The Balloon-Borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope Observatory
Abstract
The BLAST Observatory is a proposed superpressure balloon-borne polarimeter designed for a future ultra-long duration balloon campaign from Wanaka, New Zealand. To maximize scientific output while staying within the stringent superpressure weight envelope, BLAST will feature new 1.8m off-axis optical system contained within a lightweight monocoque structure gondola. The payload will incorporate a 300L He cryogenic receiver which will cool 8,274 microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) to 100mK through the use of an adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator (ADR) in combination with a He sorption refrigerator all backed by a liquid helium pumped pot operating at 2K. The detector readout utilizes a new Xilinx RFSOC-based system which will run the next-generation of the BLAST-TNG KIDPy software. With this instrument we aim to answer outstanding questions about dust dynamics as well as provide community access to the polarized submillimeter sky made possible by high-altitude observing unrestricted by atmospheric transmission. The BLAST Observatory is designed for a minimum 31-day flight of which 70 will be dedicated to observations for BLAST scientific goals and the remaining 30 will be open to proposals from the wider astronomical community through a shared-risk proposals program.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2012.01376,
title = {The Balloon-Borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope Observatory},
author = {Ian Lowe and Gabriele Coppi and Peter A. R. Ade and Peter C. Ashton and Jason E. Austermann and James Beall and Susan Clark and Erin G. Cox and Mark J. Devlin and Simon Dicker and Bradley J. Dober and Valentina Fanfani and Laura M. Fissel and Nicholas Galitzki and Jiansong Gao and Brandon Hensley and Johannes Hubmayr and Steven Li and Zhi-Yun Li and Nathan P. Lourie and Peter G. Martin and Philip Mauskopf and Federico Nati and Giles Novak and Giampaolo Pisano and L. Javier Romualdez and Adrian Sinclair and Juan D. Soler and Carole Tucker and Michael Vissers and Jordan Wheeler and Paul A. Williams and Mario Zannoni},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2012.01376},
year = {2020}
}
Comments
Presented at SPIE Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes VIII, December 13-18, 2020