The Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for polarization: BLAST-pol

• Published in: SPIE Proceedings, Millimeter and Submillimeter Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy IV
• Main Authors: Marsden, G., Bock, J. J.
• Other Authors: Duncan, William D., Holland, Wayne S., Withington, Stafford, Zmuidzinas, Jonas
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) 2008
• Subjects: submillimeter — stars: formation — instrumentation: miscellaneous — balloons — polarization; Arctic; Canada; Milky Way; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1117/12.788413

The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) is a sub-orbital experiment designed to study the process of star formation in local galaxies (including the Milky Way) and in galaxies at cosmological distances. Using a 2m Cassegrain telescope, BLAST images the sky onto a focal plane, which consists of 270 bolometric detectors split between three arrays, observing simultaneously in 30% wide bands, centered at 250, 350, and 500 μm. The diffraction-limited optical system provides a resolution of 30" at 250 μm. The pointing system enables raster-like scans with a positional accuracy of ~30", reconstructed to better than 5" rms in postflight analysis. BLAST had two successful flights, from the Arctic in 2005, and from Antarctica in 2006, which provided the first high-resolution and large-area (~0.8−200 deg^2) submillimeter surveys at these wavelengths. As a pathfinder for the SPIRE instrument on Herschel, BLAST shares with the ESA satellite similar focal plane technology and scientific motivation. A third flight in 2009 will see the instrument modified to be polarization-sensitive (BLAST-pol). With its unprecedented mapping speed and resolution, BLAST-pol will provide insights into Galactic star-forming nurseries, and give the necessary link between the larger, coarse resolution surveys and the narrow, resolved observations of star-forming structures from space and ground based instruments being commissioned in the next 5 years. © 2008 Society of Photo-optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). The BLAST collaboration acknowledges the support of NASA through grant numbers NAG5-12785, NAG5-13301 and NNGO-6GI11G, the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC), Canada's Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC), the Canada Foundation for Innovation, the Ontario Innovation Trust, the Puerto Rico Space Grant Consortium, the Fondo Istitucional para la Investigacion of the University of Puerto Rico, and the National Science Foundation Office of ...