November 13, 2009 at 9:12 pm
· Filed under General
Percentage of time scheduled for observing 100.0
Percentage of time scheduled for engineering 0.0
Percentage of time scheduled for sec/instr change 0.0
Percentage of time lost to weather 37.5
Percentage of time lost to instrument 7.3
Percentage of time lost to telescope 2.6
Percentage of time lost to general facility 0.0
Percentage of time lost to environment (non-weather) 0.0
Percentage of time lost 47.3 —————
Breakdown of hours lost to telescope:
The installation and testing of a new detector for Red Channel has been completed by the UofA’s Imaging Technology Laboratory (ITL). The new device has 15-micron pixels and a format of 520 x 1032 pixels (spatial x dispersion). The read noise of the detector is 3.5 electrons. The measure QE for the detector is provided below. ITL’s web page ( http://uao.itl.arizona.edu) provides additional details and information.
Percentage of time scheduled for observing 96.7
Percentage of time scheduled for engineering 3.3
Percentage of time scheduled for sec/instr change 0.0
Percentage of time lost to weather 26.3
Percentage of time lost to instrument 0.1
Percentage of time lost to telescope 3.7
Percentage of time lost to general facility 0.0
Percentage of time lost to environment (non-weather) 0.0
Percentage of time lost 30.0 —————
Breakdown of hours lost to telescope: 3.5 WFS 5.05 f/15 issues 2.3 SO guider camera
LCROSS successfully impacted the moon at 4.31am (MST)!! NASA will be having a news conference at 7.00am (PDT) on NASA TV.
We collected data with multiple instruments throughout the impact and for an hour after it. We now have a multitude of data which needs careful reduction over the coming weeks until we will have the opportunity to make any statements on what we saw.
We could not have asked for a better night – the weather was near perfect, the telescope worked beautifully tracking on the moon and all the instruments behaved impeccably.
Many thanks to everyone who was involved in bringing tonight together, to everyone who was onsite at the telescope to make it such a successful nights observing, to NASA for extremely clear communication through the night and to everyone who has been following us on the blog & the webcams.
Now its time for one last sip of champagne then off to bed before the sun truly rises!
The last blog before impact (and probably for a while after the impact as I’ll be busy reducing the data we observe!)
Everything here is good – sky is clear with 0.5″ seeing! Could not have asked for a better night. We have moved back to the moon and setting up for the final time before impact.
A quick list of people you might have been watching on the webcam!
Faith Vilas (MMT Director)
Shawn Callahan
Mike Algeria
Phil Hinz
John DiMiceli
Tom Trebisky
Vidhya Vaitheeswaran
Dallan Porter
Vanessa Bailey
Duane Gibson
Bryan Cardwell
Morag Hastie
At 1.31am (MST) NASA will count down to T-3 hours mark for the centaur impact. We are busily working away making sure we have all our cameras aligned (we are using 4 different camera’s for different purposes tonight!), we are collecting calibration data that is vital for our science results, making sure our data reduction software works and staying in communication with NASA and all the other telescopes that are observing the event.
On the LCROSS viewer we have a bunch of camera images for you to look at – starting at the top of the right hand column we have:
- The All Sky Camera, which is located outside the telescope and shows us the full sky. The red + sign shows exactly where the telescope is pointing.
- The next one is the view form a wide angle telescope which is bolted on to the side of our main large telescope. Here you should be able to see a more zoomed out image of the moon.
- The third is the image from a small field of view acquisition camera which looks through the main 6.5 meter telescope. It shows a very zoomed in image of the moon so might not look as you expect.
Along the bottom we show 4 webcams that are placed around the observatory; firstly the front of the chamber (dome) (you can see the shutters open with so much illumination from the moon), two cameras at the back of chamber and one in the control room. The control room webcam has the most activity! We have a large crew up here tonight to make sure we get the best possible observations we can for this one time opportunity.
After being involved in the LCROSS project and preparation for the ground based observations from the MMT over the last 18 months it has all come down to tonight. We have one shot at getting these observations so the nerves are running a little high in the control room!
In the last 10 minutes we have had confirmation from NASA that the centaur and payload (ie. the two halves of the rocket – the centaur will crash into the moon first with the payload carrying the instruments crashing in 4 minutes later) have separated successfully.
The weather has completely cleared up and is beautiful. Now we have around 7 hours to do final checks of the instruments we are using to observe the impact, and take all the calibration data that we need.
Please remember to come look at us work and see what we can see! NASA is also streaming live here.
Want to see professional astronomers at work? We are taking the unique time of the LCROSS experiment to give you all a direct view into the world of a professional observatory for one night only!
We will be streaming images throughout the night which you can view at:
Not only are we streaming images from inside the telescope chamber and control room from webcams we will be streaming images direct from two science camera that are trained on the moon throughout the night from which you may be able to see the actual impact.
This has been a big project for us and many other ground based telescopes around the world as well as the extensive NASA team that are running the actual project. It has been an exercise in communication and organization bringing all the parties together. Tonight (Weds) we are all hoping to some final checks and preparation – however here at the MMT we are stuck under heavy fog. The weather forecast for tomorrow is slightly better than tonight but we are still a little worried the weather is not going co-operate. We have all our fingers crossed for it to clear in time for us to capture the impact.
October 1, 2009 at 12:40 am
· Filed under Uncategorized
In recent weeks there has been many sightings of bears around Mt Hopkins and the observatory, including a family of three. They are often seen up in the trees munching on the ripe nuts.
On Monday morning as the day crew drove up to start their day they encountered a bear hanging out enjoying the sunshine on a rock near the road. The bear was happy to sit while Ben took a great video from the safety of his truck.
Although these bears appear to be relaxed around human presence remember they are wild animals and should be observed from a safe distance!
September 30, 2009 at 9:24 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
The LCROSS experiment is now into its last two weeks before the impact happening in the early morning of Oct 9th (MST). We will be posting more specific information about the observing happening at the MMT in the coming days but for general information NASA’s LCROSS website is a great place to start.
The media is also ramping up their coverage with many articles including our local The Arizona Republic with quotes from Faith Vilas (MMT Director).
Welcome to the new MMTO blog – an informal place the MMT staff will use to get information out to you, the astronomers, scientists and engineers who have a vested interest in the MMT. The blog will not be updated on a regular basis but posts will made when we have something new to convey. We hope to include exciting achievements, things that have gone wrong and that we have worked to fix or that we are working to fix, insight into the daily life of the observatory and many other things. There are comment spaces below each post – please use these to “talk back” to us with comments, questions, requests etc. We want this blog to be a place to open up dialogue between us so anything you would like to see a post on please let us know. We want to keep this an informal space so posts may be short, if you an interested in knowing more about a subject leave a comment and we’ll get back to you.
The most recent run for the LGS team (10/13 – 10/17) proved incredibly successful, producing some very exciting results. Following is the key results and images supplied by Michael Lloyd-Hart and the LGS team.
The ground-layer AO compensation resulted in dramatic improvements in image quality over the full 2′ x 2′ field of view of the Pisces camera in the J, H and K NIR wavebands. Native seeing in K of 0.85″ was corrected to 0.25″ with the AO. The first image below shows a great example of the native seeing of 0.61″ being corrected to 0.22″ with closed loop for a 10″ FOV at the centre of M36. The second image demonstrates the quality of the correction over the entire 2′ FOV of the camera – for native seeing of 0.86″ corrected to 0.27″. The table below quantitatively shows the uniformity of the correction over the FOV. The plot shows achieved FWHM (“) versus distance (“) from the tip/tilt natural guide star – again demonstrating how good the correction is regardless of object position in the field.
Showing a Ks, 60 second exposure of a 10″ region at the centre of M36. Native 0.66″ seeing GLAO corrected to 0.22″.
Showing image quality over the full Pisces FOV, open loop 0.86″ seeing corrected to 0.27″
Shows quality of the correction over the full field. FWHM with respect to distance from the tip/tilt natural guide star.
Table giving the achieved FWHM versus the open loop for each labelled star in image 2. Also noted is the distance of each star from the tip/tilt guide star.
The system is now very robust, staying closed unattended for tens of minutes at a time. The attained closed loop results are consistent with the open loop predictions for H & K and even better in J. It will be exciting to know what results are achieved in Z or I. Thanks again to Michael Lloyd-Hart for these wonderful images and congratulations to the whole team on the excellent results.
November 7, 2008 at 8:31 pm
· Filed under News Flash
Effective Monday, November 3, 2008.
The underpass at Canoa Road is scheduled to close for approximately 6 -7 weeks (until mid-December). Southbound drivers on I-19 will need to use the Arivaca exit (exit 48) and then double back north on the east frontage road to reach Elephant Head Road and continue on to the FLWO base camp.
Motorists heading north to Tucson on the east frontage road should still be able to access the1-19 northbound ramp.
Please contact Karen Erman-Myres at 520-670-5703 for more information if any questions.
Alternative route to the MMT during the underpass closure – use Exit 48.
MMIRS is the next new instrument that will be arriving for commissioning at the MMT. The ‘MMT and Magellan InfraRed Spectrograph’ is a wide field near-IR imager and slit mask multi-object spectrograph being built by the team at the CfA led by Brian McLeod. It has two basic operational modes:
IMAGING:
7′ x 7′ FOV
0.2″ pixels
Y, J, H & K wavelength coverage
SPECTROSCOPY:
Multi-slit (4′ x 7′ FOV)
or longslit (7′ length and 0.2, 0.4, 0.6, 0.8, 1.2, 1.8, 2.4″ widths)
J, H, K @ R = 3000
JH & HK @ R = 1200
Current delivery/commissioning date is March 2009. For more information regarding MMIRS please contact Morag Hastie (mhastie ‘at’ mmto ‘dot’ org).
MMIRS in the lab at the CPD in Cambridge undergoing thermal testing.
November 18, 2008 at 10:22 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
Thermal imaging observations of Fomalhaut using the Clio 3-5 micron camera.
Last week high profile publications hit the news about the direct detections of exoplanets around two stars, Fomalhaut & HR8799 (see ‘Optical Images of an Exosolar Planet 25 Light Years from Earth’ Kalas et al and ‘Direct Imaging of Multiple Planets Orbiting the Star HR 8799′ Marois et al and all major news sites).
Fomalhaut was observed by a team at the MMT using the Clio 3-5 micron camera (PI Phil Hinz) in December 2006 as part of a survey led by Eric Mamajek (University of Rochester). The uniquely high sensitivity thermal imaging observation of Fomalhaut obtained show that there are no planets above 2 Jupiter masses inside the dust ring imaged by HST. The open loop images had 0.5 arcsecond seeing at 2.0 to 2.5 airmasses, which the MMT AO system turned into 0.15 arcsecond diffraction limited 5 micron images. The images did not include the location of the newly announced planet, Fomalhaut b. These observations do, however, rule out any other large planets on distance scales similar to our Solar System. For further information see ‘MMT /AO 5 Micron Imaging Constraints on the Existence of Giant Planets Orbiting Fomalhaut at ~13 – 40AU’ Kenworthy et al.
November 20, 2008 at 6:42 pm
· Filed under News Flash
Signs of Weather Seen on Dwarf Planet
Strange weather on the icy dwarf planet Eris could be causing changes that scientists are now seeing at the methane-ice surface of this distant object in our solar system.
A team of researchers examined data on Eris collected from the MMT Observatory in Arizona. They specifically looked at concentrations of methane ice based on light-reflection and absorption information.
To read this Space.com article and find out their results, go here.
Mysterious changes seen on distant dwarf planet
The surface of the largest known ‘plutoid’ appears to have changed in recent years, according to new measurements of how elements are layered on its icy surface. But astronomers cannot explain the cause of the apparent change.
Eris is the largest known object beyond the orbit of Neptune, weighing nearly a third more than Pluto. It travels on an elongated path around the Sun that takes about 560 years to complete.
By studying different wavelengths – or ‘bands’ – of light in Eris’s spectrum using the 6.5-metre MMTobservatory in Arizona, the researchers concluded that the concentration of nitrogen seems to increase with depth.
At the MMT we do a lot of juggling of our three secondary mirrors & our current suite of 13 instruments. Over the last couple of years we have become so efficient at doing secondary/instrument changes that it is a task that is normally never seen by the astronomers as everything is completed before they arrive at the telescope. To give you all a small insight into the effort it takes to reconfigure the telescope we have put together this little movie for your viewing pleasure. The movie shows one day in the life of the telescope day crew as we change from a setup of f/5 secondary with Hecto to the f/15 deformable secondary and CLIO.
For best viewing have your computer speakers on .. Enjoy!
Percentage of time scheduled for observing 100.0
Percentage of time scheduled for engineering 0.0
Percentage of time scheduled for sec/instr change 0.0
Percentage of time lost to weather 26.2
Percentage of time lost to instrument 1.2
Percentage of time lost to telescope 1.5
Percentage of time lost to general facility 0.3
Percentage of time lost to environ. (non-weather) 0.0
Percentage of time lost 29.2
—————————————————————————————–
Breakdown of hours lost to telescope: 5.25 (wfs failure, hacksaw crash, pointing/rotator issues
Breakdown of hours lost to facility: 1.0 unscheduled instrument change
Another section of Mt. Hopkins Road will have guardrails installed beginning Monday, February 2 around kilometer 4.
Although the installation will be around km 4, a section between km 2.2 (by the astronomy vista) and km 4.2 will be closed. There is room to turn around at these locations.
January 29, 2009 at 8:59 pm
· Filed under Telescope
The MMT elevation tracking has been evaluated for the 3rd trimester of 2008 and was found to be at a median of 0.065″ +/- 0.04″. There is a lower limit to the tracking smoothness at about 0.02″, or +/- 2 encoder counts, with a non-linear dependence on the tracking rate. Wind rejection remains an issue, with tracking degradation a (nearly linear) function of the wind speed, regardless of the telescope position. However, positions at high elevation angles away from the prevailing wind are more favourable, as the following 3D plot with RMS error population as a surface over elevation and relative wind angle shows.
Error Distribution Minus Outliers
3D plot showing high elevation away from the wind is better for tracking.
Astronomers will use the powerful University of Arizona/Smithsonian MMT Observatory on Mount Hopkins, Ariz., to search for lunar water ice when NASA fires a 2-ton rocket into a polar crater on the moon later this year.
Percentage of time scheduled for observing 90.2
Percentage of time scheduled for engineering 9.8
Percentage of time scheduled for sec/instr change 0.0
Percentage of time lost to weather 45.1
Percentage of time lost to instrument 0.5
Percentage of time lost to telescope 2.8
Percentage of time lost to general facility 0.0
Percentage of time lost to environment (non-weather) 0.0
Percentage of time lost 48.4
——–
Breakdown of time lost to telescope: secondary (f/15 problem),
pointing/computer problem with AO, PCR server, wfs camera,
During Monday’s (3/2/9) engineering night Shawn Callahan, Morag Hastie, Tim Pickering, Phil Hinz, and Ale Milone tested the f/15 AO system capabilities to develop procedures to image lunar impact craters for the upcoming NASA LCROSS mission. To learn more about this interesting NASA mission go to: http://lcross.arc.nasa.gov/
On this mostly clear evening, the moon’s illumination was less than 50% causing polar LCROSS impact craters to be unlit. We used JPL’s HORIZONS software and scripts from Tom Trebisky to generate ephemerides for the moon. As soon as we began non-sidereal tracking the center of the moon we offset to the cusp at the northern intersection of the bright limb with the terminator. This region of the moon has several mountains and crater walls in the dark limb tall enough to catch the first rays of sunrise.
The AO system was able to lock onto one glowing oblong shaped mountain top. We were all treated to see amazing lunar images free of most atmospheric distortions while looking through 2.7 airmass (22 degrees elevation angle). This was a first for the MMT!
We tried locking onto various other moonscapes with less contrast but were unsuccessful before the rapidly setting moon prevented further observations. Regrettably our efforts did not leave enough time to capture these beautiful images of the moon with the AO system locked. (Next time!) Further testing is required to determine if we can lock the AO system on the candidate craters.
The LCROSS craters shall be illuminated during our next engineering run in early April. During this run we plan to use the f/9 and/or f/5 telescope configuration to test and verify our procedures for locating and tracking each candidate impact site.
The LCROSS mission is scheduled to impact August 28th at 4:39 UTC (21:39 MST). On this evening, sunset at the MMT is 18:52, and the moon sets at 00:27. The moon shall be at an elevation angle of 42 degrees (1.5 airmass) during impact.
Percentage of time scheduled for observing 100.0
Percentage of time scheduled for engineering 0.0
Percentage of time scheduled for sec/instr chan 0.0
Percentage of time lost to weather 38.8
Percentage of time lost to instrument 0.2
Percentage of time lost to telescope 0.3
Percentage of time lost to general facility 0.2
Percentage of time lost to environment (non-weather) 0.0
Percentage of time lost 39.4
—
Breakdown of time lost to telescope: broken mount miniserver, hacksaw crash;
Breakdown of time lost to general facility: hoseclamp reboot;
As part of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 the MMT Observatory will participate in the 100 Hours of Astronomy 24 hour webcast that will take place April 3rd and 4th UT. We will be broadcasting live from the MMT control room on Friday, April 3rd at 23:50 Arizona time (April 4th 06:50 UT). Click the image and tune in to watch!
The MMTO MySQL database was queried for routine tracking and weather data for the final trimester of 2008 (Sept-Dec). These data are presented with discussion of data sources, their distribution over various dimensions of the data, and appropriate statistics are shown for the purposes of evaluation of the tracking performance of the latest iteration of the elevation servo (e.g. the version released after Summer 2008 Shutdown).
The figures that follow and the figures in the full text are available via the web at http://tinyurl.com/cop6v8if closer study is desired.
Figure 1
Figure 2
To read the full text technical memorandum, click here.
Percentage of time scheduled for observing 93.4
Percentage of time scheduled for engineering 6.6
Percentage of time scheduled for sec/instr chan 0.0
Percentage of time lost to weather 26.8
Percentage of time lost to instrument 0.2
Percentage of time lost to telescope 3.4
Percentage of time lost to general facility 0.0
Percentage of time lost to environment (non-weather) 0.0
Percentage of time lost 30.3
—
Breakdown of time lost to telescope: mount/encoders (9.9); wfs (0.5);
September 1, 2009 at 9:00 am
· Filed under Uncategorized
The MMTO has launched a new “Astronomer’s Log”. The purpose of the log is to allow the users to provide realtime feedback to the staff. The log is web based and the format is such that users can enter text and “Submit entries” throughout a night of observing. Entries can include any problems encountered during observing, comments, and/or suggestions. Each entry is timestamped so that the staff can link entries to system and weather status. The users can “Edit header information” to provide their name and program. The log (which requires the generic mmt observer “mmtobs” login, ask the telescope operator if you don’t know the password) allows multiple users (i.e. if observing with colleagues) to add entries at the same time from different computers. Although the interface is intuitive, there’s a link to instructions for use. At the end of the night the log can be “Finished and closed” at which time the user will have the option of sending a confidential report to the Director only. PLEASE USE THE NEW ASTRONOMER’S LOG! The URL for the log is (PLEASE ONLY USE WHEN YOU ARE OBSERVING):
April 8, 2009 at 12:44 am
· Filed under Uncategorized
A short video introduction to the MMTO was compiled for the International Year of Astronomy 2009, 100-hours of Astronomy 24 hour webcast. There are two versions of the video; the first is an introduction only and the second appends a compressed time lapse version of the instrument change video provided earlier in the blog. The introduction video can also be accessed by clicking on the image of the MMT on the main web page.
Percentage of time scheduled for observing 89.7
Percentage of time scheduled for engineering 10.3
Percentage of time scheduled for sec/instr chan 0.0
Percentage of time lost to weather 25.4
Percentage of time lost to instrument 0.0
Percentage of time lost to telescope 0.2
Percentage of time lost to general facility 0.0
Percentage of time lost to environment (non-weather) 0.0
Percentage of time lost 25.6
—
Breakdown of time lost to telescope: mount computer (0.5);
MMIRS (MMT and Magellan Infrared Spectrograph) has just completed its first successful week of commissioning at the MMT. The team took imaging data, longslit spectra, multi-object slit mask spectra all with control from MMIRS of the telescope guiding and wavefront sensing.
Congratulations to the team – we look forward to the next run in a couple of weeks time.
Below is a YHK image of Messier 64, the Black Eye Galaxy.
Percentage of time scheduled for observing 100.0
Percentage of time scheduled for engineering 0.0
Percentage of time scheduled for sec/instr chan 0.0
Percentage of time lost to weather 17.7
Percentage of time lost to instrument 3.0
Percentage of time lost to telescope 1.6
Percentage of time lost to general facility 0.0
Percentage of time lost to environment (non-weather) 0.0
Percentage of time lost 22.3
—
Breakdown of time lost to telescope: 1.0 hr WFS camera; 3.0 mirror gap contamination
June 26, 2009 at 10:02 pm
· Filed under News Flash
On Tuesday evening at 21.20 local time a large meteor flashed across the Tucson sky. We captured this stunning event with the monitor cameras we use during daily operation of the MMT
The MMT All-Sky camera is mounted outside near the MMT Observatory which can view the whole sky. The astronomers and operators use this camera every night to monitor weather conditions from inside our control room. We save images roughly every 10 seconds and archive them for future use. Below is a link to a small movie clip with 3.5 minutes of the All-Sky camera images around the time of the meteor. Look carefully, on frame 8 there is a bright streak as the meteoroid enters the atmosphere and starts to burn-up. Then on frame 9 as the meteoroid completely burns up the flash is so bright it completely saturates the All-Sky camera.
We also have a number of web cameras located inside the telescope chamber that capture images once a minute. We were lucky enough to capture an image from one of the cameras right when the meteoroid first entered the atmosphere, the light is bright enough to illuminate the chamber. The image on the left-hand-side below is from 1 minute before the meteor and shows the chamber completely swamped in darkness. The image on the right-hand-side clearly shows the chamber being illuminated by the meteor. This image corresponds exactly in time with frame 8 of the movie clip, so sadly we missed capturing an image at the peak of the event.
July 8, 2009 at 10:44 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
The MMT made it on to Andrew Sullivan’s “The Daily Dish” today (July 8th) with a photograph for his “The View From Your Window” segment. Click here to see his post of the photograph (below) taken out of the Control Room window. Whoever took the photo and submitted it to Andrew Sullivan let us know and we’ll happily credit you!
July 10, 2009 at 6:24 pm
· Filed under Uncategorized
Percentage of time scheduled for observing 93.3
Percentage of time scheduled for engineering 6.7
Percentage of time scheduled for sec/instr chan 0.0
Percentage of time lost to weather 29.7
Percentage of time lost to instrument 0.0
Percentage of time lost to telescope 0.0
Percentage of time lost to general facility 0.0
Percentage of time lost to environment (non-weather) 0.0
Percentage of time lost 29.7
Percentage of time scheduled for observing 96.1
Percentage of time scheduled for engineering 3.9
Percentage of time scheduled for sec/instr chan 0.0
Percentage of time lost to weather 60.3
Percentage of time lost to instrument 0.0
Percentage of time lost to telescope 17.5
Percentage of time lost to general facility 0.0
Percentage of time lost to environment (non-weather) 0.0
Percentage of time lost 77.8 —————
Breakdown of hours lost to telescope: 33.40 AO system failures (f/15, DM, hexapod, M2 water contamination) 1.25 f/5 WFS failure
To help our visiting astronomers perform tasks either specific to the MMT or for any of our instrumentation we have pulled together a number of “cheat sheets”. You can find these “how to” helpers on the web site or there are hardcopies in a binder located in the control room (top shelf in the bookshelf in the middle of the room).
We have started with a small handful of cheat sheets and will continue to build this resource until we cover all the tasks needed. If you encounter something you feel needs a cheat sheet during your time at the observatory please request it in the Astronomer’s Log.
A short summary of the status of each MMT instrument and any work that has been completed over the summer period is given below. If you would like any further information regarding any of the instrumentation please contact Morag Hastie (mhastie@mmto).
RED CHANNEL: Unavailable. Awaiting a new detector which should be completed in late Oct.
BLUE CHANNEL: Available.
MMIRS: Unavailable. Further commissioning work undertaken. Shipped to Magellan 09/09.
