Concepedia

Publication | Closed Access

A bolometric millimeter-wave system for observations of anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation on medium angular scales

DOI

33

Citations

0

References

1992

Year

M. L. Fischer, David C. Alsop, E. S. Cheng, A. C. Clapp, D. A. Cottingham, J. O. Gundersen, T. Koch, E. Kreysa, P. R. Meinhold, A. E. Lange,
The Astrophysical Journal

Abstract

We report the performance of a bolometric system designed to measure the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation on angular scales from 0.3^deg^ to 3^deg^, The system represents a collaborative effort combining a low-background 1 m diameter balloon- borne telescope with new multimode feed optics, a beam modulation mechanism with high stability, and a four channel bolometric receiver with passbands centered near frequencies of 3(90), 6(180), 9(270), and 12(360) cm^-1^(GHz). The telescope has been flown three times with the bolometric receiver and has demonstrated detector noise limited performance capable of reaching sensitivity levels of {DELTA}T/T_CMB_~ 10^-5^ with detectors operated at T = 0.3 K.