The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) 2006: Calibration and Flight Performance
Abstract
The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) operated successfully during a 250-hour flight over Antarctica in December 2006 (BLAST06). As part of the calibration and pointing procedures, the red hypergiant star VY CMa was observed and used as the primary calibrator. Details of the overall BLAST06 calibration procedure are discussed. The 1-sigma absolute calibration is accurate to 10, 12, and 13% at the 250, 350, and 500 micron bands, respectively. The errors are highly correlated between bands resulting in much lower error for the derived shape of the 250-500 micron continuum. The overall pointing error is <5" rms for the 36, 42, and 60" beams. The performance of the optics and pointing systems is discussed.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0904.1202,
title = {The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) 2006: Calibration and Flight Performance},
author = {Matthew D. P. Truch and Peter A. R. Ade and James J. Bock and Edward L. Chapin and Mark J. Devlin and Simon R. Dicker and Matthew Griffin and Joshua O. Gundersen and Mark Halpern and Peter C. Hargrave and David H. Hughes and Jeff Klein and Gaelen Marsden and Peter G. Martin and Philip Mauskopf and Lorenzo Moncelsi and Calvin B. Netterfield and Luca Olmi and Enzo Pascale and Guillaume Patanchon and Marie Rex and Douglas Scott and Christopher Semisch and Nicholas E. Thomas and Carole Tucker and Gregory S. Tucker and Marco P. Viero and Donald V. Wiebe},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0904.1202},
year = {2009}
}
Comments
Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Maps available at http://blastexperiment.info/