2023
August 3rd, 2023: The summer flew by. Robo-AO-2 Akamai intern Kyla presented the results of her research at the Akamai Workforce Initiative, Internship Symposium at UH Hilo this morning. Excellent work Kyla! (also pictured: mentors James and Christoph with limited edition UHIfA lei c/o Kyla).
July 21st, 2023: Robo-AO-2 PI Christoph Baranec presents at the TASC7/KASC14 workshop on how Robo-AO-2 will help NASA’s TESS mission discover and measure stellar blends that through off our measurements of exoplanets.
June 29, 2023: Dr. Reed Riddle of @Caltech is at #AO4ELT this week presenting early Robo-AO-2 commissioning results on behalf of the team.
June 22, 2023: Mike Bottom and team @UHIfA Hilo just scored a huge @NASA grant for developing next-gen IR detectors. We’re using some of the earlier types of these devices developed by Don Hall et al., in Robo-AO-2, and will likely upgrade at the appropriate time. https://t.co/NAPw5S5iTC
June 20, 2023: No time to waste! First day on the job and Robo-AO-2 Akamai intern Kyla is seen here working with James to make upgrades to our robotic computer’s thermal management system.
June 7, 2023: The Robo-AO-2 team just closed the adaptive optics control loop on the UV laser!
June 6, 2023: The Robo-AO-2 team is back for more engineering this week!
May 8, 2023: Success with the Robo-AO-2 laser wavefront sensor. Pictured is our UV laser, gated at 10 km (500 m depth) and as seen by our Shack-Hartmann wavefront sensor. We’ll be back for more engineering next month where we plan to close the AO loop.
May 7, 2023: It’s our last night of our first re-commissioning of Robo-AO-2. The new optical bench is working out great (super stiff – thanks again @protech3).
May 1, 2023: Robo-AO-2 is back on the UH 2.2m telescope. We had clear weather for a smooth ride to the summit, and our awesome day crew built new fixtures which sped up the installation.
April 28, 2023: Show-and-tell day in the Robo-AO-2 lab @UHIfA Hilo. We’ll be heading back to the summit shortly so gave everyone in the building a chance to view the instrument up.
April 6, 2023: The Robo-AO-2 team is putting the final touches on the newest adaptive optics system for the UH 2.2-m telescope. Robo-AO-2 was recently upgraded with a solid carbon fiber optical bench and will be recommissioned, starting in May.
January 19, 2023: Hooray 🎉 the deformable mirror works as expected still! Thankx @BMCMirrors
January 14, 2023: We’ve reinstalled and fully aligned the first off-axis parabolic mirror. Now on to aligning the deformable mirror.
January 9, 2023: We removed the deformable mirror from the previous system and installed it today on our new optical bench.
January 6, 2023: New year, new optical bench for Robo-AO-2. The lightweight carbon fiber (CF) bench we took to the UH2.2m telescope last year was not stiff enough to properly secure our optics, but we now have a new solid CF bench thanks to @protech3 and are starting to rebuild the instrument.
