wiggly mirror to un-twinkle stars from a four story building that rotates all night long. The whole experience feels like an internship at something between a castle fort and sea-bound vessel. For the record, I do not think that buildings this big should merry-go-round. However, I will admit that this one is impressive.

We continue to be supported from CACAO sages across the globe. Olivier called in last night about to board a Hawaii-bound plane, and Jared logged on from one of the fastest trains in the world. (Thank you wise ones, for being so generous with your travel time.)

Kagayaki 533 for Kanazawa
MAPS at 160 mph

Tonight Olivier split his time between the Subaru team and ours, remotely helping us tie off some CACAO loose ends. Finally, after the trials and tribulations of last night’s clouds and cranky mirrors, we finally have a happily closed loop! Early tonight we had the DoCrimes response matrices loaded up and performing corrections. We’re still working on some other orthogonal control algorithms with CACAO, but for now, enjoy the success of the day, from two different perspectives:

First, mine, as the AO operator:

Here we turn on the Crimes, and see the WFS pupils (top left) flatten, acquisition source (middle) shape up. You can see on the bottom the ASM’s positon, current, and temperature per each actuator.

Second, Jorge’s as the observer (video by Joseph):

AO off, tip tilt on, full AO loop on.

“Now that’s what I call an AO System!” Manny.

The team was still taking data when this photo was taken.

Summer runs are funny in that you seem to always be running out of time. Sun-down at 8pm to sun-up at 4am isn’t as long as you’d think. We’ve been running our observations into sunrise more often than not.

A wave from the light of the full moon!

That said, we still have a few more days to get our loops more stable, but what we’ve accomplished so far has made me proud of my small, button-pushing part of the MAPS team. I have had such a great time working with the crew, have been charmed by MMT, and despite all worries I do believe Joseph and I have proven ourselves helpful.

Song of the Day

TURN THE LIGHT by Danger Mouse