Astrophysics (Index)About

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.


(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://www.nist.gov/measuring-cosmos/balloon-borne-large-aperture-submillimeter-telescope-next-generation-blast-tng
PrefixExample  
BLASTBLAST J065837-555708 

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