The BOOMERANG North America Instrument: a balloon-borne bolometric radiometer optimized for measurements of cosmic background radiation anisotropies from 0.3 to 4 degrees
astro-ph
/ Authors
F. Piacentini, P. A. R. Ade, R. Bathia, J. J. Bock, A. Boscaleri, P. Cardoni, B. P. Crill, P. de Bernardis, H. Del Castillo, G. de Troia
and 17 more authors
P. Farese, M. Giacometti, E. F. Hivon, V. V. Hristov, A. Iacoangeli, A. E. Lange, S. Masi, P. D. Mauskopf, L. Miglio, C. B. Netterfield, P. Palangio, E. Pascale, A. Raccanelli, S. Rao, G. Romeo, J. Ruhl, F. Scaramuzzi
/ Abstract
We describe the BOOMERANG North America (BNA) instrument, a balloon-borne bolometric radiometer designed to map the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation with 0.3 deg resolution over a significant portion of the sky. This receiver employs new technologies in bolometers, readout electronics, millimeter-wave optics and filters, cryogenics, scan and attitude reconstruction. All these subsystems are described in detail in this paper. The system has been fully calibrated in flight using a variety of techniques which are described and compared. It has been able to obtain a measurement of the first peak in the CMB angular power spectrum in a single balloon flight, few hours long, and was a prototype of the BOOMERANG Long Duration Balloon (BLDB) experiment.