The observational and operational efficiency of the TIFR 1 meter balloon borne far infrared telescope has been improved by incorporating a multielement solid state optical photometer (SSOP) at the Cassegrain focus of the telescope. The SSOP is based on a 1-D linear photo diode array (PDA). The online and offline processing schemes of the PDA signals which have been developed, lead to improvement in the determination of absolute telescope aspect (∼ 0\farcm8), which is very crucial for carrying out the observations as well as offline analysis. The SSOP and its performance during a recent balloon flight are presented here.
@article{arxiv.astro-ph/9910213,
title = {Efficient absolute aspect determination of a balloon borne far infrared telescope using a solid state optical photometer},
author = {M. V. Naik and S. L. D'Costa and S. K. Ghosh and B. Mookerjea and D. K. Ojha and R. P. Verma},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:astro-ph/9910213},
year = {2009}
}