MAXIMA: an experiment to measure temperature anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background

Journal Article · Sat May 01 00:00:00 EDT 1999 · AIP Conference Proceedings

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.59349· OSTI ID:698858

Lee, A T; Balbi, A; Borrill, J; Jaffe, A H; Oh, S; Rabii, B; Richards, P L; Smoot, G F; Winant, C D ^[1]; Lee, A T; Jaffe, A H; Rabii, B; Richards, P L; Smoot, G F; Winant, C D ^[2]; Ade, P; Hristov, V; Lange, A E; Pascale, E ^[3]; Balbi, A ; Borrill, J ^[4]; Bock, J; Crill, B P; Smoot, G F ^[5]; Bock, J; Del Castillo, H ^[6]; Boscaleri, A ^[7]; De Bernardis, P ^[8]; Ferreira, P ^[9]; Ganga, K ^[10]; Hanany, S ^[11]; Mauskopf, P ^[12]; Netterfield, C B ^[13]; Ruhl, J ^[14]

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1. Center for Particle Astrophysics, 301 LeConte Hall, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720 (United States)
2. Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720 (United States)
3. Queen Mary and Westfield College, London (United Kingdom)
4. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720 (United States)
5. Department of Physics, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125 (United States)
6. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California 91125 (United States)
7. IROE-CNR, Firenze (Italy)
8. Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita La Sapienza, Roma (Italy)
9. CERN, Geneva (Switzerland)
10. IPAC, Pasadena, California 91125 (United States)
11. School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55455 (United States)
12. University of Massachusetts, Amhurst, Massachusetts 01003 (United States)
13. Department of Physics, University of Toronto, Toronto (Canada)
14. Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106 (United States)

We describe the MAXIMA experiment, a balloon-borne measurement designed to map temperature anisotropy in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) from l=80 to l=800. The experiment consists of a 1.3 m diameter off-axis Gregorian telescope and a receiver with a 16 element array of bolometers cooled to 100 mK. The frequency bands are centered at 150, 240, and 410 GHz. The 10{sup {prime}} FWHM beam sizes are well matched to the scale of acoustic peaks expected in the angular power spectrum of the CMB. The first flight of the experiment in its full configuration was launched in August 1998. A 122 deg{sup 2} map of the sky was made near the Draco constellation during the 7 hour flight in a region of extremely low galactic dust contamination. This map covers 0.3{percent} of the sky and has 3200 independent beamsize pixels. We describe the MAXIMA instrument and its performance during the recent flight. {copyright} {ital 1999 American Institute of Physics.}

• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE
• OSTI ID: 698858
• Report Number(s): CONF-981098-; ISSN 0094-243X; TRN: 9918M0050
• Journal Information: AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 476, Issue 1; Conference: 3K cosmology: EC-TMR conference, Rome (Italy), 5-10 Oct 1998; Other Information: PBD: May 1999
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

66 PHYSICS
NOISE
BALLOONS
BACKGROUND RADIATION
RELICT RADIATION
TEMPERATURE RANGE 0000-0013 K
ANISOTROPY
MEASURING INSTRUMENTS