In-flight performance of Spider’s 280-GHz receivers

Spider is a balloon-borne instrument designed to map the cosmic microwave background at degree-angular scales in the presence of Galactic foregrounds. Spider has mapped a large sky area in the Southern Hemisphere using more than 2000 transition-edge sensors (TESs) during two NASA Long Duration Balloon flights above the Antarctic continent. During its first flight in January 2015, Spider was observed in the 95- and 150-GHz frequency bands, setting constraints on the B-mode signature of primordial gravitational waves. Its second flight in the 2022–2023 season added new receivers at 280 GHz, each using an array of TESs coupled to the sky through feedhorns formed from stacks of silicon wafers. These receivers are optimized to produce deep maps of polarized Galactic dust emission over a large sky area, providing a unique data set with lasting value to the field. We describe the instrument’s performance during Spider’s second flight, focusing on the performance of the 280-GHz receivers. We include details on the flight, in-band optical loading at float, and an early analysis of detector noise.

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Publication Details

Journal
Journal of Astronomical Telescopes Instruments and Systems
Published
2024-12-27
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1117/1.jatis.10.4.044012
Citations
1
Primary Topic
Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.33
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article

In-flight performance of Spider’s 280-GHz receivers

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1 citations
Journal of Astronomical Telescopes Instruments and Systems
Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology
0.33
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In-flight performance of Spider’s 280-GHz receivers

K. Ganga, Susan F. Redmond, M. Amiri, Rong Nie, Steven Li, Cesiley King, Z. Kermish, Daniel Becker, Donald Wiebe, L. Javier Romualdez, J. F. van der List, K. D. Irwin, Jason S.-Y. Leung, Carlo Contaldi, Corwin Shiu, Shannon M. Duff, Jason E. Austermann, Steven J. Benton, A. S. Bergman, Katherine Freese, James A. Beall, B. Osherson, J. E. Ruhl, Lorenzo Moncelsi, C. Tucker, Michael R. Nolta, Xue Mei Song, Scott Akers, Adriaan J. Duivenvoorden, Matthew Hasselfield, Simon Tartakovsky, I. K. Wehus, Carl Reintsema, M. Galloway, M. Farhang, C.-L. Kuo, J. A. Shariff, Ivan L. Padilla, R. Gualtieri, A. Rahlin, J. P. Filippini, Johanna M. Nagy, Elle C. Shaw, Arpi Grigorian, H. Thommesen, Zhiqi Huang, Sho M. Gibbs, Suren R. Gourapura, Sean Bryan, P. Mason, R. S. Domagalski, J. Richard Bond, Shyang Wen, Peter A. R. Ade, Alexis C. Weber, Marcus C. Runyan, E. Young, Gene Hilton, Calvin B. Netterfield, Aurélien A. Fraisse, H. C. Chiang, Saianeesh K. Haridas, Hans K. Eriksen, Asad Kahn, Warren Holmes, J. D. Soler, Krikor G. Megerian, Olivier Doré, James J. Bock, Amber R. Lennox, Viktor Hristov, Jeff Van Lanen, Michael R. Vissers, A. Trangsrud, Mark Halpern, John Hartley, Thuy Vy T. Luu, L. M. Fissel, N. N. Gandilo, T. A. Morford, Anthony D. Turner, William C. Jones, Johannes Hubmayr, Joel Ullom, A. E. Gambrel, Jared May
article en
1 citations

Abstract

Spider is a balloon-borne instrument designed to map the cosmic microwave background at degree-angular scales in the presence of Galactic foregrounds. Spider has mapped a large sky area in the Southern Hemisphere using more than 2000 transition-edge sensors (TESs) during two NASA Long Duration Balloon flights above the Antarctic continent. During its first flight in January 2015, Spider was observed in the 95- and 150-GHz frequency bands, setting constraints on the B-mode signature of primordial gravitational waves. Its second flight in the 2022–2023 season added new receivers at 280 GHz, each using an array of TESs coupled to the sky through feedhorns formed from stacks of silicon wafers. These receivers are optimized to produce deep maps of polarized Galactic dust emission over a large sky area, providing a unique data set with lasting value to the field. We describe the instrument’s performance during Spider’s second flight, focusing on the performance of the 280-GHz receivers. We include details on the flight, in-band optical loading at float, and an early analysis of detector noise.

Journal of Astronomical Telescopes Instruments and SystemsVol. 10(04)
California Institute of Technology (US), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (FR), Pennsylvania State University (US), National Institute of Standards and Technology (US), Jet Propulsion Laboratory (US), University of British Columbia (CA), University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US), Stockholm University (SE), University of Oslo (NO), University of Toronto (CA), Princeton University (US), Queen's University (CA), Université Paris Cité (FR), Laboratoire AstroParticule et Cosmologie (FR), University of Chicago (US), Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (DE), Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CA), Flatiron Health (United States) (US), Imperial College London (GB), Shahid Beheshti University (IR), McGill University (CA), Arizona State University (US), Case Western Reserve University (US), Cardiff University (GB), The University of Texas at Austin (US), Stanford University (US)
Affordable and clean energy
Openalex Percentile: Top 32%
Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology
0.33
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