Instrument, method, brightness, and polarization maps from the 2003 flight of BOOMERanG

¹ Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita' di Roma La Sapienza, Roma, Italy e-mail: silvia.masi@roma1infn.it
² School of Physics and Astronomy, Cardiff University, Wales, UK
³ Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, USA
⁴ Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), University of Toronto, ON, Canada
⁵ Computational Research Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, CA, USA
⁶ Space Sciences Laboratory, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
⁷ IFAC-CNR, Firenze, Italy
⁸ Dipartimento di Fisica, Universita' di Roma Tor Vergata, Roma, Italy
⁹ Department of Physics, Imperial College, London, UK
¹⁰ Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
¹¹ Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
¹² Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia, Roma, Italy
¹³ Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, ON, Canada
¹⁴ Department of Astronomy, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
¹⁵ Physics Department, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA
¹⁶ Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA, USA
¹⁷ Department of Physics, University of Toronto, ON, Canada
¹⁸ INFN, Sezione di Roma 2, Roma, Italy
¹⁹ Department of Physics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada
²⁰ Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, Paris, France

Received: 23 July 2005
Accepted: 12 July 2006

Abstract

Aims.We present the boomerang-03 experiment, and the maps of the Stokes parameters I, Q, U of the microwave sky obtained during a 14 day balloon flight in 2003.

Methods.Using a balloon-borne mm-wave telescope with polarization sensitive bolometers, three regions of the southern sky were surveyed: a deep survey (~90 square degrees) and a shallow survey (~750 square degrees) at high Galactic latitudes (both centered at , ) and a survey of ~300 square degrees across the Galactic plane at , . All three surveys were carried out in three wide frequency bands centered at 145, 245 and 345 GHz, with an angular resolution of ~.

Results.The 145 GHz maps of Stokes I are dominated by Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropy, which is mapped with high signal to noise ratio. The measured anisotropy pattern is consistent with the pattern measured in the same region by boomerang-98 and by WMAP. The 145 GHz maps of Stokes Q and U provide a robust statistical detection of polarization of the CMB when subjected to a power spectrum analysis. The amplitude of the detected polarization is consistent with that of the CMB in the ΛCDM cosmological scenario. At 145 GHz, in the CMB surveys, the intensity and polarization of the astrophysical foregrounds are found to be negligible with respect to the cosmological signal. At 245 and 345 GHz we detect ISD emission correlated to the 3000 GHz IRAS/DIRBE maps, and give upper limits for any other non-CMB component. When compared to monitors of different interstellar components, the intensity maps of the surveyed section of the Galactic plane show that a variety of emission mechanisms is present in that region.