2015A Day 9: Coronagraphs for fun and profit

tap tap tap tap

…hello, hello……is this thing switched on? Great! Here we go…

This is Matt Kenworthy, and I’ve been let loose given the reins of the MagAO blog for the night. The word of the night is “plate”, and apparently I’ve been saying “holy guacamole!” a lot.

My graduate student, Gilles Otten, and I are here for three engineering nights with the MagAO team testing three grating vector APP coronagraphs that we have had manufactured. These APP coronagraphs enhance the sensitivity of direct imaging cameras such as Clio2.

Getting the APPs installed in Clio was an epic task which the MagAO team rose to without a single complaint (that we heard…) and last night we saw the first light through the first APP – and it works!

Tonight, after a fight with high wind, we’ve been doing more engineering tests for the A1 APP and then we tried the 360 degree vAPP – which worked as well. Amazing stuff.

Now we’re taking science data with the vAPP.

Some Deadmaus to get us going:

 

…and a pop interpretation!