The balloon-borne large-aperture submillimeter telescope for polarimetry: BLAST-Pol
Abstract
The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLAST-Pol) is a suborbital mapping experiment designed to study the role played by magnetic fields in the star formation process. BLAST-Pol is the reconstructed BLAST telescope, with the addition of linear polarization capability. Using a 1.8 m Cassegrain telescope, BLAST-Pol images the sky onto a focal plane that consists of 280 bolometric detectors in three arrays, observing simultaneously at 250, 350, and 500 um. The diffraction-limited optical system provides a resolution of 30'' at 250 um. The polarimeter consists of photolithographic polarizing grids mounted in front of each bolometer/detector array. A rotating 4 K achromatic half-wave plate provides additional polarization modulation. With its unprecedented mapping speed and resolution, BLAST-Pol will produce three-color polarization maps for a large number of molecular clouds. The instrument provides a much needed bridge in spatial coverage between larger-scale, coarse resolution surveys and narrow field of view, and high resolution observations of substructure within molecular cloud cores. The first science flight will be from McMurdo Station, Antarctica in December 2010.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1007.1390,
title = {The balloon-borne large-aperture submillimeter telescope for polarimetry: BLAST-Pol},
author = {Laura M. Fissel and Peter A. R. Ade and Francesco E. Angile and Steven J. Benton and Edward L. Chapin and Mark J. Devlin and Natalie N. Gandilo and Joshua O. Gundersen and Peter C. Hargrave and David H. Hughes and Jeffrey Klein and Andrei L. Korotkov and Galen Marsden and Tristan G. Matthews and Lorenzo Moncelsi and Tony K. Mroczkowski and C. Barth Netterfield and Giles Novak and Luca Olmi and Enzo Pascale and Giorgio Savini and Douglas Scott and Jamil A. Shariff and Juan Diego Soler and Nicholas E. Thomas and Matthew D. P. Truch and Carole E. Tucker and Gregory S. Tucker and Derek Ward-Thompson and Donald V. Wiebe},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1007.1390},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
14 pages, 9 figures Submitted to SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation Conference 2010