With Theo on the gondola, it’s time to start scanning. That is, after all, what we’re supposed to be able to do. As a telescope. The first thing to scan is a calibration source, mapping out Spider’s beams (how each detector sees a point source).
Sun shields in the highbay
Getting antenna cables routed
Natalie routes her GPS cables
Sean and Johanna on the cherry picker
Which is out tool of choice for accessing Theo on the gondola
Backing in
Carefully
Setting up the beam map source
Holding it up really high is the cherry picker's other purpose
Fully extended
Spider seeing light
With two telescopes open
Beam mapping
The source
A black board for the star camera to look at, and the thermal source on the right
Scanning with all five telescopes
Sun sensor, with aritificial sun
Just to make the highby a little hotter, on a hot day with the big door open
Watching science happen
Detector timestreams as they observe the source. Good watching
Lorenzo repaired the espresso machine (since rebroken...)
Because beam mapping involves a lot of waiting
Mapping at night
You can see the orange glow of the thermal source
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