Astrophysics, Relativity, and Cosmology Seminar - Katie Harrington (Argonne National Laboratory) "The Simons Observatory: Commissioning and Early Observations for the Mid-frequency Small Aperture Telescopes"

The Simons Observatory (SO) is a cosmic microwave background (CMB) survey experiment observing from an altitude of 5,200 m in the Atacama Desert in Chile. The SO Small Aperture Telescopes (SATs) will cover six spectral bands between 30 and 280 GHz primarily to search for evidence of primordial gravitational waves in the large angular scale B-modes of the CMB polarization. The first two Mid-Frequency (MF) SATs, operating in the 90 and 150 GHz frequency bands, began commissioning observations in late 2023. I will discuss the telescope designs, commissioning observations and results, and analysis from our initial science observations.