Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Jan 1994
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1994phdt........23k&link_type=abstract
PhD Dissertation, California Univ. Santa Barbara, CA United States
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
1
Interstellar Gas, Molecular Clouds, Oxygen, Microwave Spectrometers, Balloon-Borne Instruments, Millimeter Waves, Sis (Superconductors), Radio Astronomy
Scientific paper
An experiment is described that is designed to detect molecular oxygen in interstellar molecular clouds. Oxygen is the third most abundant element in our galaxy. The oxygen-bearing molecules that have been detected do not account for the expected oxygen abundance in molecular clouds. Molecular oxygen (O2) could be a major reservoir for the missing oxygen. At the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in conjunction with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Bell Laboratories, a balloon-borne, millimeter-wavelength receiver with the capability of observing the primary isotopes of O2 (118, 750 MHz; N = 1, J = 1-0) and CO (115, 271 MHz; J = 1-0) has been designed, built, and flown. This system uses a superconducting-insulating-superconducting (SIS) mixer and a digital auto-correlator spectrometer. The SIS spectrometer (SISS) has achieved a double sideband receiver temperature of 5 K and a spectral resolution of 1 km/s. Using the 1-meter primary mirror on the UCSB balloon-borne gondola, the SISS has an 11 arcsecond beam (FWHM). The first flight was executed in August 1993. Although pointing and cryogenic problems prevented taking astronomical data, it proved to be an excellent engineering flight.
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