Day 43, 7/9/2012 -- Stormy weather

Last night, Kyle stayed in the high bay overnight to make sure the fridge cycle went off without any issues -- and it's a good thing too, because due to some files not having been updated correctly, the detectors wouldn't have been tuned. Because of Kyle's vigilance, he was able to tune the detectors by hand and put us in a good position this morning to take some measurements.

The goal for today was to take some more spectral measurements at 250 and 410GHz. I started at 410, since that's how the spectrometer was set up already, but was having no luck finding the signal. It was only later, after switching the hardware for 250 GHz measurements, that I had the grating in completely the wrong position, so it's no wonder I didn't see anything. Still, the 250GHz measurements were on track for going much more smoothly (we found a detector with a whopping big signal)...and then I broke the motor for the chopper wheel. After a frantic bit of hunting around for the replacement motors, we finally were able to take some data.

We had a pretty massive downpour today, which caused the power to go out -- but luckily, we now have the whole bolo system running off of a UPS, so we didn't lose detector biases and were able to continue with measurements without much delay. Awesome!

On the logistical front, today we had a long meeting trying to figure out our schedule for the rest of the integration -- mostly, how long do we keep doing these spectral measurements before putting the cryostat on the gondola. Right now it looks like we have just a couple more days to wrap up these measurements.

On a blogistical note, it's getting harder for me to know of who all is doing what around the high bay, especially as there are few visible changes (the gondola's mostly put together and the receiver looks the same as always), and people are now working different schedules to try and make the most efficient use of time. Thus it's hard to keep track of what's going on without wandering around and asking people -- which is tough when I've got work to do! So of course all of my updates focus on receiver stuff since that's what I'm working most directly on. C'est la vie.

Finally, we had another collaboration member join us -- Amber, the EBEX Co-I from Columbia, arrived with her newborn baby and husband in tow.

Pictures:
https://picasaweb.google.com/104253244018605213307/EBEXInPalestine20120709