 Submillimeter APEX Bolometer Camera Bolometer Development Group Millimeter & Submillimeter Astronomy Group Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR)
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Welcome to the official SABOCA website SABOCA ( Submillimeter APEX Bolometer Camera) is a multi-beam bolometric receiver developed by the Max-Planck-Institut für Radioastronomie (MPIfR) of Bonn SABOCA is a superconducting (TES) bolometer camera installed on the APEX telescope for operation in the 350 micron atmospheric window Performance on Sky and
Sensitivity
The signals of the bolometers of SABOCA are
extremely clean and do not show 1/f noise down to 10 mHz (see the plot
below). This excellent signal quality is mainly due to the use of the
new superconducting technology: TES bolometers, in fact, are not
sensitive to microphonics. This technology, therefore, is particularly
suitable for a noisy environment like the C-cabin of APEX and for
operation on a cooling machine like a pulse tube refrigerator.
 The sensitivity of SABOCA was derived from blank-sky observations after correlated noise removal. The mean array sensitivity was found to be ~1.4 Jy s^(1/2). The best bolometers have sensitivities of ~1.1 Jy s^(1/2). Based on these measurements we expect an array sensitivity as low as ~200 mJy s^(1/2). The beam shape of SABOCA was determined from several beam maps on Mars (see figure below). The main beam is almost spherical and has a deconvolved FWHM of 7.7″, close to the expected value of 7.5″. The beam starts to deviate from a Gaussian at a relative intensity of ~8% (11 dB). The underlying sidelobe pattern shows some asymmetry which is mainly due to imperfect X-focus setting during the test run.  |
| web: gsiringo (at) mpifr-bonn.mpg.de | last edit: G. Siringo, MPIfR - February 2009 |