The Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarization: BLAST-pol

TL;DR

BLAST-pol is a balloon-borne submillimeter telescope designed to study star formation and polarization in galaxies, providing high-resolution, large-area surveys that bridge space-based and ground-based observations.

Contribution

This paper introduces BLAST-pol, an upgraded polarization-sensitive version of BLAST, enabling detailed studies of star-forming regions with unprecedented mapping speed and resolution.

Findings

First high-resolution, large-area submillimeter surveys at 250, 350, 500 microns.

Successful flights from Arctic and Antarctica in 2005 and 2006.

Upcoming polarization-sensitive observations in 2009.

Abstract

The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST) is a sub-orbital experiment designed to study the process of star formation in local galaxies (including the Milky Way) and in galaxies at cosmological distances. Using a 2-m Cassegrain telescope, BLAST images the sky onto a focal plane, which consists of 270 bolometric detectors split between three arrays, observing simultaneously in 30% wide bands, centered at 250, 350, and 500 microns. The diffraction-limited optical system provides a resolution of 30" at 250 microns. The pointing system enables raster-like scans with a positional accuracy of ~30", reconstructed to better than 5" rms in post-flight analysis. BLAST had two successful flights, from the Arctic in 2005, and from Antarctica in 2006, which provided the first high-resolution and large-area (~0.8-200 deg^2) submillimeter surveys at these wavelengths. As a pathfinder for the SPIRE instrument on Herschel, BLAST shares with the ESA satellite similar focal plane technology and scientific motivation. A third flight in 2009 will see the instrument modified to be polarization-sensitive (BLAST-Pol). With its unprecedented mapping speed and resolution, BLAST-Pol will provide insights into Galactic star-forming nurseries, and give the necessary link between the larger, coarse resolution surveys and the narrow, resolved observations of star-forming structures from space and ground based instruments being commissioned in the next 5 years.