Abstract
We describe two related experiments that measured the anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). QMAP was a balloon-borne telescope that flew twice in 1996, collecting data on degree angular scales with an array of six high electron mobility transistor-based amplifiers (HEMTs). QMAP used an interlocking scan strategy to directly produce high signal-to-noise ratio CMB maps over a limited region of sky. The QMAP gondola was then refitted for ground-based work as the MAT/TOCO experiment. Observations were made from 5200 m on Cerro Toco in Northern Chile in 1997 and 1998 using time domain beam synthesis. MAT/TOCO measured the rise and fall of the CMB angular spectrum, thereby localizing the position of the first peak to lpeak = 216 ± 14. In addition to describing the instruments, we discuss the data selection methods, check for systematic errors, and compare the MAT/TOCO results to those from recent experiments. The previously reported data are updated to account for a small calibration shift and corrected to account for a small contribution from known sources of foreground emission. The resulting amplitude of the first peak for 160 < l < 240 is δTpeak = 80.9 ± 3.4 ± 5.1 μK, where the first uncertainty is statistical and the second is from calibration.
Original language | English (US) |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 115-141 |
Number of pages | 27 |
Journal | Astrophysical Journal, Supplement Series |
Volume | 140 |
Issue number | 2 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jun 2002 |
All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Space and Planetary Science
Keywords
- Cosmic microwave background
- Instrumentation: miscellaneous