BLAST (telescope)

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BLAST, still hanging on the launch vehicle, in Esrange near Kiruna , Sweden June 2005

The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) is a reflecting telescope for infrared astronomy carried by a statosphere balloon . It was the result of a cooperation between several research institutions, the University of Toronto , Brown University , the University of Miami , the University of British Columbia , JPL , INAOE , and Cardiff University , led by the University of Pennsylvania .

Functions and goals

The telescope consists of a Cassegrain telescope with a primary mirror 2 m in diameter , which focuses the radiation on a bolometer field. This evaluates the wavelengths of 250 µm, 350 µm, and 500 µm. This is the bolometer that was developed for the Herschel Space Observatory and expanded to include a polarization measurement option for BLAST's fourth flight. The overcoming of the atmospheric window required for observations in this wavelength range by an altitude of around 38 km was achieved with a 1,120,000 m³ balloon for the 2-ton system.

The primary scientific goals of BLAST are:

These goals were fully achieved in three dedicated flights with a total flight time of over 600 hours.

A documentary about this project was made by Paul Devlin, film producer and brother of Principal Investigator Mark Devlin.

Flights

  1. The first flight of BLAST was exclusively for technical testing. The launch took place on September 28, 2003 at 15:10 UTC from the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Fort Sumner, New Mexico . The landing took place 26 hours later near Newcomb , New Mexico.
  2. From the second flight of BLAST scientific goals were pursued. It began on June 12, 2005 at 1:10 UTC in Esrange in northern Sweden and ended on June 16, 2005 at 6:15 UTC on Victoria Island in the Northwest Territories , Canada . The primary mirror was irreparably damaged on landing.
  3. The third flight was again carried out with the aluminum primary mirror with a diameter of 1.8 m from the test phase and took off on December 21, 2006 at 1:54 UTC from McMurdo station on the Antarctic continent and ended on January 2, 2007 1:05 UTC 756 km southwest of McMurdo. After landing, the parachute did not come off the gondola as intended, so that the strong polar wind dragged it for 200 km. Although the telescope was largely destroyed in the process, the hard drives with the scientific records were recovered.
  4. With the expansion of polarization measurement, the subsequent flight extended from December 27, 2010 to January 5, 2011 again over Antarctica , from the Williams Field airfield at McMurdo Station in an almost closed orbit around the South Pole to the Ross Ice Shelf .

BLAST-TNG

The first flight of the next generation of the telescope took place in January 2020, with a primary mirror made of carbon fiber reinforced plastic with a diameter of 2.5 m and a larger matrix of around 3000 microwave kinetic inductance detectors as radiation receivers . Due to a mechanical defect that occurred a few hours after take-off, the flight was then canceled.

Web links

Commons : BLAST  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Official website ( Memento of June 3, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
  2. ^ Culture Dish . In: Nature , No. 454, July 2008, p. 166; blastthemovie.com (PDF).
  3. ↑ Detailed report of the first flight on stratocat.com.ar (English) accessed on January 21, 2019.
  4. ↑ Detailed report of the second flight on stratocat.com.ar (English) accessed on January 21, 2019.
  5. ↑ The Doh! of technology . ( Memento of April 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) In: New Scientist Tech , December 23, 2007
  6. ↑ Detailed report of the third flight on stratocat.com.ar (English) accessed on January 21, 2019.
  7. ↑ Detailed report of the fourth flight on stratocat.com.ar (English) accessed on January 21, 2019.
  8. ↑ BLAST at Northwestern University (English). Retrieved January 21, 2019.