BLAST
(Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope)
(balloon-borne 1.8-m submillimeter telescope)
BLAST (for
Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope)
is a 1.8-meter far infrared telescope
that is flown in a high-altitude balloon.
It has made several flights from different locations,
including Antarctica, its first operational
flight in 2005. Its second operational flight damaged
the original 2-meter operational mirror,
which was replaced by a 1.8-meter mirror.
Its instrument is an imaging Fourier transform spectrometer, modeled after
the Herschel Space Observatory SPIRE design, and the project
served as a pilot for that instrument.
A follow-on balloon-borne project, BLASTPol,
including polarimetry was carried in the 2010-2012 time frame.
A third version, BLAST-TNG flew in January 2020, but
the instrument was destroyed on landing.
As of 2024, a fourth version is proposed, called BLAST Observatory.
(telescope,reflector,submillimeter,far infrared,airborne)
Further reading:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLAST_(telescope)
https://sites.northwestern.edu/blast/
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2014JAI.....340001G/abstract
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2016SPIE.9914E..0JG/abstract
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018SPIE10708E..0LL/abstract
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020SPIE11445E..26C/abstract
https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024PASP..136c5003C/abstract
https://www.nist.gov/measuring-cosmos/balloon-borne-large-aperture-submillimeter-telescope-next-generation-blast-tng
Prefix | Example | | |
BLAST | BLAST J065837-555708 | | |
|
Index