Bibcode
Melhuish, S. J.; Dicker, S.; Davies, R. D.; Gutierrez, C. M.; Watson, R. A.; Davis, R. J.; Hoyland, R.; Rebolo, R.
Bibliographical reference
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Volume 305, Issue 2, pp. 399-408.
Advertised on:
4
1999
Citations
11
Refereed citations
10
Description
We describe a new high-sensitivity experiment for observing cosmic
microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. The instrument is a two-element
interferometer operating at 33 GHz with a ~3 GHz bandwidth. It is
installed on the high and dry Teide Observatory site on Tenerife where
successful beam-switching observations have been made at this frequency.
Two realizations of the interferometer have been tested with element
separations of 11.9lambda and 16.7lambda. The resulting angular
resolution of ~2 deg was chosen to explore the amplitude of CMB
structure on the large angular scale side of the Doppler (acoustic)
peak. It is found that observations are unaffected by water vapour for
more than 70 per cent of the time when the sensitivity is limited by the
receiver noise alone. Observations over several months are expected to
give an rms noise level of ~10-20 2 muK covering ~100 resolution
elements. Preliminary results show stable operation of the
interferometer with the detection of discrete radio sources as well as
the Galactic plane at Dec. =+41 deg and -29 deg.