Understanding the Herschel-SPIRE bolometers

摘要

Bolometers are very simple devices. In principle, the behaviour of a bolometer can be described by a simple model alongwith a small number of parameters. The SPIRE instrument for the Herschel Space Observatory contains five arrays ofNTD germanium spiderweb bolometers containing up to 139 pixels. We show from characterisation measurements on theground using the flight read-out system that the bolometers follow the ideal model extremely well, are very stable, and thatthe read-out system is sufficiently well behaved to take advantage of this. Calibration should be greatly simplified by beingable to take advantage of this behaviour.