The big news for today is that Laird and Katie cabled, plumbed, and powered-up the ASM. We’ve never done that before without at least one Arcetrian in the room. It all went very smoothly, and the ASM is ready to go on sky!
Laird and Katie connected the ASM power and communication cables and the cooling lines.This nice display shows our shell in the “RIP” (rest in peace) state. We were happy to see this, as it meant all the electronics were working.
Our day started with Oscar introducing us to the Cherimoya. It’s a really flavorable sweet fruit. We also had fresh squeezed Cherimoya juice for breakfast.
That”s a Cherimoya. In front, that is. That’s Povilas in back.Tonight’s sunset, or just after it.
We started switching over to a night schedule. That means we got up for breakfast at 7:30 and worked until 2 am. We finished out the night testing some new plumbing fixtures for the NAS. At least we’ll sleep in a little this morning.
There was a cold wind blowing today but in the hottest/sunniest parts of the day it calmed down. During this time we moved the ASM from the clean room up to the Clay dome:
Here the Isuzu is moving the ASM up the hill from the Clean Room to the Clay telescopeThis is the new way to connect the Come-Along Strap for moving the ASM on/off the truck via the lift gate at the Cerro Manqui summit where the Clay telescope is
It’s beautiful up here. Breakfast was amazing: fresh-squeezed orange juice, oatmeal with warm milk, dos huevos fritos por favor, and unsweetened whole-milk yogurt — yum! I hiked up and down the mountain 5 or 6 times and it’s really helping with my jet lag to be out and about in the sunshine.
I connected Clio and got it up and running. Victor helped me cool it down as we were doing this. First Laird and I put the new washers Manny made in to help support the gold electronics box as the Delrin was starting to crack/warp.
Laird and I are putting in the washers to help hold up the Clio electronics boxHere are the washers from Manny that Laird and I put in the Delrin plateVictor is cooling down Clio with liquid nitrogenClio’s Alive!Also Clio can read out the chip!
Meanwhile, Jared did the same thing with VisAO — plugged everything in, moved the motors, took test images. Later Laird cleaned the optics and Jared tested characterized the images:
Here Jared is hacking away on his spiffy DJ setupLaird is cleaning the telecentric lens. He is dusting it with a Q-tipLaird is teaching me how to put the Wollaston prism in and out of the beam
And we saw all sorts of wildlife today! Donkeys, a guanaco, a snake (little garter snake), and a vizcacha bounding up the stairs! Here are the ones we were able to get pictures of:
BurrosThis is a guanaco (kinda like a llama) that I saw down in the saddle while we were moving the ASM. Sorry for the terrible picture from my anti-zoom camera phone.
So those were the fauna, now for the flora. It’s spring here and the desert flowers are coming up – beautiful!
Jared took these flower pictures for the various mothers … and any other MagAO fans who like pretty things.
This song makes me think of home, more MN/WI than NM b/c of the farm refs. For the Moms, the Dads, the Grandmothers, and the Grandfathers, we miss you. <3 Agnes
MagAO fans… we have arrived! It’s nice to be back here at LCO in Chile, where all the coffee is strong, all the viscachas are good-looking, and all the food is above average. Jared, Laird, and I left Tucson on Saturday and arrived here on Sunday, for an uneventful trip. Believe it or not, due to various issues with our respective houses in Tucson (involving construction, plumbing, and wildlife), we are all looking forward to some peace and quiet on the mountain even though this is such hard work!
But see, it is so beautiful and peaceful up here: Gorgeous views of LCO. It’s good to be back!
Here’s the NAS and our equipment, waiting for us!
After dinner, Laird and Jared inspected the ASM and the NAS: Laird and Jared inspect the shell. It’s still in 1 piece!
Jared and Laird remove the dust covers from the NAS.
And I worked with Victor and Juan to vacuum-pump Clio: Here is Clio being pumped to vacuum.
Clio vacuum pump.
And finally, I thought I’d share a couple older pictures with you. One is Jared giving a public talk a few weeks ago about MagAO and extrasolar planets, at a super fun event called “Space Draft” (https://www.as.arizona.edu/space-drafts-public-talk-series) at a local Tucson brewpub called Borderlands: You can see the Magellan Clay telescope and our logo on his slide — we got to see all our old friends today!
And the other picture is of the 3 concurrent Sagan Fellows at the University of Arizona, which we took last week at dinner with a friend visiting from out of town. My fellowship is just ending and Ian’s just started so this was the only time to get the overlap picture! We all study extrasolar planets and we hope you keep following the blog to hear more about what we are up to! Katie Morzinski, Jared Males, and Ian Crossfield — the 3 concurrent NASA Sagan Fellows at the U of A — overlapping briefly.
Quotes:
“Isn’t this fun?!?!” -Jared, happy to be back.
It’ll be 6 weeks until Jared and I see Tucson again, so here we go:
MagAO has produced another Ph.D.! Kate successfully defended her dissertation on Thursday, at the very un-Astronomer hour of 9 am. Nevertheless her talk was well attended, and all of that hard work paid off. Congratulations to Dr. Kate Follette, Queen of VisAO SDI.
Kate describing the recent successes at imaging transition disks. Free sticker to the first person who names all the MagAO team members in this picture.Laird delivering the advisor’s toast to Dr. Follette.
Now that the fun is over, Laird,Katie, and Jared are heading down to LCO for MagAO’s 2014B science run. Our flight leaves Tucson this afternoon. We get the telescope for 37 nights, and we’ll be down there for 6 weeks. That means you get over 40 blog posts in a row. Lucky!
I’m feeling the need for some motivation. It’s time for us to pull our (steel-toe) boots on, lace ’em up, and earn our pay. Here’s what we’ll be singing as we march up to the telescope every day for the next 6 weeks.
We’ve had a few meetings lately to prepare for our upcoming 2014B run in Oct–Dec. This will be our second regular science run, and our operations are becoming more smooth and efficient, so we are going to have a more streamlined personnel plan. It will also be our longest run yet (37 nights!).
We are laying in for spares and planning improvements in our operations. One spare Phil has gotten for Clio is a spare pump for pumping on the liquid nitrogen chamber in the dewar to bring the temperature of the detector from 77 K (liquid nitrogen) down to 55 K (solid nitrogen) by lowering the pressure. This spare pump is coming to us from the LBT where it used to be a vacuum pump, and while it is no longer strong enough to deliver a true vacuum, it is strong enough to lower the pressure to solidify the nitrogen in the dewar. It is a Leybold Oerlikon EcoDry M 30 Dry Piston Vacuum Pump.
New Clio pump technical info, from Phil:
The current Clio pump is specified to reach an ultimate vacuum of 5 Torr (7 mbar). This allows the solid N2 vessel to be at 50-51 K. We typically regulate ~5 K above this or 55 K. The new EcoDry pump has an achieved lab pressure of 0.11 Torr. This will put the solid vessel at ~42 K. This suggest we could regulate as low as 47 K on the detector.
Therefore, on this next run, we will explore new setpoints and the effect on detector performance. Thanks Phil!
Here are Laird and Kim (CAAO Project Specialist) working on shipping the spare Clio pump to LCO. It weighs ~130 lbs and is 50 cm long x 30 high x 30 cm wide, and uses 120 V AC. It will be quite at home in the pump room.
