Day 24, November 17, 2012 -- Hanging out

Today was devoted mostly to gondola work. We had excellent weather which meant that we could take the gondola outside the high bay and do some tests that Chappy and Joy have been itching to do for a while. In the morning, we did a star camera test -- which should be quite surprising, given that it's always daylight down here! But it turns out that Sirius, the brightest star in the sky, is actually bright enough to be seen by our star cameras (which have very strong filters to cut out sky brightness) even from the ground here in Antarctica.

In the afternoon, the gondola once again went out, but this time with its back to the sun to do tests of the sun sensor which took most of the afternoon. During the rest of the day, helium fills continued as the cryostat continued to cool -- hopefully only one more day left of late night fills.

Pictures:

https://picasaweb.google.com/104253244018605213307/EBEXInAntarctica20121117