Today was the last day of SPIE Astronomical Telescopes & Instrumentation 2024 and tonight was the last night of MAPS June 2024A.
Joseph gave a nice talk (second-to-last of the conference) with MagAO-X data:
Meanwhile at the MMT we tested our previous CACAO calibration, took a new one in better seeing, practiced both Bianca and Lauren running CACAO, and were in the process of more testing when we had to close the dome due to high winds. We waited around until finally calling it a night and a run around 2:30am when the winds continued rising and the clouds came up too.
We keep asking Tim and others from MMTO to explain the hexapod to us, but we still don’t understand some of the behavior we see. Last night we had the focus pushed to the limit (near +1600 um), even to the point where the LUT wanted to offload coma but couldn’t send it. So last night we tried starting over: We put the focus to +800 um, let the LUT run for a little while, and lo and behold we were way out of focus. As we focused by eye we ended up back near the limit, around +1600. Tonight, on the other hand, we’re around +700 um and we’re in focus. We asked Brian if the temperature correction is very different and it’s not — well it’s about 50 um different, but that’s not enough to account for the focus difference of around 800 um.
Thanks for a great conference and observing run all!
The word of the night is 満月 (Mangetsu) which means full moon.