Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope
Short Name:
BLAST
Date:
31 Aug 2023 01:00:00
Publisher:
NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive
Description:
The Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope (BLAST) is a
2-m telescope that conducted the first wide-area (> many square
degrees) sub-mm surveys at wavelengths 250--500 um. Built and flown by
an international collaboration headed by the University of
Pennsylvania (P.I. Mark Devlin), the telescope uses a prototype of the
SPIRE camera for the Herschel satellite. Despite parts of this band
being available to ground-based telescopes from high-altitude sites
such as Mauna Kea (e.g. JCMT) and Chile (e.g. future ALMA site), BLAST
surveys are currently un-matched in sensitivity and area given the
comparatively negligible atmospheric water vapour at 38 km
altitude.
