2017B Day 2: On Sky!

In a new world record, the crew installed the ASM, the Nas, and Clio all in one day. After dinner we finished connecting and cabling everything. We went on sky and closed the loop around midnight. Clio is still getting down to a cool 55 K (-218* C or -360* F). It started out at 287 K (14* C or 57* F) and it was a long cold day for me yesterday:

Cooling down Clio. I am acclimated to temperatures like the 38* C (101* F) in Tucson yesterday, so I was wearing all of my wool and down to try to stay warm as I spent the day in a 56* F (14* C) room with a 77 K liquid.

Laird worked all day today with the crew, with Jared and I joining later so that we could sleep a bit during the day to be up all night. Pato Jones helped Jared and Laird cable the Nas, turn on the guider, and balance the rotator:

Here Pato and Jared are during cabling of the Nas. Good thing Pato is wearing his hard hat.

We had some trouble shooting to do after getting on sky and closing the loop. This included the Clio motors, nodding, rotating, and at the end of the night the ASM was complaining because it was too cold, so we were trying to let it warm up. We also had problems with X11 windows being too slow on one of the default computers in the Clay control room “Guanaco”, so we switched to a computer of our own:

Jared at the new AO work station with high-speed X forwarding. Meanwhile, Hernan edits the night report to notify the day crew of the rotator issues.

With the loop closed and before I tried to change any filters, I managed to measure the focus position in one Clio filter, 3.3um:

Closed loop image of a bright star at 3.3um with Clio, and a good focus curve

Well, we’re happy to have gotten on-sky in the fastest time ever, so we will leave it at that and head down to a delicious LCO breakfast:

Breakfast at LCO: Fresh squeezed orange juice, strong tea with heated milk, oatmeal with heated milk, and two fried eggs with avocado