Today was our first official science night! The previous nights were engineering, but tonight we had a visiting astronomer here at the telescope, and he was calling the shots for his observations. He took logs while we helped him take data, and the operations went pretty smoothly.
The Clay at sunset, from the vantage point of the wild viscachas
The night started out well, with Alfio successfully managing a difficult aquisition, and with the data coming down the pipeline looking just fine.
This picture is from yesterday, when we looked at the Trapezium to do some astrometric calibration. Pretty cool how you can see it on the acquisition camera huh?
However, around midnight the clouds thickened up, and the AO system couldn’t stay locked. Clouds, clouds, and more clouds
We kept trying brighter and brighter stars, eventually trying a 0-th magnitude star — the wavefront sensor would alternate between saturating counts on this bright star to not even seeing any photons from it at all — 12 mags of extinction! Sigh. So it was a disappointing night. At least we were able to get some testing of various modes and set-ups done, so that’s good. But we are really hoping for a better night tomorrow!
Time for the pretty pictures: Panorama from East to West by the Aux at sunset
Top: To the West at sunset. Bottom: To the East at sunset.A wild viscacha behind the Clay (as opposed to the “tame” ones that hang out at the clean room)Mizz Vizz said hello to us on our way to dinner by the clean room
This is the song in my head when we are watching the photons on the wavefront sensor slowly diminish:
Hello everybody, I’ve been enlisted to write the blog post tonight. I take it that I’m supposed to post a picture of a horse:
The daily horse picture, today with domes and Jordan.
To get started, here’s a few images from last night’s engineering. The first is a VisAO image of Baade’s window. Check out all of those stars!
VisAO is able to detect many faint stars within 3″ of this 8th magnitude star in Baade’s window. The faintest stars shown are z’=21.5
Next, here’s a picture of an asteroid and its little satellite.
MagAO resolves the main-belt asteroid 45 Eugenia, and detects its satellite, the Petit prince. Non-sidereal tracking is facilitated by the AO system.
We also did a bit of engineering on Clio’s spectroscopic mode. Here’s the dispersed L-band image of an A-star. The prism provides R~200.
We spent some time engineering the spectrometer mode yesterday in preparation for tomorrow’s science time. This L-band spectrum of an A star shows 3 Airy rings.VisAO got into the Brown Dwarf companion game tonight too. This is a z’ image of a BD companion well inside 1″ from its star. The only image processing was unsharp mask and smoothing.
Lot’s of thin cirrus clouds in the sky, but the AO loop remained closed for most of the night. We did lose some time when the power went down briefly in the dome. Everything restarted smoothly and not too much time was lost.
I hope these clouds leave, science time starts tomorrow!
Tonight’s song is, according to Jared, the official VisAO theme song. I present it here in honor of the beautiful blue images produced by VisAO:
We spent almost the whole night with the loop closed, with a few exceptions. For instance, we had to open the loop during an earthquake! Not a big one, but the floor rumbled and the loop went a little crazy because of the vibrations.
One of the fun things about observing with AO is that we frequently discover that stars listed as singles are doubles, triples, or even quadruples. This happens when we pick a star just to do engineering tests, and we find more stars than we expected. Here’s an example from tonight.
A quadruple, probably hierarchical, star system that we weren’t expecting. This is a VisAO z’ image.
The same horse is still hanging around. He still won’t let me pet him.
Our horse friend posing dramatically
We couldn’t do much in the way of photometric standards, but the sky was pretty.
Tonight’s sunset.
In addition to the quad, we imaged a couple of star fields and clusters. We counted lots of stars on both of our cameras.
Today we went on sky and closed the loop! The first half of the night was cleaning up final guider problems, but then just before midnight we acquired our first AO setup star and were able to close the loop with an audience and everything! I’m glad we showed the GMT folk some good images before they had to leave. Jordan arrived safely today.
First we finished up the final touches — removing the ASM cover and mounting the wind monitor: Povilas and Laird took off the protective cover of the ASM. It required the scissor lift and then some climbing.
This is what the Clay control room looks like during commissioning and engineering.
Then Alfio closed the loop and we had some beautiful 6.5-m diffraction-limited images!! First closed loop of 2014A!
A brown dwarf companion imaged in thermal IR filters with Clio2 today
There was also some good wildlife today: Jared took these gorgeous photos of a horse in the afternoon.
Vizzy has a special affinity for Jared, and she (Mizz Vizz) let him get really close to take these pix with his cell.
The song today is historic and fun:
Well, now we’re all on a night schedule — the run has begun!
You may have heard that a magnitude~8 earthquake struck northern Chile after dinnertime. Thanks for all your checking-in emails, and we are happy to say that we did not feel the earthquake at all; it was up in way way northern Chile and we are approximately central:
LCO is about halfway down Chile and the earthquake was way up in the north.
Our thoughts and well-wishes are with the people affected.
Ya-Lin arrived safely this afternoon.
Today we worked all day and all night so I have a lot of pictures to catch you up.
Yesterday Pato balanced the telescope and I got a good view from the catwalk. Povilas was working on alignment.
Pato balances ClayHere’s what the ASM looks like hung up above the telescopeThis is what the crosshairs look like on the ASM cap for fiducial alignment. On the left is a picture of the crosshair taken from standing on the NAS through a telescope Povilas had connected for alignment. On the right is me looking tired.
Today we installed the rest of our instrument: the NAS ring that holds VisAO and the wavefront sensor, and then Clio mounts to that ring. The crew pushes the NAS ring from the Aux to the telescope
Emilio and the crew work on the NAS while Fernando looks onJared and Laird cable up the NASThe crew put Clio on the NASWe are carefully checking to see if Clio is going to fit with the new dust coversT.J., Povilas, and Jared checking out ClioClio attached to the NASThe Clio umbilical after we wrapped it all upClio temperatures are goodClio cloning successful
Then we turned on all our various cooling systems before powering everything on.
Laird showed me the fans for cooling the ASM heat-exchange glycol
The Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) will be built on a neighboring peak, and so Antonin Bouchez (the AO lead on GMT) and colleague are up here to look in on what it’s like to install and bring online an AO system up here. We are happy to be their pathfinder and to host their visit.
Jared, Antonin, and Laird look on as Alfio and I power up the ASMLaird is plugging in the single-phase and 3-phase power sources for the ASM, while I am hoping he doesn’t fall off the ladderLaird and Alfio check out the ASM guiUp in the Clay control room after powering on the ASM, Alfio and I are checking that everything is ok while Antonin and Laird look on
Tonight we wanted to go on-sky for the first time, but unfortunately we had a major issue with the guider communications and software. TBD, check back in tomorrow.
Did I mention that we worked all day and all night?
We’re pretty tiredT.J. fell asleep at the Clio workstation while waiting for the dome to open.I passed out on the couch in the lounge.
The song of the day is a change-up of genres. It’s a fun one, Lonely Boy by Mnozil Brass. Enjoy!
