Tag: Unpacking MagAO

Unpacking Day 3: The Team Gets Bigger

Another eventful day here at Las Campanas. Some more of the team arrived: Richard Sosa from Steward, Tyson Hare from Carnegie (Pasadena) and Mario Andrighettoni and Frederico Piccin from Microgate (Bolzano Italy). We unpacked the flipping bench, and even more exciting was the first mounting of our 4 electronics boxes on the NAS ring. This also led to our first glitch. After dinner we started unpacking the ASM unit itself. As usual, here are some pictures of all the fun:

Juan, Emilio, and Alan are mounting the guider box on the NAS. This box holds the control electronics for our guider.
The PI celebrates. The guider, driver, and CCD electronics boxes are safely mounted. See below for what happened to VisAO.
Mario and Frederico unpacking the ASM unit.

So we had our first glitch today. After mounting the VisAO box on the NAS, we noticed that a box bolted to the side (part of its liquid cooling system) would prevent the NAS from rotating to the vertical while on the transport cart. Even though this is only a problem when the system is off the telescope, we still need to fix it. The fix sounds simple: get a smaller box. As usual, it ain’t that easy. Removing the box meant almost completely gutting the VisAO electronics box. Fun.

The VisAO box after being gutted. This was necessary to remove the offending cooling equipment.
Jared about to express his opinion about something. This is a family blog, so I'll just say that having your advisor tell you to disassemble your PhD project makes for a rough evening.

At the end of the day, VisAO is all back together and working. We’ll mount it on the NAS tomorrow as soon as we get a chance. We also powered up the “Little Joe” CCD controllers today, and verified that they survived the trip. Things continue to go well.

Victor, Laird, Povilas, and Alan sitting down to steak and potatoes for lunch. The food here is great.
LCO is a beautiful place. This was tonight's sunset from outside the clean room. Our ASM mount ring shines in the foreground.

Unpacking Day 2

We kept at it on our 2nd day (our 1st full day). Today we unpacked the NAS, installed the guider in the NAS (for the first time), unpacked and tested our computers, and after dinner we unpacked and inspected the WFS. Some pix:

Here we are about to lift the NAS out of its box, the whole team is making sure nothing goes wrong.
Lowering the NAS down onto its cart.
The spacer ring goes back onto the NAS after the guider is installed.
Juan finishes tipping the NAS with the crane.
Laird and Jared inspecting the WFS immediately after opening the shipping box. Everything looks good. Before anyone asks, yes the T/T mirror is still attached to its stage.
A rare view of the back of the WFS with no cables. CCD 39 at left, CCD 47 at right.
The pyramid sensor side of the WFS - all looks good.
The VisAO arm of the WFS - all our special filters look unharmed.
A herd of asses.

MagAO Arrives at Las Campanas: Unpacking Day 1

Today, for the first time, all of the MagAO system was on the same continent, and even in the same building. On top of that, after a 50 hour odyssey Laird, Victor, and Jared arrived at LCO to begin unpacking. MagAO is officially at Magellan! Here are some pictures from today.

The MagAO ASM arrives at LCO
The conductor celebrates the end of a *slow* drive up the mountain.

Meanwhile, somewhere between Tucson and La Serena:

Victor and Jared pose after defeating Chilean customs with way too many parts of MagAO in our luggage.

And finally at the top of the mountain:

We witnessed a blast for the GMT.
Here we see the backup transport system, standing by outside our dorm rooms just in case.
Our future home, the Clay Telescope, is the one at left opening at sunset.
Venus over LCO. By the way, the stars are weird down here.
Laird celebrates the fact that none of the drop-n-tells tripped on the outer box. This means that the shell was handled very carefully on its trip from Italy.
Our electronics waiting to be unpacked.
Victor and Alan unbolting the top of the outer box.
Jared expresses his opinion about something. Ask me later - it probably doesn't matter. Update 4 days later: it didn't matter.
We only tripped 2 of 3 5g drop-n-tells on the inner box. This is a great sign that our delicate shell was treated well on its journey.
Here we're moving the inner box. Jared is operating the crane, and Laird is guiding the load.
Victor guides the inner box and its delicate contents down. The foam behind him was on top of the inner box.

At the end of our first day the inner box was safely stowed in the clean room, and we have started unpacking our electronics. A big first day.