SPIE 2026 Wrapped: A Campaign in Copenhagen

*This blog post provides a belated summary of the various exploits of MagAO-X team members at the 2026 SPIE Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation conference in Copenhagen, Denmark.* Day 0 We began our conference journey with the registration of participants and their respective guests (human and otherwise). In fact, there were so many MagAO-X affiliates in …

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SPIE 2026 Prelude: The Leiden Affair

There was sporadic talk of a pre-SPIE summit of Leiden and Arizonan and New Yorkian and Albuquerqueño MagAO-X users, but it seemed a distant dream until Asst. Prof. Sebastiaan Haffert said those four words we all long to hear: Ultimately the visiting delegation was comprised of myself, Dr. Lauren Schatz (Space Force), Eden McEwen (UArizona), …

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In Residence

Part I: At The Grand Canyon Drs Males and Morzinski (and a little squirrel) just had the amazing honor of being personally shown around the Grand Canyon by the Grand Canyon Conservancy’s Astronomer in Residence. Said resident astronomer is none other MagAO-X’s own Dr! Logan Pearce. After a pleasant road trip (via Nothern New Mexico) …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 32: UUUUU_

As Katie reports, we had a smooth and efficient MagAO-X removal — even though Sebastiaan and Parker collected the very last photons of the run. Everything went great, that is, until we turned the computers back on in the cleanroom. At this point we found that the data storage system on the Instrument Control Computer …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 31: All in a Day’s Work

I fell asleep trying to write this blog last night, if that tells you anything about how hard we’ve been working now that we’re back down here at LCO. That’s right — all good things must come to an end, and MagAO-X’s first experiment with remote operations has finally called it a wrap. Uninstall day …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 30: Wind Troubles

The day started with Jared, Katie and I flying from Santiago to La Serena with another minor delay of about an hour. As we were driving up to the summit in the afternoon, the remote crew back in Tucson were in charge of aligning and prepping Alycia’s observations. Due to us three being in Chile …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 29: Dawn of the final day

Alright, here’s the scoop: I’m beginning to write this blog at the start of observations and I predict median conditions or slightly better. My qualifications for making these types of predictions is a 100% accuracy rate so far for this run and I intend to keep it that way! Though I admit I’ve only made …

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MagAo-X Day 27: Many photons make light work

In this blog, we celebrate observing in good conditions! The astronomical seeing at Las Campanas was ~0.5″ or better for the whole night! Using this time, I managed to get a very nice sequence of coronagraphic data on a circumstellar disk with the polarimeter. The crew celebrated such a good night of observing with a …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 26: Come along for a ride!

After a short break of three whole days, it’s time for another MagAO-X night. Within these 3 days, we have welcomed 2 special guests back to Tucson: our MagAO-X alumni Logan Pearce and Lauren Schatz. They have joined in on our weekly Friday group meetings and the happy hour pizza slice. While Logan is preparing …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 25: What Happened?

Well…something happened tonight. We showed up and the telescope opened. That may have been the most exciting part of the evening observing-wise. The 2nd shift took over and watched the seeing monitor agonizingly creep upward with no end in sight. This seeing monitor is reaching record levels. In fact, the weather left Miles downright bean-boozled. …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 24: The Sonoran Dessert

Remote observing feels weird. Not because of what goes on in the ROC, but rather because of what goes on outside the ROC. When we observe at LCO, Tucson starts to feel a little bit like a dream. When you’re on top of Cerro Manqui, the idea of grocery shopping or vacuuming or pulling up …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 23: Characterizing Remote Observing

Welcome to Day 22! Tonight was another observing night for Alycia, while we were here in Tucson operating remotely. However, since she was great at both operating the system and logging, it wasn’t too eventful for the three of us on second shift. With this being the first run observing remotely, I’m sure it would …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 22: Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars

There is an eerie silence in the Clay control room. It’s a bit like a spooky Twilight Zone episode where everyone has disappeared, but their disembodied voices periodically ring out. Despite the remoteness of 2026A, it made sense for me to be here, as I will be spending the rest of the week at LCO …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 21: The Return of Maggie-OX?

Ever since the MagAO-X team left the mountain, we have not had a sunset view nor the company of Maggie-OX in the control room. Well folks, that changes today. Our long time collaborator and primo disk observer, Alycia, has made her journey up the mountain tops today. She shared some familiar views of the sunset …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 20: Star Hopping and Special Guests

The observing night started with myself (and Josh to supervise me…) aligning the instrument rather early before observations began. Since I am less familiar with the startup and aligning process, this was a good time to get some practice in. Once aligned, we began the night with our collaborator from MIT joining us, Jensen Lawrence. …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 18: Standards of Operating

We had some quality control stop by the remote operating room this evening. Though I wasn’t in attendance for the early shift, I did hear we passed with flying colors. Or flying animal crackers, as it were. MagAO-X has been operating true to the golden rule “Having more things just means more things can go …

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MagAO-X Day 17: Always something fun when satellites are involved

Lauren Schatz, XWCL alum here! I flew in from Albuquerque, New Mexico to observe GEO satellites with MagAO-X to see if coronagraphy is possible with an extended source. It sounds simple enough right? “Put dot on top of satellite, done”, but turns out it is more complicated than that. The first thing you have to …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 16: And Nothing Else Matters

Well here we go, on our way home. Wow this run felt long, even though we only had 7 nights. The first group of us got here 10 days early, though as is typical we mostly sat around waiting for a shipment to arrive. In truth we did an unreal amount of work. From overhauling …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 15: It’s the final countdown

This is my first blog post of the run even though I have already been here for nearly two weeks! It’s great to be back again at LCO. After being here for so many observing runs it is starting to feel like a second home. And it is almost time to go back because tonight …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 15: Another day (or night) at MagAO-X

Algunos años han pasado desde mi última colaboración con este blog, aunque ya no son tan populares, este sí mantiene su vigencia con el aporte constante de sus integrantes. ¡ FELICITACIONES ! NIEVEEl años pasado tuvimos algunas jornadas con nieve, se cubre el paisaje de blanco, blanco invierno si buscamos en una ferretería el color …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 14: Back Online

The day began with the LCO engineers troubleshooting an issue we were having with the telescope last night. After spending many hours during the night and 10 hours during the day, they were able to determine there was an open loop somewhere in the motor through electrical measurements. They found the part that was causing …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 13: Paired Up

I really hope we never have to align these cubes again! Laird Close, MagAO-X 2026A Day 7 Today Laird and I aligned the beamsplitter cubes again. This time we discovered a faulty clamp, which is a better explanation for our constantly having to re-align than “perhaps someone is hexing us.” We’re confident that the problem …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 12: snacks, asteroids and a childhood friend

Onto our 2nd night of observing! Despite the burros best efforts to block us in, we managed to get up the mountain again for an action packed night. Observing snacks Everyone knows that you cannot observe off caffeine alone. We all bring a wide range of weird but yummy snacks to keep us going during …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 11: Bizarro world

Welcome to the day of flips, we’re back on the telescope and everything feels just a little off. Flip the platform, NASE to NASW. Flip the schedule, day to night. Flip the detectors, visible to IR. We were not victorious for all fights involving negative signs, but our 24 hour day was full of flipping …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 10: Work Hard, Play Hard

Today’s the day. And it’s going to happen again and again. But for this time, the first order of business is to pick up where we left off at the end of the day yesterday and move MagAO-X, safely, from the cleanroom -> up the summit -> onto the Nasmyth platform. Moving from the clean …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 9: Clean Up Day

Today was full of action! To prepare for install tomorrow, we had a whole lot going on. Laird and Katie had some alignment work, me and Eden were finding new focus positions for the camsci stages, Rob and Viktoria worked on camdurham, and of course there were still grad students in the library working on their …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 8: Vignetting

They say every day is a school day and despite it being a Sunday in sunny Las Campanas I would definitely say it’s been another good day for learning! Lesson 1, Size matters: My first lesson of the day was that a 32 oz cup (946 mL to those metrically minded) exists and is considered …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 7: Cubism

You know it’s optical alignment day when you open your camera roll to write a blog post and it just looks like this: It’s been an all-hands-on-deck kind of day. Our activities have ranged from the very low-tech (cardboard tubes) to the very high-tech (new infrared camera in the visitor port) to the sort-of-medium-tech (refractometer …

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MagAO-X Day 6: Big Red and Big Upgrades

Today started with Tiffany putting in some plumbing work for MagAO-X. We added a new glycol port to go into the side instrument panel to cool the new IR camera being installed within the next week. In order to make space for the new IR camera, Sebastiaan and our collaborators from Durham University, Rob and …

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MagAO-X 2026A Day 5: All about the vibes

[TYPING] “combustion… point… cardboard…” The 26A run is well and truly moving along now. We had our first sunburn, a visit to a fellow Clay instrument (Lightspeed) and some more of the team (Katie, Parker and Tiffany) joining today. On our first and second day of work, Sebastiaan and I targeted the vibes of the …

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