Doctoral Thesis of DVW

Here you can get access to electronic copies of my Doctoral Thesis entitled BLAST: A Balloon-borne, Large-Aperture, Submillimetre Telescope.

This thesis is licenced to the public under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 Canada License. Members of the BLAST Collaboration may use this thesis under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 Canada License.

The version currently available from this page is the Third Edition. It contains the several corrections and ammendations to the First and Second Editions. It is available in either PostScript (ps) or the Portable Document Format (PDF). Various layouts are available as outlined below.

The First Edition of this thesis is available from the National Library, although there's really no reason to seek that one out. The Third Edition of this thesis is available from the Library of the University of Toronto.

Corrections: Corrections and errata are always welcome. When reporting corrections, please include the edition and layout of the copy to be corrected. The relevant version and layout information can be found at the end of the Proœmium (in the front matter, immediately before the Short Contents). Known errors in this edition are noted below in the Corrigenda and Errata secion.

—dvw/kt

Notes on layouts:

• Duplex vs. simplex: Duplex layouts are designed for duplex printing (printing on both sides of the page). They have page numbers which are always on the outside edge of the page, and they force chapters to start on new leaves. Simplex layouts always position the page numbers at the top-right corner of the page, and never insert extra pages.
• Colour vs. greyscale: Colour allows for a greater dynamic range than greyscale printing (for the BLAST maps, ~60 to 100% more). The colour layouts include full-colour maps. The greyscale layouts contain greyscale maps, at reduced dynamic range. The colour maps are not reproduced in a meaningful way on greyscale printers. NB: the greyscale layouts still contain some colour figures, but these remaining colour figures should print fine on a greyscale printer.
• On-screen reading: If you're not interested in printing the thesis, but only want to read it on-screen, choose the colour simplex PDF layout: it has better dynamic range. Furthermore, the PDF verion contains hyperlinked section references which should help with navigation.

Corrigenda and Errata for the Third Edition

General Corrigenda:

• List of Acronyms: For "Flux-Programmable Gate Array" read "Field-Programmable Gate Array".
• Section 5.1.1: Naïve Map Making: For "f_hp" read "f_lp".
• Section 5.4.6: The Weight Spectrum: ditto.

Miscellaneous Errata:

• Section 1.3: My Thesis Work: For "[...] and peformed general testing on the pointing system." read "[...] and performed general testing on the pointing system."
• Section 2.2.3: The Sun Shields: For "[...] from striking the telescope upon ‘chute shock [...]" read "[...] from striking the telescope upon ’chute shock [...]".
• Section 2.3.2.3: Frame Control: For "These date are written to the BLASTbus [...]" read "These data are written to the BLASTbus [...]".
• Figure caption 2.5: For "[...] is clearly aparent." read "[...] is clearly apparent."
• Section 2.4: The Flight Computers: For "[...] and multiport a serial card." read "[...] and a multiport serial card."
• Section 3.4.5: The Pointing System: For "[...] at certain orientations relative the sun." read "[...] at certain orientations relative to the sun."
• Section 4.6.2: Correlated Noise Estimation: For "[...] an underestimation of the noise at on these scales." read "[...] an underestimation of the noise on these scales."
• Section 4.9: Pointing Offsets: For "[...] the orientation ISC is used as the reference." read "[...] the orientation of the ISC is used as the reference."
• Section 5.3: The BLAST Map Makers: For "[...] along with the Optibin and SANEPIC." read "[...] along with Optibin and SANEPIC."
• Section 5.4.6: The Weight Spectrum: For "[...] these modes are cannot be recovered [...]" read "[...] these modes cannot be recovered [...]".
• Appendix C: For "The true philosphers, Syrus, were, [...]" read "The true philosophers, Syrus, were, [...]".