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

Abstract

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 2-m 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 microns. The diffraction-limited optical system provides a resolution of 30" at 250 microns. The pointing system enables raster-like scans with a positional accuracy of ~30", reconstructed to better than 5" rms in post-flight 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.

SPIE Conference Proceedings

References in corpus (33)

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• Magnetically Aligned Velocity Anisotropy in the Taurus Molecular Cloud
• BLAST: Correlations in the Cosmic Far-Infrared Background at 250, 350, and 500 microns Reveal Clustering of Star-Forming Galaxies
• The VLA 1.4GHz Survey of the Extended Chandra Deep Field South: First Data Release
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• SANEPIC: A Map-Making Method for Timestream Data From Large Arrays
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• Statistical Assessment of Shapes and Magnetic Field Orientations in Molecular Clouds through Polarization Observations
• A Millimeter-Wave Achromatic Half Wave Plate
• Temperature Profiles and the Effect of AGN on Submillimeter Emission from BLAST Observations of Resolved Galaxies
• Simulations of polarized dust emission
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Cited by in corpus (8)

• BLAST: The Mass Function, Lifetimes, and Properties of Intermediate Mass Cores from a 50 Square Degree Submillimeter Galactic Survey in Vela (l = ~265)
• BLAST: A Far-Infrared Measurement of the History of Star Formation
• Astronomy in Antarctica
• The Next Generation BLAST Experiment
• The balloon-borne large-aperture submillimeter telescope for polarimetry: BLAST-Pol
• A cryogenic waveplate rotator for polarimetry at mm and sub-mm wavelengths
• Probing the cold magnetized Universe with SPICA-POL (B-BOP)
• Half-wave Plates for the Spider Cosmic Microwave Background Polarimeter