Things have settled down a bit. Gondola control is proceeding
smoothly, and we are cleary observing many interesting fields. The
most confusing thing at this point is keeping track of time. There are
at least five clocks I need to know: local time, since we are still in
contact with Esrange; Universal time, since TDRSS windows are given in
UT; BLAST's local sidereal time, the time adjusted to the sidereal day
and to BLAST's always-changing longitude; Pacific time, since I'm in
contact with family, friends, and colleagues at home; and, my own
personal clock, which although confusing, is at least stable, although
I'm a little late for bed tonight. Additionally, we are all on
different sleep cycles, so we must try to keep track of when people
will be coming back to the lab after sleeping. Matt, Marie and I share the
midnight to 5 pm shift — today was spent scheduling observations
and sending commands, and, while not monitoring data, starting to pack up the
highbay.
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Finally, we relax. Matt leaves Kiruna early on Friday morning, the
rest of us (Barth, Don, Ed, Marie and I) leave at 2pm. Barth has and
early flight out and stays at an airport hotel. The rest of us head
into the city. Ed has to leave fairly early Saturday morning, but the
rest of us have a few days to explore the city. We visit many museums
and walk around a lot. Stockholm is a very nice city and we
have great weather. See my panorama
gallery.
After a couple of days of tourism, we leave for
home Monday morning.
