Beyond The Blur

219 Pages·2013·42.6 MB·English

by  Shriharsh P. Tendulkar

Beyond the Blur
Construction and Characterization of the
First Autonomous AO System
and
An AO Survey of Magnetar Proper Motions
A Thesis by
Shriharsh Prakash Tendulkar
Advisor
Prof. Shrinivas R. Kulkarni
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
for the Degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
California Institute of Technology
Pasadena, California
2014
(Defended August 26, 2013)
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(cid:13)c 2014
Shriharsh Prakash Tendulkar
All Rights Reserved
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Acknowledgments
As a child, I had always heard of Caltech as the Mecca of sciences, a place where giants like
Feynman, Gell-Mann and Zwicky (in alphabetical order) roamed. It has been my greatest
fortune to work at Caltech among such intellectual peers. My work over the past four
years was advised by two incredible advisors: Shri Kulkarni and Christoph Baranec. In
his inimitable flair, Shri provided the ‘big-picture’ advice, the sharp scientific guidance, the
patientyetfrankappraisalandcriticalfeedback. Hetaughtmetothinkcriticallyandtolook
atthebig-picturewithoutimmediatelygettingboggeddowninminordetails. Christoph, as
an expert in AO, taught me all I know about optical engineering and design and practical
optical work, mostly in the COO laboratory and often during long drives to and from
Palomar in his station wagon (listening to the interminable trance music). From him, I
learnt the importance of the minutiae, the importance of considering all possible details
before committing a hardware design and the importance of maintaining documentation as
a project progresses.
On the Robo-AO project, many thanks are due to Reed Riddle and Nicholas Law for
all the excellent discussions and work together (while maintaining patience through my
mistakes). I would like to thank our partners at IUCAA, Ramprakash, for his advice and
mentorship when I was a young graduate student just beginning work, and Mahesh Burse
and Hillol Das for their help on Robo-AO.
It has been enjoyable to work with Lynne Hillenbrand on pre-main-sequence stars. The
vastness of her knowledge of stars and everything people know about them never ceases to
amaze me. I look forward to continue the work through the future.
IthasbeenapleasuretospendlongobservingrunsatPalomarbecauseoftheamazingly
dedicated staff. None of this work would have been possible without their support. Special
warm thanks to Dipali Crosse who makes a Palomar trip just like homecoming, pampering
us with delicious food and stern warnings to eat our proteins. The observatory crew: Steve
Kunzman, Mike Doyle, Greg van Idsinga, Bruce Baker, Drew Roderick helped countless
times with the Robo-AO installation and removal and for many machining requests. John
Henning and Kevin Rykoski were the quick and patient responders to my multitude of
computer and electronics requests, often made in the middle of the night. Jean Mueller and
KajsaPefferprovidedgreathelpandguidanceduringmy200-inchobservingruns. AtCOO,
Richard Dekany kept his office open for anytime advice and suggestions. Ernest Croner,
Jason Fucik and others helped out with my laboratory setups.
I thank Brian Cameron for his support on precision astrometry and our magnetar work
through his busy schedule. The Keck support astronomers: Marc Kassis, Hien Tran, Luca
Rizzi and Jim Lyke who helped through all the NIRC2 nights, some beautiful and some
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marred with software bugs were of great help in the magnetar proper motion survey.
IbelieveoneofthegreatestreasonsforCaltech’ssuccessistheextremelydedicatedstaff
who would go far out of their way to accomodate our whimsy requests: Patrick, Anu and
Jose ran an amazing computer setup, responding to software SOS emails in the middle of
the night. The administrators Gita, Gina, Althea, Bronagh, Anna-Marie, Pam and Judith
who helped out at each and every step of the way with a cheerful smile. I must specially
thank Efrain Hernandez for all the wonderful discussions in the corridors and the sunny
encouragement.
I’ve had the greatest fun discussing everything from quantum chromodynamics to travel
and rock-climbing and recipes with a wonderful group of colleagues over the past five years.
Swarnima, Ryan and Dmitiry, my classmates, my seniors: Elisabeth, Walter, Laura, Joey,
Gwen, Drew, Matthew, Krzysztof, Thiago, Karin and my juniors: Kunal, Matt, Ke, Sebas-
tian, Jackie, Michael, Tejaswi, Ben, John, Melodie, Mislav, Antonija, Allison and others.
You guys and girls are AWESOME!
My extended family away from home has been my very close circle of friends who have
always been around to support, encourage, cheer up and when necessary scold: In approx-
imate order of decreasing senescence and uniformly high awesomeness, they are: Ashish,
Anu, Vijay, Sowmya, Varun, Pinkesh, Zeeshan, Naresh, Mansi, Setu, Prabha, Krishna,
Arundhati, Samir, JK, Sushree, Ravi Teja.
To my ‘brothers’: Varun, Pinkesh and Abhilash and ‘sisters’: Swarnima and Ishwari, I
have no words to describe how much your support has meant to me. Thank you for bearing
with my bad, bad jokes, for feeding me when I was hungry and cranky and taking me to
the mountains when I was still crankier.
Through many years of our friendship, Kartiki has been a pillar of support by my side;
celebrating success and consoling failure.
And most importantly, I’m immensely grateful to my parents Jyotsna and Prakash and
my sister Mallika who have supported me fully in everything that I did.
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To my parents and my sister,
who brought me up to be who I am.
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The road to wisdom? — Well, its plain
and simple to express:
Err and err and err again
but less and less and less.
—Piet Hein
I thought I knew I knew it all,
But now I must confess,
The more I know I know I know,
I know I know the less.
—Anon
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