The Simons Observatory: Dark Characterization of the Large Aperture Telescope

The Simons Observatory (SO) is a cosmic microwave background experiment composed of three 0.42 m Small Aperture Telescopes (SATs) and one 6 m Large Aperture Telescope (LAT) in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The Large Aperture Telescope Receiver (LATR) was integrated into the LAT in August 2023; howeve...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2024-07
Main Authors: Haridas, Saianeesh K, Ahmed, Zeeshan, Bhandarkar, Tanay, Devlin, Mark, Dicker, Simon, Duff, Shannon M, Dutcher, Daniel, Harrington, Kathleen, Henderson, Shawn W, Hubmayr, Johannes, Johnson, Bradley R, Kofman, Anna, Manduca, Alex, Niemack, Michael D, Randall, Michael J, Satterthwaite, Thomas P, Orlowski-Scherer, John, Schmitt, Benjamin L, Sierra, Carlos, Silva-Feaver, Max, Thornton, Robert J, Wang, Yuhan, Zheng, Kaiwen
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Apertures
Cosmic microwave background
Noise levels
Observatories
Optical properties
Telescopes
White noise
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:The Simons Observatory (SO) is a cosmic microwave background experiment composed of three 0.42 m Small Aperture Telescopes (SATs) and one 6 m Large Aperture Telescope (LAT) in the Atacama Desert of Chile. The Large Aperture Telescope Receiver (LATR) was integrated into the LAT in August 2023; however, because mirrors were not yet installed, the LATR optical chain was capped at the 4K stage. In this dark configuration we are able to characterize many elements of the instrument without contributions from atmospheric noise. Here we show this noise is below the required upper limit and its features are well described with a simple noise model. Maps produced using this noise model have properties that are in good agreement with the white noise levels of our dark data. Additionally, we show that our nominal scan strategy has a minimal effect on the noise when compared to the noise when the telescope is stationary
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2407.09669