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Proceedings Paper

The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry-BLASTPol: performance and results from the 2012 Antarctic flight
Author(s): N. Galitzki; P. A. R. Ade; F. E. Angilè; S. J. Benton; M. J. Devlin; B. Dober; L. M. Fissel; Y. Fukui; N. N. Gandilo; J. Klein; A. L. Korotkov; T. G. Matthews; L. Moncelsi; C. B. Netterfield; G. Novak; D. Nutter; E. Pascale; F. Poidevin; G. Savini; D. Scott; J. A. Shariff; J. D. Soler; C. E. Tucker; G. S. Tucker; D. Ward-Thompson
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Paper Abstract

The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope for Polarimetry (BLASTPol) is a suborbital mapping experiment, designed to study the role played by magnetic fields in the star formation process. BLASTPol observes polarized light using a total power instrument, photolithographic polarizing grids, and an achromatic half-wave plate to modulate the polarization signal. During its second flight from Antarctica in December 2012, BLASTPol made degree scale maps of linearly polarized dust emission from molecular clouds in three wavebands, centered at 250, 350, and 500 μm. The instrumental performance was an improvement over the 2010 BLASTPol ight, with decreased systematics resulting in a higher number of confirmed polarization vectors. The resultant dataset allows BLASTPol to trace magnetic fields in star-forming regions at scales ranging from cores to entire molecular cloud complexes.

Paper Details

Date Published: 22 July 2014
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 9145, Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V, 91450R (22 July 2014); doi: 10.1117/12.2054759
Show Author Affiliations
N. Galitzki, Univ. of Pennsylvania (United States)
P. A. R. Ade, Cardiff Univ. (United Kingdom)
F. E. Angilè, Univ. of Pennsylvania (United States)
S. J. Benton, Univ. of Toronto (Canada)
M. J. Devlin, Univ. of Pennsylvania (United States)
B. Dober, Univ. of Pennsylvania (United States)
L. M. Fissel, Univ. of Toronto (Canada)
Northwestern Univ. (United States)
Y. Fukui, Nagoya Univ. (Japan)
N. N. Gandilo, Univ. of Toronto (Canada)
J. Klein, Univ. of Pennsylvania (United States)
A. L. Korotkov, Brown Univ. (United States)
T. G. Matthews, Northwestern Univ. (United States)
L. Moncelsi, California Institute of Technology (United States)
C. B. Netterfield, Univ. of Toronto (Canada)
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (Canada)
G. Novak, Northwestern Univ. (United States)
D. Nutter, Cardiff Univ. (United Kingdom)
E. Pascale, Cardiff Univ. (United Kingdom)
F. Poidevin, Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (Spain)
Univ. de La Laguna (Spain)
G. Savini, Univ. College London (United Kingdom)
D. Scott, Northwestern Univ. (United States)
J. A. Shariff, Univ. of Toronto (Canada)
J. D. Soler, Univ. of Toronto (Canada)
Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (France)
C. E. Tucker, Cardiff Univ. (United Kingdom)
G. S. Tucker, Univ. of Toronto (United States)
D. Ward-Thompson, Univ. of Central Lancashire (United Kingdom)


Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 9145:
Ground-based and Airborne Telescopes V
Larry M. Stepp; Roberto Gilmozzi; Helen J. Hall, Editor(s)

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