Xiao's 2011May run

May 8th

1. find the best focus for luminous 5 and 6 We mount a visible fiber to one stage and shoot visible light in from the other end. Moving z axis manually to make sure the spot bounce off the parabola mirror maintain similar size to a long distance, which means we find rough focus position. Then we search XY position by letting the spot go through an alignment telescope, and look at the spot size and shape on wall. Then we adjust the alignment telescope to infinity by placing a mirror in front of it, and find the two clear grid image. Now we try to adjust z axis of luminous stage manually again to find a finer focus by looking at the spot through the telescope (BE care to reduce light first before looking in to the telescope)

2. re-find focus position for beam 1 AND 2 AND 3 Since we replaced all the actuators on luminous stages with new ones, we have to find the focus positions for all the stages. For beam 1, 2 and 3, because they still use the same infrared fibers, the fiber should stay at the best focus positions as before, which means you don't need to adjust the pickoff mirror. We shoot laser into the MIRC vgroove and align it with CHARA beam on the alignment telescope. First place a beamsplitter in between MIRC light and CHARA beam, and a retro near the beamsplitter:

                              mirror  ==>   alignment telescope
                                  /\
                                   ||
              MIRC light = = >   beamsplitter         <= = CHARA beam
                               ||    /\
                                \/   ||
                                retro

Second, place the CHARA beam in the center of telescope by adjusting beamsplitter, retro, and mirror. Third, overlap the CHARA beam with MIRC light by moving XYZ axis through FE gui.

Be care when looking into the telscope, reduce the laser or waring a goggles.

May 9th

1. change the fiber on luminous stage 4 shoot laser into MIRC vgroove. Moving XYZ axises to overlap with CHARA beam using the method above. then change to new infrared fiber, and align again. Hopefully the best positions are close

2. mount luminous stages 5 and 6 shoot laser into MIRC vgroove, and move the pickoff mirror to overlap with CHARA beam. Then change to the MIRC infrared fiber, and do this again by moving XYZ of luminous stages.

By now, we have six infrared fiber plugged in and well focused, and roughly aligned with CHARA beam.

May 10th

1. assemble new MIRC hardware pieces Only assemble the MIRC parts: MIRC lens array and beamsplitter and spherical mirror. With all the above steps now MIRC luminous stages are well aligned with CHARA beam, but it drifts. So ones needs to redo the aligned a little using the method above to get most light through.

With CHARA laser on, one should see light come out of mirc vgroove. By directly looking at the bright fiber tips and the MIRC lens array, one can roughly match them. Then check the spot size for focus, and rotate the lens array to make sure the spots are vertical. Then move the whole stage so that the light bounce off the spherical mirror goes through black dot on the target, doublet and camera.

We did this on beam 3 and 4, which are the furthest two. We see beam 4 light on camera with the whole detector view, and we don't see beam 3. The new RTschedule doesn't work with the whole detect mode, need to be fixed. We run the old MIRC system and astropci, but FE has some problem with the whole mode, need to be fixed.

May 11th

Tried to figure out the new MIRC system problem: segmentation error when configuring the whole detector. But failed. I have a feeling that it has something to do with the data type, because the index could exceed the limit and become some unexpected number. Such that there is an memory leak.

1. figured out the FE problem. The code is right, it is just the row/col offsets apply to the four quadrants so that if we are using 252 X 252, the maximum offset will be 2.

Meanwhile I spent some time on PAVO alignment and observing for the whole night.

May 12th

Find fiber position for beam 4, 5 and 6. I used old MIRC system to monitor the whole detector, using old fiberexplorer method. Their spot sizes are similar, but not over lapped on detector.

I also tried to find beam 1 fiber position using the same method, but no success. I will try again tomorrow.

May 13th

find fiber positions for beam 1,2,3. I used old mirc system and old fiberexplorer method. The camera configuration is rows = 252 cols= 252 row off=2 col off =2 Nreads=5 number of frames=100 frames per reset=100 cohere coadds=10 number ps coadds=15

I also find a way to shoot laser backwards without taking off anything. I find a mirrow in cabinet 8 from MIRC cabinet, and place it at the position where the prism is, and place the real laser near it.