GISMO run #1 (November 2007)
In November 2007, a team lead by Johannes Staguhn, including Stephen Maher, Elmer Sharp, Dale Fixsen, and Dominic Benford as members spent two weeks at the 30m observatory to install and test on the sky for the first time a new bolometer prototype they built: the Goddar Iram Superconducting Millimeter Observer (GISMO). GISMO consists of 8x16 pixels with transition edge sensors (TES). The super conducting TES are read out by SQUID multiplexers. The nominal bandwidth is 125-175GHz, pixels are spaced by 14", the telescope HPBW is 17" at 2mm. Data are taken while the telescope meander raster scans, with and without switching the secondary. An automated pipeline merged the GISMO data with the telescope data streams to create FITS files, being triggered by the IRAM messaging system. Data were then further reduced using the Goddard data reduction package. The 2mm spectral range provides a unique terrestrial window enabling ground-based observations of the earliest active dusty galaxies in the universe and thereby allowing a better constraint on the star formation rate in these objects. Despite the unavailability of a quater of the array due to broken wire bonds, preliminary results looked promising.
List of documents describing the instrument and some results of the test run:
Staguhn et al. 2008 GISMO, a 2 mm Bolometer Camera Optimized for the Study of High Redshift Galaxies