Princeton University Gravity Group Lunch Seminar

This week, Javier Romualdez, Steven Benton, and Steven Li will introduce the SuperBIT and GigaBIT experiments, two of the projects underway in William Jones' experimental cosmology group. The Super-pressure Balloon-borne Imaging Telescope (SuperBIT) is the first-of-its-kind, three-axis stabilized, high-resolution, wide-field imager designed to provide weak lensing measurements in near-UV to near-IR bands (300–1000 nm). Operating in near-space from the stratospheric balloon-borne environment, SuperBIT's 0.5-m telescope has demonstrated diffraction-limited imaging over its 0.5-degree field of view. SuperBIT's successor, the Giga-pixel BIT (GigaBIT), is being designed with an upgraded camera and 1.3-m primary mirror. We report on SuperBIT performance from the most recent 2019 test-flight, preparations for SuperBIT's science flight in 2022 from Wanaka, NZ, and current design progress for the GigaBIT instrument.