The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimetre Telescope (BLAST) and BLASTPol

Balloon observations from Antarctica have proven an effective and efficient way to address open Cosmological questions as well as problems in Galactic astronomy. The Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimetre Telescope (BLAST) is a sub-orbital mapping experiment which uses 270 bolometric detectors to image the sky in three wavebands centred at 250, 350 and 500 μm with a 1.8 m telescope. In the years before Herschel launched, BLAST provided data of unprecedented angular and spectral coverage in frequency bands close to the peak of dust emission in star forming regions in our Galaxy, and in galaxies at cosmological distances. More recently, BLASTPol was obtained by reconfiguring the BLAST focal plane as a submillimetric polarimeter to study the role that Galactic magnetic fields have in regulating the processes of star-formation. The first and successful BLASTPol flight from Antarctica in 2010 is followed by a second flight, currently scheduled for the end of 2012

The BLAST Scientific Program

Introduction The primary motivation for the BLAST detector is to carry out a comprehensive program of measurements of the spin dependent electromagnetic response of the few body systems. These systems (A = 1,2,3) consist of the free proton, the weakly bound deuteron system and the three body 3 He system. The BLAST scientific program is focussed on the study of these systems in terms of nucleon structure, the ground state few body structure built from the nucleonnucleon interaction and the nature of the interaction of the virtual photon for Q 2 1 (GeV/c) 2 . A major consideration in the design of BLAST has been the realization that these aspects of the study of the electromagnetic response are interrelated in a complicated way and can only be unambiguously separated by a broad study of the few body systems. In addition, both the choice of few body systems and the relatively low momentum transfers should al

Status of the BLAST experiment

The BLAST experiment is beginning operation at the MIT-Bates Linear Accelerator Laboratory. The experiment will study the spin dependent electro-magnetic interaction in few nucleon systems at momentum transfers between 0.1 and 1.0 GeV2. This will provide improved measurements of the nucleon form factors, particularly G E n , as well as study the structure of D and 3He. Other reaction channels such as pion production and inclusive scattering will also be studied. The experiment, physics goals, and current status are described briefly