ARGO is a 1.2m
balloon-borne telescope, conceived in 1987 and flown in the stratosphere
in 1988, 1990 and 1993. The instrument was designed to measure Cosmic Microwave
Background anisotropies at angular scales around 1 degree.
In the 1993 flight the observation wavelengths were 2.2, 1.2, 0.8, 0.5
mm. The detectors were composite bolometers
cooled at 0.3K. The beam was 0.56 degrees FWHM. The sky chop was sine wave
at 14 Hz, with an amplitude of 1.8 deg peak tp peak. The instrument performed
"step and integrate" scans of the sky, accumulating a data
set of microwave temperature difference measurements in about 200 independent
sky patches, in the Hercules and Aries/Taurus regions.
The general design of the experiment is
described in
- P.de Bernardis, E. Aquilini, A. Boscaleri, M. De Petris, M. Gervasi,
L. Martinis, S. Masi, V. Natale, P. Palumbo, F. Scaramuzzi, L. Valenziano,
ARGO: A balloon-borne telescope for measurements of the millimeter diffuse
sky emission ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS, 271, 683, (1993).
- P. de Bernardis, S. Masi, M. Perciballi,
G. Romeo A resonance wobbling secondary mirror for balloon borne IR
telescopes INFRARED PHYSICS 29, pg 1005, (1989)
- P40 P. Palumbo, E. Aquilini, P. Cardoni, P.de Bernardis, A. De Ninno,
L. Martinis, S. Masi, F. Scaramuzzi, Balloon Borne 3He cryostat for
millimetre bolometric photometry CRYOGENICS, 34, 1001, (1994)
The scientific results from the ARGO flights
are described in
- P.de Bernardis, L.Amicone, A.De Luca,
M.De Petris, M.Epifani, M.Gervasi, G.Guarini, S.Masi, F.Melchiorri, V.Natale,
A.Boscaleri, G.Natali,F.Pedichini A short wavelength measurement of
the Cosmic Background Radiation Anisotropy THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL
LETTERS, 360, L31, (1990) where we get an upper limit
to CMB fluctuations
- P.de Bernardis, E. Aquilini, A. Boscaleri,
M. De Petris, G. D' Andreta, M. Gervasi, E. Kreysa, L. Martinis, S. Masi,
P. Palumbo, F. Scaramuzzi, Degree-scale observations of cosmic microwave
background anisotropies THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS, 422, L33,
(1994) where we detect CMB anisotropies in the
Hercules region
- P. de Bernardis
, G. De Gasperis, S. Masi, N. Vittorio, Detection of Cosmic Microwave
Background Anisotropy at 1.8 deg: theoretical implications on inflationary
models, THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS, 433, L1, (1994) where
we compare the ARGO data in Hercules to models for CMB anisotropies
- S. Masi, E. Aquilini, A. Boscaleri, P.de Bernardis, M. De Petris, M.
Gervasi, L. Martinis, V. Natale, P. Palumbo, F. Scaramuzzi, Millimeter
and sub-millimeter Observations of Interstellar Dust Emission, THE
ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL, in press, October 1995. where
we analyze the ARGO data relevant for the physics of interstellar
dust
- S. Masi, E. Aquilini, A. Boscaleri, P. de Bernardis
, M. De Petris, M. Gervasi, L. Martinis, F. Scaramuzzi Foreground
removal and CMB fluctuations in a multiband anisotropy experiment (ARGO
1993), THE ASTROPHYSICAL JOURNAL LETTERS, L47, 463, (1996) where
we show how the data can be cleaned from dust emission taking advantage
of the multiwavelength capabilities of the ARGO system, and we get
another detection of CMB anisotropies.