Day 24, 4/18/09 -- Hot at any wavelength

Today was a productive day here at the high bay. The most noticeable change to the gondola is that it's now received some new hardware -- Jeff and I spent most of the day building up the rollbar for the primary mirror. Robin from CSBF spent the day lightweighting some additional hardware for the triangle support structure (this probably means nothing to those who don't know the construction of the gondola...but whatever, I'm leaving it in), and Michele got started on cleaning up and installing those parts once we got them back.

Joy and Daniel have been working the late shift lately, taking the advantage of the night to do scan tests with the star camera. Because we still have cold detectors, Dan started doing some of our baseline calibration tests (optical efficiency, rough beam checks, etc). The McGilligans have been probably writing detector tuning algorithms or something like that. What the hell do I know?

The big news today was our ice cream party -- Britt's husband arranged with the local grocery store to provide us with a veritable cornucopia of ice creams. Five or six different flavors and a variety of toppings, all brought to the high bay and set up by Dave, the owner of Dave's Venture Foods and former mayor of Fort Sumner. It was a great way to take a short break in the afternoon and enjoy some ice cream and the great weather.

It's currently about 11:15PM and Joy, Daniel, and I are still in the high bay. I'm cycling fridges so detectors will be ready to use in the morning, and the kids are doing more scan tests.

Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/asad137/EBEXInNewMexico041809#
Also, be sure to check out a couple pictures that Milligan took yesterday that I posted in that day's album.