High-precision temperature monitoring system for room-temperature equipment in astrophysical observations

Abstract

We present a precise thermometry system to monitor room-temperature components of a telescope for radio-astronomy such as cosmic microwave background (CMB) observation. The system realizes precision of 1 mK${\rm \sqrt{s}}$ on a timescale of 20 seconds at 300 K. We achieved this high precision by tracking only relative fluctuation and combining thermistors with a low-noise measurement device. We show the required precision of temperature monitors for CMB observation and introduce the performance of our thermometry system. This precise room-temperature monitoring system enables us to reduce the low-frequency noise in a wide range of radio-astronomical detector signals observation and to operate a large detector array perform at its designed high sensitivity.