Tag: 2024B

Three observing nights left! Wait actually just two! We love it here, we really do. Our TO’s are lovely, the company is great, and the science is incredible (especially this run). But there comes a time in any astronomer’s trip where we start gazing wistfully out to the sunset horizon and thinking longingly of the family and beds and cats waiting for us back home.

First, a moment of mourning for our fridge hoard of empanadas that only survived one night of cleaning crew scrutiny. Though we did not get to enjoy as many of you as we wanted, know that you were loved while we had you.

The main course tonight was a VisX sandwich, with a filling of Jaylishus. Luckily, we’re getting good at swapping between normal operations with our imaging cameras and the spectrograph, and overheads are dropping across the board.

We looked at some sources that were sure to illuminate the high resolution grating. These systems are easy for our AO system to lock onto, but high spatial resolution data is immediately interesting, or “astrophysically unsettling” depending on perspective.

VisX imaging on such bright targets requires only a few exposures for noise, and we spent the first few hours merrily jumping between targets and interrupting our good TO’s naps.

Midway through the night, the seeing seemed to say we had overstayed our welcome. We went from a variable, but usable seeing to “AO system can’t operate in these conditions” and “it’s amazing that we’re making an image at all” in a short 30 minute span. Just in time for observer handoff.

Needless to say, we didn’t have much science we could do with chart breaking seeing. We got as far as acquiring, but the star was so far spread around the coronagraph (when we could even close the loop at all) that the hour was chalked up to wash. So we got up to some hobbies in the down time.

Two teams competed heartily on both the Wednesday and the Sunday crossword. Neck and neck, brains were steaming. But in the end, who can really say which team won, especially when one team refused to screenshot their times.

Alycia graciously handed back the telescope to Sebastiaan, and more visXing occurred. Also more neural nets. And perhaps even some trapezium camsci calibration. It feels like we’ve been here forever, but it still surprises me that we have just two days to wrap up this run.

Leaving you with some more peaceful words. Because I’ll be thinking of them even when I’m gone.

Song of the Day

Ok I didn’t do a great job with the quotes this time. But sometimes you just want a song with a beat.

The first time I operated a professional telescope, I was 17 years old; I did it for 9 years at the Cerro Tololo Observatory. Later, I continued my professional astronomy career, traveling the world until three years ago when I finally landed at Las Campanas as an Instrument and Operations Specialist for the Magellan Telescopes. Yet, as fate and vacations would have it, I found myself back in the operator’s chair last Tuesday, temporarily filling in for Carla while she enjoyed a well-earned break. And so began a week with the MagAO-X team.

The MagAO-X team doesn’t just occupy the control room—they own it, both in spirit and sound, filling the nights with a stream of ideas, laughter, and cutting-edge science and technology. This shift, we enjoyed some truly exquisite seeing, sharp stars at their best under a spotless sky (most of the time), mixed with the excitement of students and supervisors over their successful experiments and observations. Between moments of scientific triumph, we soaked in the hues of sunset skies  and occasional green flash, navigated a maze of colliding chairs, and dealt with the quirks of unreliable sanitary devices… because even the Universe has a dirty sense of humour!

The best friends of MagAO-X team:

superb seeing…

… and lots of food!

My favourite moment? Watching the team gather in the dome after a successful night, faces lit with joy and wonder, as Clay gently closed its eye to rest.

Thank you, MagAO-X team, for the vitality and good vibes, and for making me feel 17 years old again 😉 .  You have my deepest admiration for your amazing work.

яoger

This Sunday, we celebrate the triumphant return of the penguin seeker, Dr. Joseph Long, along with his bonus blog detailing his short weekend journey. On top of the cute penguin pictures, Joseph brought back lots of local chilean snacks that he sourced in supermarkets during his trip.

As always, before the sunset viewing session, a few of us went out for a vizzy spotting session. We only spotted a little baby vizzy and we were unable to find the parents. I suspect that we have been coming to this spotting location too often and have scared some of them away. As requested by a follower of Jay, we recreated the famous “crawling Jay, searching for vizzy” moment.

Roger, our T.O. for this turno, marched towards the dome with another basket full of empanadas in the glow of the setting sun as we gathered outside the control room for another sunset viewing. Although not captured by a phone, we were fortunate enough to witness another green flash on a Sunday this run. “Do you get deja vu” feeling that I am getting?

Tonight on the observation schedule, we have Sebastiaan and Alycia. Some errors popped on CACAO, but were “successfully ignored” and we went to observe giant stars with low resolution mode on VIS-X and regular imaging mode on MagAO-X.

As the time for midnight lunch approaches, Joseph cracked opened some of the snack that have arrived on the mountain today. Katie, our resident Canadian snack tester, had particularly strong feelings about the ketchup flavored cheetos. As a big fan of the Canadian ketchup chips myself, I would have to agree with Katie on this one. Unfortunately, I have another disappointing news to deliver: the empanadas today contained 300% more olives than previous Sunday.

With the successful engineering blocks in the past few days, Sebastiaan implemented partial EFC on sky for Alycia and Jay’s debris disk observations, which dug a dark hole for seeing fainter objects like disks.

Song of the Day

Per the 24B blog rules, the song I have chosen for the day is “déjà vu.” We are constantly doing new. and exciting science on the mountain, so I “think everything is special”.

I think I’ve had observing time at LCO in every month (though I’m unable to figure out from the records I have on my laptop if I’ve actually physically been at LCO in every month), but this is the best November that I remember. The days are warm and lovely, the nights are clear and crisp with good seeing. “These are the days to hold on to” and “this is the time to remember.” I’m busy using this run to forget the 2024Ab weather.

Even though I never forget how beautiful it here, I can’t help taking more photos of lovely sunsets and Venus next to the dome.

A lot of Magellan observations are done remotely now, but I continue to think people ought to come and experience the Observatory and learn the instruments in person. There are no shortage of students on this run, of course, given that MagAO-X is so hands-on. And I admit that I am remotely observing on two separate nights in the next month alone. But I hope some others see these photos and want to come. I fear a future when we’re all just looking at screens of telescopes.

On a different subject, I have to say that for something not very funny to 9 people sharing one bathroom in the dome, our clogged baño caused a lot of hilarity. Thanks to the heroic efforts (though I will spare you the photo) of Roger, Laird, and Parker, the situation was resolved. Now we “look back and have to laugh. We lived through a lifetime and the aftermath.”

Song of the Day: Anyone my age knows the song I’ve been quoting as it was absolutely unavoidable in 1986-87 and possibly the prom theme for every senior class in America in 1987. Magellan wasn’t my first love, but “I’m warm from the memory of days to come.”