Current B-mode Projects

JULY 12, 2013

by the Editors of Sky & Telescope

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For a seemingly esoteric subject, the so-called B-mode polarization patterns that are expected to hide in the universe’s cosmic microwave background receive a lot of research attention. In our October 2013 issue, we highlighted the Polarbear project and also included a sky chart showing where current observing efforts are pointing. You might have noticed that most of them cluster in the southern hemisphere, crowded into the section around the South Celestial Pole. That’s because the North and South Celestial Poles happen to be far from the Milky Way’s dusty plane and therefore relatively free of our galaxy’s contamination.
Below, you’ll find the same list of current B-modes projects that we included with our article, but this time with links to the projects’ websites. Some of the projects have several websites; we generally only included one, but feel free to do your own poking around for more information.
This list is current as of 2013, but remember: in such a hopping field, more projects are sprouting up all the time...:

Open at cah red lin abovo...

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  Ground-based: Chile
  • POLARBEAR: Polarization of Background Radiation. The current Huan Tran Telescope will be joined by two more to form the Simons Array in 2016.
  • ACTPol: Atacama Cosmology Telescope – Polarization
  • ABS: Atacama B-mode Search
  Ground-based: South Pole
  • SPTpol: Polarization-sensitive camera on the South Pole Telescope. There's also a fun blog written by the astronomers.
  • BICEP2: Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization and Keck Array. BICEP is in its second iteration.
  • QUBIC: Q&U Bolometric Interferometer for Cosmology
  Ground-based: Canary Islands
  • QUIJOTE: Q-U-I Joint Tenerife
  Balloon Experiments
  • EBEX: E and B Experiment. Also has a blog.
  • SPIDER: Suborbital Polarimeter for Inflation
  Satellite Missions
  • ESA's Planck spacecraft