Preliminary scanning strategy analysis for the LSPE-STRIP instrument

• Published in: Millimeter, Submillimeter, and Far-Infrared Detectors and Instrumentation for Astronomy IX
• Main Authors: Incardona, Federico, Benetti, Marco, Bersanelli, Marco, Franceschet, Cristian, Maino, Davide, Mennella, Aniello, Realini, Sabrina, Tomasi, Maurizio
• Other Authors: J. Zmuidzina, J.-R. Gao, F. Incardona, M. Benetti, M. Bersanelli, C. Franceschet, D. Maino, A. Mennella, S. Realini, M. Tomasi
• Format: Book Part
• Language: English
• Published: SPIE 2018
• Subjects: CMB polarization; foreground; Ground-based telescope; large angular scale; multi-frequency; Northern Hemisphere; polarimetry; scanning strategy; Electronic; Optical and Magnetic Material; Condensed Matter Physic; Computer Science Applications1707 Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition; Applied Mathematic; Electrical and Electronic Engineering; Settore FIS/05 - Astronomia e Astrofisica; Arctic; North Pole
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2434/586760; https://doi.org/10.1117/12.2315005

We present a preliminary study of the sky scanning strategy for the LSPE-STRIP instrument, a ground-based telescope that will be installed at the Teide Observatory (Tenerife, Canary Islands) in early 2019 and will observe the polarized emission of about 25% of the sky in the Northern Hemisphere at 43 and 95 GHz. The same sky portion will be observed at 140, 220 and 240 GHz by LSPE-SWIPE, a stratospheric balloon scheduled for a long-duration flight around the North Pole during the Arctic winter of 2019/2020. The combination of data from the two instruments aims at constraining the tensor-to-scalar ratio down to r ∼ 0.03. In our paper we discuss the main scanning strategy requirements (overlap with SWIPE coverage, sensitivity distribution, observation of calibration sources) and show how we obtain a trade-off by spinning the telescope around the azimuth axis with constant elevation and angular velocity. The combination of the telescope motion with the Earth rotation will guarantee the access to the large angular scales. We will observe periodically the Crab Nebula as well as the Perseus molecular cloud. The Crab is one of the best known polarized sources in the sky and it will be observed for calibration purposes. The second one is a source of Anomalous Microwave Emission that could be characterized both in intensity and polarization.