ACBAR

ACBAR Left Image of Viper telescope.
Viper telescope at South Pole Station, conical ground shield.
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ACBAR Center Image of Viper telescope close up showing the ff-axis Gregorian reflector.
The Viper telescope is an off-axis Gregorian reflector with a 2 m primary mirror and an additional 0.5 m radius of skirt.
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ACBAR Right Image of the fully assembled ACBAR instrument in Berkely.
Fully assembled ACBAR instrument being tested in Berkeley. The detectors are deep inside the blue liquid helium cryostat.
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Images Courtesy of the Holzapfel Group, ©2002

Overview

The Arcminute Cosmology Bolometer Array Receiver (ACBAR) was a sensitive multi-frequency receiver designed to measure slight temperature differences in the Cosmic Microwave Background. The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is the faint afterglow of the Big Bang which formed the universe. Most of these temperature differences in the CMB resulted from quantum fluctuations which grew during the rapid expansion of the very early universe while some of them resulted from the interaction of CMB photons with clusters of galaxies via the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. Observations of both types of CMB fluctuations can tell us about the composition and evolution of the universe.
Modified from: The ACBAR Experiment Website

Experiment Information:

  • Experiment Date Range in Years: 2001 - 2008
  • Frequency (GHz): 150, 219, 274
  • l-min: 60
  • l-max: 2700

The archived ACBAR website can be viewed HERE.

A service of the HEASARC and of the Astrophysics Science Division at NASA/GSFC
Logo - Goddard Space Flight Center, National Aeronautics and Space Administration

HEASARC Director: Dr. Andrew F. Ptak

LAMBDA Director: Dr. Thomas M. Essinger-Hileman

NASA Official: Dr. Thomas M. Essinger-Hileman

Web Curator: Mr. Michael R. Greason