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BLAST, Jaspaul, Barth and Marco, early on in the reconstruction
phase.
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Our 5 lb bag of jolly ranchers, having safely made the trip from
Palestine, Texas.
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The view from our highbay door, across the launch pad, on an overcast
day.
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A bird's eye view of the highbay. Mark and Jeff with the cryostat in
the foreground, Marco and Enzo with the gondola in the background, and
Marie way in the back corner checking out the star cameras.
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Greg tightens bolts on the sun shield frame pivot shelf.
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A view of the inside of the optics box, with all 3 detector arrays
(the gold-coloured "boxes"), together for the first time!
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Enzo and Barth, while measuring the alignment of the inner frame,
demonstrate one of BLAST's most important maxims: Safety
Third.
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A view of the telescope with primary and secondary mirrors just
attached. More precarious stacking of objects.
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Mark gets ready to mount the star cameras.
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Both cameras now mounted. The white tubes are fiberglass baffles to
keep stray light off of the cameras, housed inside the aluminum cans
behind the baffles. Also note that the primary mirror is now wearing
its safety poncho, constructed from hot water heater insulation.
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Pointing at the sky for the first time (in Kiruna). Before looking at
stars, though, we performed a experiment to measure the alignment
between the telescope and the star cameras. A laser was mounted
through the hole in the secondary. Our plan was to aim the laser at a
hill and hope to see a reflection (off the snow or a satellite dish),
but the laser proved to be too weak. Instead, Mark, Jeff, and Jaspaul
drove up to the hill and looked back towards the highbay. They could
see the diverged beam (apparently ~1.5 metres in diameter), and shone
a flashlight back towards us, which we detected with the star
cameras. A succesful measurement!
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A pretty moon rise over the launch pad.
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Leak testing the Helium 4 pot in the (open) cryostat.
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Babushka BLAST.
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Mission control.
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Jeff and Mark tying down the heat strap (piece of copper that runs
from the fridge to the detector arrays to cool them down). We had seen
vibrations in earlier tests that we thought might be due to the strap
flopping around.
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Mark, Jeff, Matt, and Greg screw down the outer radiation shield.
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BIG Wasa crackers. (Bananas for scale.)
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Marco wonders if a larger ping pong paddle might improve his play.
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