A Measurement of the Angular Power Spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background with a Long Duration Balloon-borne Receiver

• Main Author: Brendan P. Crill
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: 2001
• Subjects: Antarctic; McMurdo Station; The Antarctic; Antarc*; Antarctica
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.634.8422; http://thesis.library.caltech.edu/3180/1/bpc_thesis.pdf

iii This thesis describes Boomerang; a balloon-borne telescope and receiver designed to map the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) at a resolution of 10 0 from the Long Duration Balloon (LDB) platform. The millimeter-wave receiver employs new technology in bolometers, readout electronics, cold re-imaging optics, millimeter-wave lters, and cryogenics to obtain high sensitivity to CMB anisotropy. Sixteen detectors observe in 4 spectral bands centered at 90, 150, 240 and 400 GHz. The wide frequency coverage, the long ight duration, the optical design and the observing strategy all provide strong rejection of systematic eects. We report the in- ight performance of the instrument during a short test ight from Palestine, Texas, that mapped 230 square degrees and during a 10.5 day stratospheric balloon ight launched from McMurdo Station, Antarctica, that mapped 2000 square degrees of the sky. The Antarctic data yielded a measurement of the angular