We have developed two redundant daytime star cameras to provide the fine pointing solution for the balloon-borne submillimeter telescope, BLAST. The cameras are capable of providing a reconstructed pointing solution with an absolute accuracy < 5 arcseconds. They are sensitive to stars down to magnitudes ~ 9 in daytime float conditions. Each camera combines a 1 megapixel CCD with a 200 mm f/2 lens to image a 2 degree x 2.5 degree field of the sky. The instruments are autonomous. An internal computer controls the temperature, adjusts the focus, and determines a real-time pointing solution at 1 Hz. The mechanical details and flight performance of these instruments are presented.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/0605039,
title = {BLAST Autonomous Daytime Star Cameras},
author = {Marie Rex and Edward Chapin and Mark J. Devlin and Joshua Gundersen and Jeff Klein and Enzo Pascale and Donald Wiebe},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/0605039},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
8 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. To be published in conference proceedings for the "Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy" part of the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation Symposium that will be held 24-31 May 2006 in Orlando, FL