Thermal design and performance of the balloon-borne large aperture submillimeter telescope for polarimetry BLASTPol
arXiv:1407.2670 · doi:10.1117/12.2055431
Abstract
We present the thermal model of the Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol). This instrument was successfully flown in two circumpolar flights from McMurdo, Antarctica in 2010 and 2012. During these two flights, BLASTPol obtained unprecedented information about the magnetic field in molecular clouds through the measurement of the polarized thermal emission of interstellar dust grains. The thermal design of the experiment addresses the stability and control of the payload necessary for this kind of measurement. We describe the thermal modeling of the payload including the sun-shielding strategy. We present the in-flight thermal performance of the instrument and compare the predictions of the model with the temperatures registered during the flight. We describe the difficulties of modeling the thermal behavior of the balloon-borne platform and establish landmarks that can be used in the design of future balloon-borne instruments.
arXiv comment18 pages, 11 figures. Presented at SPIE Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V, June 23, 2014. To be published in Proceedings of SPIE Volume 9145
References in corpus (5)
- Maps of Dust IR Emission for Use in Estimation of Reddening and CMBR Foregrounds
- Theory of Star Formation
- BOOMERANG: A Balloon-borne Millimeter Wave Telescope and Total Power Receiver for Mapping Anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background
- The BOOMERANG North America Instrument: a balloon-borne bolometric radiometer optimized for measurements of cosmic background radiation anisotropies from 0.3 to 4 degrees
- The balloon-borne large-aperture submillimeter telescope for polarimetry: BLAST-Pol