Today was our first science night, with visiting observers Jayne and Ben from Amsterdam in collaboration with Sebastian from Arizona. Jayne, Jared, and I were all Sagan fellows before becoming faculty, and Sebastian is a current Sagan(-Hubble) fellow at Arizona.
A picture of the 3 Sagan alums in the Clay control room. [Image description: Jared is operating his phone in selfie mode so he’s up close. I’m sitting at the VisAO workstation. Jayne is behind me sitting at the Clio workstation. There are around 20 computer monitors mounted to the desks and walls in the background.]
There were a few hiccups associated with trying to keep the rotator tracking like all other instruments at Clay, but Emily and Amali managed to keep the loop closed and we got great data all night long.
Sunset at Clay. The MagAO-C and MagAO-X teams participated in the tradition of hoping for a green flash. [Image description: Several people stand on a catwalk watching the orange sun set over the distant horizon. The horizon has a orange glow and the distant mountains are blurry.]
The song of the day is the Britney Spears classic “Oops I did it again”:
Today was the super long day through night. Up at 7am for a quick breakfast, then hurried to the top for a day full of instrument removal and installation, then a full night of on-sky engineering tests. The crew removed MIKE, the MIKE guider, and the f/11. The crew plus the MagAO instrument team (including some Classico and some eXtreme) installed the Nas, the ASM, and Clio. I didn’t take many pictures, but I’m sure those will be coming once the new kids on the block start blogging. The live-view camera of the inside of the Clay dome was cool (see Jared’s MagAO-X post). Here’s what it looks like right now (while we’re still on-sky:)
Live view of the interior of the Clay dome while observing. [Image description: It is a black rectangle. A black rectangle with a border and official-looking timestamp that implies it could have come from a webcam.]
Then there was much cabling and testing of cooling, signals, connections, and functionality. This went on past sunset. Then through the night we further tested on-sky capabilities such as the guider, offsets, angles, volcanoes, scripting, focus, and modes.
A beautiful Clay sunset. [Image description: A horizon lit up with light blue and yellow. The yellow/orange sun is setting behind some low clouds/fog in the distance. In the foreground are some vehicles and gravel.]We ironed out a few AO, telescope, and Clio bugs, and then were able to test some modes and do some engineering. Here we have closed the loop on Trapezium B. [Image description: A log-scale image of stars in the Trapezium cluster around Theta 1 Ori B. Negative star images are from where the sky was subtracted off.]
Turno changed over today too. Had another nice round of hellos with colleagues I haven’t seen in 18 months. It’s good to see everyone again!
The song of the day is a classical classic, Pachelbel’s Canon by the Canadian Brass. I really like their descant arrangement.
Well we made it through customs, and are on a truck. We expect delivery of MagAO-X to LCO around 2 pm local time tomorrow afternoon.
Otherwise, it was all MagAO-C all the time.
I learned about the dome camera today. You can see Katie and Alex at the lower right, they’re working on Clio’s cables.
A cuddly looking vizcacha. They are almost tame this year.
If the drive goes smoothly tomorrow (which given recent luck, keep your fingers crossed), this is the last sunset at LCO without MagAO-X (for a while).
If you’ve ever been to an NBA game, you’ll recognize this song. If MagAO-X arrives safely, I plan to make Laird, Kyle, and Alex perform this dance to celebrate.
Yesterday was cooldown day; today was prep day; tomorrow will be the big day/night. Tomorrow we will be busy from 7am with removing MIKE, the MIKE guider, and the f/11, and installing the NAS, Clio, and the ASM. To prep today, we continued to test the Clio motors and code, and then we moved Clio from the Aux to the platform to start pumping on the inner dewar in order to solidify it:
Some of the team bring Clio up on the lift. [Image description: Point of view is from looking down an open lift shaft from above. The Clio instrument and its electronics rack are raised from the ground to the Nasmyth platform level.]A herd of burros were milling about as I walked to lunch. [Image description: An adult and a juvenile burro stand in profile but look at the camera. They are brown with white undersides. Behind them are some roads, and off in the distance are at least 2 telescope domes on ridges. There is also a low-lying bodega. Finally, a light brown valley, some distant purple mountains, and the blue sky round out the scene.]I think Vizzy is a fan of the blog. Because I haven’t seen a viz make this pose in several years, but yesterday I link to this image and all of a sudden Vizzy is making the same pose today! [Image description: A Tame Vizcacha on the Clean Room sits up on its haunches with its little paws in front like a classic Monte Python bunny rabbit.]
The song of the day is the MagAO-C Classic “Boom Clap” cover by Lennon & Maisy:
