As OSIRIS-REx speeds away from Earth, it’s been turning on and testing out its various engineering functions and science instruments. My favorite proof of a happy instrument is data, especially camera data, so I’ve really been enjoying the series of “first light” images that OSIRIS-REx has been sharing over the past few weeks.

The first such image was this one, from the star tracker. Star trackers help a spacecraft understand its orientation in space, by shooting photos of the stellar background and comparing them to an onboard star catalog. With help from astrometry.net I can tell you that this particular bit of the sky lies deep in the southern hemisphere and includes Beta and Gamma Sculptoris.