A Blur....

Being back has been a huge blur. I feel like I just got sucked right back in to the thick of things. But not in a bad way, just in the usual way. I got home Wednesday. I'm told it's another Wednesday. WTF? I think the main memories are dealing with a bunch of crap admin stuff at IfA, some wonderful hours at home on the weekend with some great chill time, guitar-hero and flying, and then a giant cluster of lab stuff. I came over to Maui on Monday for some lab work. We're trying to set up the new 'curvature adaptive optics' system. Try out : Wavefront Sensor, a tutorial, or the UH AO page. Anyways, I'll be jumping in on building this sytem up in the Maikalani lab before we put it up on the summit to test it out with HiVIS. Fun stuff.

Chirst and I packing up and looking for parts in the Manoa AO lab.
Your assignment: here's some parts. Figure out how they work and build this thing by Friday. Go!
The 'Simulator' - this thing takes a laser and makes a flat wave-front (collimates it). Then it passes through a 'pupil mask' and a 'phase screen' - the two bits of metal on the top right. The pupil mask simulates the entrance to a telescope and the phase screen is atmospheric turbulence (a spinning piece of not-flat-plastic). You then fold the beam around (next two optics) and send it through the lens (in the middle) that gives an output beam the same as would be coming in to the rest of the setup from the telescope.
The 'pupil mask' shot through four optics (taken from off last mirror in the bottom left in the above image). Obviously there are alignment issues. It's hard to align when the crate of hardware hasn't shown up yet...

And I got a couple papers ready - a letter to ApJ on another 'old & dying' class of stars with the type of 'absorptive' signature we've been seeing in young stars.

And the conference proceedings for the Canada trip in July. Too much writing lately....
Anyways, that's where I've been.