Celebrating PI Day in the lab Thanks to @tweedybirdnorth for baking a delicious maple sugar pie. #fb

Robin caught the first light of our new 1000mJ green beam into the night sky. Check it out here:

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Long, long day (week!) but we got some light up into the sky! 1000 mJ @ 30 Hz (30 W) of green at 532 from our new Litron YAG. Well done Crows!

So what y'all doing now? We're gratuitously dumping 1000mJ of green into the sky!!!!!!! It works! #fb

Getting our green on at the PCL. Day 1 of the laser install. Check out first light here:

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Starting to get some green light out of the new laser. This first flash of green was at "low" power (390 mW of green at 30 Hz). Check the afterglow on the camera, I though I burned out my phone's retinal display (more realistic, right, you are supposed to have a hole in your retina!).

Why are we so happy? We didn’t tip over a 1 ton laser table! #westernu

The profound-ess problem of the day: how to move our 1 ton laser table a couple feet forward as part of the new laser install? After MUCH looking around town, including every gadget AB Rental had to offer we founds some dollies at Canadian Tire made for moving a disabled car around. We were concerned the feet at the bottom of the table would punch right through them, but they held and we got the table in place in anticipation of Monday’s install. Much thanks to Peter D who is an expert with the jack! Amazing how much weight that 4x4 can bear.

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Our New Nd:YAG laser has arrived! 1000 mJ/pulse @ 30Hz, 532 nm #westernu

Ohhh it has been a LOOONNNGGGG wait but the PCL has taken a big step towards getting back in action. Our new laser was trucked in today and Emily and Robin were there to meet it. Fortunately for them so were Caroline from the Western Environmental Field Station and several real nice folks from the ICFAR lab with strong backs and a forklift. As you can see in the picture they were certainly needed. I thought 2 people would be able to lift the laser head, but it was hard to get it on the table with 5! We are hoping to get it operational Monday and have our fingers crossed it will robustly meet its spec of 1000 mJ/pulse at 30 Hz in the green.

More to follow!

Bob

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Discovery's Final Launch Viewed From a Commercial Jet: how cool! Note how strongly stratified the lower atmosphere is.

via youtube.com

As an atmospheric physicist it is neat to see (via the exhaust trail) how generally stratified the atmosphere was for that launch, must have been a relatively smooth ride. Best of luck to the crew on their mission. Thanks to former student VL for sending me this!