P. Mauskopf

The European contribution to the SPICA mission

The Japanese led Space Infrared telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA) will observe the universe over the 5 to 210 micron band with unprecedented sensitivity owing to its cold (~5 K) 3.5m telescope. The scientific case for a European involvement in the SPICA mission has been accepted by the ESA advisory structure and a European contribution to SPICA is undergoing an assessment study as a Mission of Opportunity within the ESA Cosmic Vision 1015-2015 science mission programme. In this paper we describe the elements that are being studied for provision by Europe for the SPICA mission. These entail ESA directly providing the cryogenic telescope and ground segment support and a consortium of European insitutes providing a Far Infrared focal plane instrument. In this paper we describe the status of the ESA study and the design status of the FIR focal plane instrument.

Probing changes of dust properties along a chain of solar-type prestellar and protostellar cores in Taurus with NIKA

The characterization of dust properties in the interstellar medium (ISM) is key for star formation. Mass estimates are crucial to determine gravitational collapse conditions for the birth of new stellar objects in molecular clouds. However, most of these estimates rely on dust models that need further observational constraints from clouds to prestellar and protostellar cores. We present results of a study of dust emissivity changes based on mm-continuum data obtained with the NIKA camera at the IRAM-30m telescope. Observing dust emission at 1.15 mm and 2 mm allows us to constrain the dust emissivity index (

Optical modeling of waveguide coupled TES detectors towards the SAFARI instrument for SPICA

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The NIKA 2011 run: results and perspectives towards a permanent camera for the Pico Veleta observatory

) in the Rayleigh-Jeans tail of the dust spectral energy distribution (SED) far from its peak emission, where the contribution of other parameters (i.e. dust temperature) is important. Focusing on the Taurus molecular cloud, a low-mass star-forming regions in the Gould Belt, we analyze the emission properties of several distinct objects in the B213 filament: three prestellar cores, two Class-0/I protostellar cores and one Class-II object. By means of the ratio of the two NIKA channel-maps, we show that in the Rayleigh-Jeans approximation the dust emissivity index varies among the objects. For one prestellar and two protostellar cores, we produce a robust study using Herschel data to constrain the dust temperature of the sources. By using the Abel transform inversion technique we get accurate radial

Investigation of planar switches for large format CMB polarization instruments

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A NIKA view of two star-forming infrared dark clouds: Dust emissivity variations and mass concentration

profiles. We find systematic spatial variations of

NIKA 2: next-generation continuum/polarized camera at the IRAM 30 m telescope and its prototype

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Recent progress in commercial cryogen-free THz detectors and large format arrays

in the protostellar cores that is not observed in the prestellar core. While in the former case

Metal-mesh broadband anti-reflection coatings in the THz frequencies

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Superconducting Lumped Element Kinetic Inductance resonators for millimeter, sub-millimeter and far infrared detection

decreases toward the center, in the latter it remains constant. Moreover,