Tatum was born and raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and graduated from Discovery Canyon Campus High School. At a young age, Tatum discovered a passion for art and space, which fueled her curiosity to explore the unknown. Her rooted interests and ancestral ties to the Hawaiian Islands led her to pursue a B.S. in Astrophysics and a B.A. in Information & Computer Sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. So far, she has engaged in two research projects involving machine learning and galaxy merger simulations. Post-graduation, Tatum plans on chasing her new interest in instrumentation in grad school or through an immediate job opportunity. In her free time, Tatum enjoys creating art, photography, surfing, free diving, and looking for shells.
Home Island: Maui
High School: Discovery Canyon Campus High School
Institution when accepted: University of Hawaii at Manoa
Project Site: W. M. Keck Observatory: Keck, Waimea, Big Island HI
Mentor: Charlotte Guthery
Project Title: Rebuilding the Calibration Setup Process for a High-Order Deformable Mirror
Abstract:
The W.M. Keck Observatory’s adaptive optics (AO) system was first built with a 349-actuator deformable mirror (DM) controlled by a relatively straightforward software system. Over 25 years of hardware upgrades and improvements, the AO system has become increasingly complex. Currently, a team of scientists and engineers are working to comprehensively rebuild the AO software in preparation for the installation of a new 2900-actuator DM on Keck II, part of the High-order Advanced Keck Adaptive Optics (HAKA) project. As part of this effort, this project aims to update the calibration set-up software for the current 349-actuator DM and design it to be easily adjustable to the new HAKA DM. The existing calibration setup graphical user interface (GUI) contains seven buttons that perform a series of calibration tasks on the AO bench during the daytime. Using Python and modular programming techniques, we build high-level functions (one for each button) that call low and mid-level functions from libraries. Once the new HAKA DM arrives, only the low-level functions will be changed, while the high-level functions will remain consistent. This strategy improves code efficiency, organization, and quality. In addition, new GUIs will be created to replace the current ones.