Tonight went really well we only had 6 communication errors on start-up of the ASM (whereas we often have thousands but most don’t bother us) — so the ASM is enjoying this warm weather we are having. As you can see for the photos below we had a surprise at the end of last night when the telescope’s instrument rotator got stuck with MagAO upside down. This was exciting for us since the Infrared camera Clio can’t be filled up if it is upside down. The telescope crew quickly fixed the problem after breakfast and Clio was filled with liquid nitrogen by 9AM. So all is good. Tonight the telescope rotator has been great.
We have had another great night of low winds and great seeing for almost the whole night. Tonight is my last night. I’ll be back in 2 weeks to help with the GMT Phase Cam experiment and to take down the system. Katie and Jared will continue to be the real heroes of MagAO –keeping the system/AO/Clio/VisAO all running perfectly as usual for our visiting astronomer friends.
So as the seeing gets worse I need to take my leave of running the AO system — and so today’s song: