Dr. Amy Lowitz

Out-of-context Quote of the Day: "Did you make any more long necked creatures today? Any more beverages named after members of your family?"

I did once manage to update Wheezy all the way to Bullseye on a live production machine, albeit not one doing super critical things. (I had just inherited it; I did not neglect it like that, for the record 😅). It did come out fine, shockingly. This time it was just my own ancient, disused netbook.

I gave up pretty fast 😅

photo of a computer screen showing an update in progress from Ubuntu 12.04 to 14.04

What do we think the probability is that I can get this thing all the way to 24.04? 😅🤣

about 12 dozen small, white-ish football-shaped cookies stacked on a cooling rack

A totally normal number of cookies (unrelated to the totally normal number of power supplies I posted the other day, I swear).

It's part of a RF switch matrix, so yes there are some splitters on there, but also some switches and amps. Routing signals from lots of different places to either test equipment or to where they normally go.

Casually hogging every 50 ohm termination in the lab. #justRFthings 🧪🔭

a wooden table is covered with many identical partly-assembled electronics boxes.

We're in production mode, y'all. These will be used to track the MASER stability at most of the Event Horizon Telescope sites. 🧪🔭🕕

15 small power supplies stacked up on a wooden table. They are partially wired up and there are little piles of additional wires in the foreground and background.

A totally normal number of power supplies:

A 10 m diameter radio telescope, with some pine trees and snowy ground in the foreground.

It seems this place is getting busy again, so maybe I'll try out spending some time here again.

Anyway, as proof(?) I did some science in the last 11mo since my last post, here's the SMT on Mt Graham from when I was up there for the EHT (Event Horizon Telescope) campaign in April.

A large electronics box with the lid off

Two plywood crates full of boxes

Yesterday's activity: replace some shunt resistors in the EHT recorders, and then my crates of disk modules for the SPT 2024 EHT campaign arrived, so I unpacked all of the disks and installed them in the recorders, ready for April. 🔭🇦🇶📡🕳️🌌

They were on a very tight schedule, so SPT and EHT combined only got 5 minutes to talk, and no time for questions. Unfortunately these visits are always quite crammed.

Today I spoke about EHT (Event Horizon Telescope) to some members of Congress and staffers who came to visit us at Pole and learn about the science we do here. 🔭🇦🇶🕳️🌌

Me standing with a frosty face in front of the South Pole Telescope.

Made it to Pole! I'm here to do some work on the South Pole Telescope for the Event Horizon Telescope. 🔭🇦🇶📡🌌🕳️

We're on the plane! Here we gooooo!

Haven't even left the hotel yet and we're already on a 2h delay for our ice flight today.

Trying on my loaner cold weather gear a couple days ago in Christchurch. Hopefully we're heading to McMurdo today and then Pole tomorrow (but probably the weather and airplane maintenance gods have other plans).

Most of that pile is wool, so warmer than it may appear, but the big stuff (parka, insulated overalls, etc) are provided by the US Antarctic Program; I will pick up loaners when I get to Christchurch.

A corner on the floor with somewhat messy piles of clothes and equipment, not yet packed into a suitcase.

And so begins another trip to the South Pole (with chaotic packing the night before). 🇦🇶🔭📡🌌🕳️

I suspect it's the same but I'm not 100% sure. So I guess it's tied for largest with the other GMT mirrors and also with the LBT mirrors.

Here's a 6.5 m mirror for a different project. It was cast in 2019 and is now being polished.

Last weekend I got to visit the Mirror Lab at the University of Arizona to see the casting of the 7th mirror for the GMT. Tied with the other 6 GMT mirrors, it's the largest monolithic mirror ever cast, at 8.4m. That whole round structure is a spinning furnace, and it's about 1200°C inside. 🔭

Wanna view the eclipse and have literally no supplies? You can make a pinhole camera with just your hand! (hold your hand so just a tiny dot of light goes through). 🔭

Got my flu shot today! 💉 Have you scheduled yours yet?

Photo of a computer screen showing a SolidWorks window with several waveguide components partially assembled

SolidWorks: like Legos for grown-ups.

Photo shows a 12m diameter radio telescope dish inside a white fabric dome.

Telescoooooooope! Went up to the Kitt Peak 12m on Thursday to take care of some EHT maintenance odds and ends.

Hellooo Blueverse(?), I'm a physicist who builds telescopes. Sometimes I post about my work, which sometimes involves traveling to telescopes in cool places like Antarctica, and sometimes I post about whatever unrelated random thing pops into my head.