2023A – Page 5 – Extreme Wavefront Control Lab

MagAO-X 2023A Day 5: Aligned and well

Today Laird and I continued alignment on MagAO-X with some frustration but ultimately success. The MKIDS team has provided us (among other additions) with a new dichroic that has made a nice addition to the instrument.

Reeeaching for some dichroism — Keeping up with MagAO-X fashion to consistently sneak new things onto the table in fun mechanical ways!

Occasional robotic and sometimes chipmunk-like sound bites were heard around the cleanroom today, indicating that MagAO-X may be soon equipped with some auditory additions…

Laird and I (now sometimes referred to as Lardy and Eva) will be freed from our bubbles tomorrow as long as we pass our nose-swabbing tests in the morning. This means I can very soon visit my good friend the espresso machine! Non-bubbled members got to enjoy a visit from Carlos the culpeo at the lodge.

In my experience, the lodge is historically the best place to spot a Carlos — Perhaps looking for leftovers.

Not to worry, vizzy activity near the cleanroom has kept all members happy – bubbled or not.

Much fluff — Vizzy enjoying sunset at the ASB with a nice view of the Baade in the background.

Some of my favorite mountain dwellers were spotted by the PI today as well.

They wont outnumber us for long! — My kind of caravan.

Group members Warren and Sebastiaan are en route to LCO so we will have new familiar faces arriving soon!

Song of the day is brought to you by Melanie:

This song was introduced to me by both my dad and aunt in conjunction I suppose. Back in the days of cds, my dad’s sister burned a cd for him with some of his favorites and songs they had shared a likeness for growing up together. This charmer made it on that cd and was played nearly every morning by my dad – quite loudly through the house – in order to encourage my brother and I out of bed to get to school on time. On that same cd you can find the song I was named after (I’ll let you guess the title) by Roxy Music. Both of these have found their way onto my personal playlists, and sometimes help me get out of bed in the morning to this day.

MagAO-X 2023A Day 4: Never go Full Quantum

For better or worse, the original MagAO-X NSF proposal included funds to bring a brand new type of camera to the party – a superconducting sensor array that runs at 0.1 degrees above absolute zero. The big idea is that these arrays can tell you the energy of every photon that hits them, without the pesky noise sources that typically degrade astronomical images. These detectors, called MKIDs, are also VERY FAST, which lets you play all sorts of fun games to pick faint sources out from the background starlight that MagAO-X hasn’t bothered to deal with.

This camera, called XKID, was originally meant to just be the DARKNESS instrument from Palomar moved down to Magellan. However, DARKNESS uses liquid helium for cooling, and that has become outrageously expensive, so we actually took the old ARCONS fridge and did a massive upgrade. This resulted in the beauty you see above.

XKID will extend the wavelength range of MagAO-X out to 1400 nm (J band), allowing astronomers to look at older, colder exoplanets, and also provide low resolution spectroscopy and eventually focal plane wavefront sensing to help MagAO-X clean up all the meshugas the damn atmosphere gets up to.

Jeb Bailey, Noah Swimmer, and I are in the process of getting this bad boy cooled down and tuned up, which is always an adventure. Later in the week we will mate it up to MagAO-X (for the first time!) and hopefully see stuff… Stay tuned!

Song of the day

Say what you want, I’m a sucker for the classics.

The Milky Way, taken 2/25/24 from Las Campanas with my iPhone.

MagAO-X 2023A Day 3: It’s alive

This blog post was titled—somewhat optimistically—earlier today, but rest assured, dear reader: MagAO-X is even more alive now than when I wrote that. There is a polemic I could write about the Linux kernel’s casual attitude toward hardware support, but the short version is: we got everything reinstalled and connected and closed the loop in lab this evening on 1,564 modes.

As you may have heard, our Instrument Control Computer was supposed to get a software remodel, but instead ended up with the equivalent of a spit-shine and a new coat of paint. (One can imagine worse outcomes.) The best efforts of our hardware partners to provide Linux support were no match for Linux itself, which continues to defeat all comers in its ability to break software that once worked.

On the plus side, I hear the new way to write drivers is, like, super convenient. Shame about all those old drivers y’all have.

The highlight of the day (other than the loop closing thing) was the arrival of Eva and Lardy:

now, in spanish the name "lardy" would be "grasiento"

This afternoon a van disgorged a Professor Lardy Clos (optomechanics lead, natty dresser) and Eva Maklaod, soon-to-be-Ph.D. student in the XWCL.

I wondered why the closed fist but then realized it's the Mario pose

It was a bit disappointing to spend all that effort on the computer upgrade and then roll it all back, but getting here early means I’ve run out my quarantine days already. And that means I’m allowed in to the dining room to dispense cappuccinos from the fancy machine, and that is an outcome worth celebrating on its own.

The third most exciting thing to happen today was spotting this neat bug:

Song of the Day

A review of the blog archives (blargchives?) revealed that nobody had ever used 2000s classic “Bring Me To Life” by Evanescence as a blog post Song of the Day before. (Jared didn’t believe me.)

“Bring Me To Life” by Evanescence

Required Song Context Per Rule 2023A§5(c): It is hard to pinpoint when I became aware of this masterpiece. To date myself (and/or upset my elders) I was a melodramatic 13 year old when it came out. That alone is reason enough to resonate with the subject matter. (Wikipedia research reveals the songwriter was 19 when it was written, which tracks.)

Per the blog rules I should explain a memorable occasion when the song was played, but “being 13” might not cut it. Instead, I offer the following important facts:

“Bring Me To Life” reached #5 on the Billboard Hot 100, but #1 on the US Alternative chart. (And was the number one song of the year in the Australian Rock charts, what the heck.)
The sudden dude energy that kicks in at 2:50 in the song was apparently due to record executives being too chicken to release a song with female lead vocals and heavy guitars. I always thought it was incongruous and now that all makes sense.
I have just learned that it served as the official theme song for WWE’s 2003 No Way Out event, a totally normal stop on the route to international fame.

MagAO-X 2023A Day 2: Know When to Fold ’em

Today started auspiciously, with a double viz:

such tail much wow — A viscacha on the left

she pulled her tail up when she realized I was looking — And a viscacha on the right

And there was a distant guanaco:

Gary knows how to pose — A guanaco looking back at me

Plus this little guy:

I got CLOSE for this shot and it didn't move — A tarantula crossing the road to Magellan

But alas, we ended the night with the decision to undo the last two days of Joseph’s hard work and abandon our attempt to upgrade a computer O/S. (We also discovered that one of our main motivations for upgrading on this run was . . . still a problem). So it’s back to trusty ‘ole CentOS in the morning.

I’ve seen Clint Black live twice. The first time was at the 1995 edition of We Fest, what was then the “Camping and Country Music Festival” but is now just a “Country Music Festival”. That there’s why I don’t go no more. The second time was in Lincoln, Nebraska a few years later. I almost saw him live a third time last Fall in Tucson, but couldn’t make it.

This is one of my favorite Clint Black songs:

A Good Run Of Bad Luck by Clint Black

Also from a great movie. It’s funny that Clint is wearing white here, both times I saw him he was in head-to-toe black as one would expect.

MagAO-X 2023A Day 1: Ready to Boot

We had a modestly productive day today. Our main goal during these first couple of lab days is to overhaul our instrument control computer (ICC). Joseph has been arguing with it all day, and maybe has it coming into shape as of sunset tonight.

The day started with a Vizzy visit.

a good omen — Vizzy the (current) cleanroom Viscacha. He was a little bit agitated because of a bunch of forklift operations, but settled down for a photo.

After a brief (planned) power outage we got to work putting MagAO-X on its air legs.

2300 lbs fully loaded — Mauricio Cabrales and Emilio Cerda helped us run the crane.

Overall it was a solid animal day.

skittish though — Double Guanacos by the Telescopio Solar.

not at all skittish — Herd of burros by the 100 inch.

it's good! — Two cautiously friendly girls hoping for food.

I hope not a snuggler though — I have a roommate.

higher and brighter — A brightening moon hangs over the observatory at sunset.

The song of the day is “Ready to Go” by Republica. This was the signature song of an Australian cover band playing a bar in Bahrain in mid-2003. In Bahrain there aren’t very many bars and few of those were playing good ‘ole rock and role, so the crew of USS Pasadena (SSN-752)* spent a lot of time in this particular one. I’ve been listening to this ever since.

Ready to Go by Republica

*The photo of Pasadena pulling into Pearl marks my only known presence on wikipedia.