Temp Gun vs. Thermostat

[Lina]

Hello, everyone. I'm new to the forum and I'm also a new baby ball python owner so I've been going kind of crazy worrying. I apologize in advance that this post is long. I tried to include any information that you might find useful.

I set up his cage before he arrived on Tuesday with a heat pad under my 10 gallon terrarium and hooked that up to a thermostat. I set it to 93 degrees as I heard the warm spots are in the range of 88 - 96 degrees. The way I had seen thermostats set up in videos and read in the instructions of the one I got, was to put the probe inside the cage into the substrate. I learned later that this was a mistake. I then taped the probe on the underside of the terrarium to make contact with the heat pad. Wanting still to know what the temperature of the actual substrate was, I purchased a temp gun (thermostat still set to 93) and found that the middle of the warm spot in my ball python's hide was 100 degrees! I feel terrible. It's been about three days being like this and he spent the first day outside beside it. He spends more time on the cool side.

I went back to the drawing board and messed around with the thermostat and my temp gun. Here are the results:

Thermostat set to 87, turns on again at 85
Trial 1:
On thermostat 85 degrees, my temp gun read 88-89 in the general/middle area of the hide with 90-91 in the back.
At 87 degrees, gun read 90-91 with 89 degrees where the inside edges of the hide are. Should I concern myself with the edges?
Trial 2 was the same but the edges being 1 degree cooler.

Thermostat set to 88, turns on again at 86
Trial 1:Thermostat 86, temp gun 89-90 in middle area. Edges 88.
Thermostat 88, temp gun 92 - 94.
Trial 2:At 86, gun 90-92.
At 88, gun 90 - 93.

So should I trust my temp gun over my thermostat? They are both new. Shouldn't the temperature be hotter outside on the heat pad rather than inside on the substrate? Is it because of the glass? The thermostat probe is touching the pad on its tip instead of laying completely flat on it, so maybe this is why it's reading the way it is? I don't know if this makes a difference but I also have a paper towel underneath the substrate which I saw was recommended here in case a ball python digs to the glass. Currently, I have the thermostat set to 88. Inside the hide, temp gun still reads in the 90-93 range.