The Next Generation BLAST Experiment
Abstract
The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol) was a suborbital experiment designed to map magnetic fields in order to study their role in star formation processes. BLASTPol made detailed polarization maps of a number of molecular clouds during its successful flights from Antarctica in 2010 and 2012. We present the next-generation BLASTPol instrument (BLAST-TNG) that will build off the success of the previous experiment and continue its role as a unique instrument and a test bed for new technologies. With a 16-fold increase in mapping speed, BLAST-TNG will make larger and deeper maps. Major improvements include a 2.5 m carbon fiber mirror that is 40% wider than the BLASTPol mirror and ~3000 polarization sensitive detectors. BLAST-TNG will observe in three bands at 250, 350, and 500 microns. The telescope will serve as a pathfinder project for microwave kinetic inductance detector (MKID) technology, as applied to feedhorn coupled submillimeter detector arrays. The liquid helium cooled cryostat will have a 28-day hold time and will utilize a closed-cycle He refrigerator to cool the detector arrays to 270 mK. This will enable a detailed mapping of more targets with higher polarization resolution than any other submillimeter experiment to date. BLAST-TNG will also be the first balloon-borne telescope to offer shared risk observing time to the community. This paper outlines the motivation for the project and the instrumental design.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1409.7084,
title = {The Next Generation BLAST Experiment},
author = {Nicholas Galitzki and Peter A. R. Ade and Francesco E. Angilè and Peter Ashton and James A. Beall and Dan Becker and Kristi J. Bradford and George Che and Hsiao-Mei Cho and Mark J. Devlin and Bradley J. Dober and Laura M. Fissel and Yasuo Fukui and Jiansong Gao and Christopher E. Groppi and Seth Hillbrand and Gene C. Hilton and Johannes Hubmayr and Kent D. Irwin and Jeffrey Klein and Jeff Van Lanen and Dale Li and Zhi-Yun Li and Nathan P. Lourie and Hamdi Mani and Peter G. Martin and Philip Mauskopf and Fumitaka Nakamura and Giles Novak and David P. Pappas and Enzo Pascale and Giampaolo Pisano and Fabio P. Santos and Giorgio Savini and Douglas Scott and Sara Stanchfield and Carole Tucker and Joel N. Ullom and Matthew Underhill and Michael R. Vissers and Derek Ward-Thompson},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1409.7084},
year = {2014}
}