Archeops, mapping the CMB sky from large to small angular scales

Abstract

Archeops is a balloon-borne experiment designed to measure the temperature fluctuations of the CMB on a large region of the sky (≃ 30%) with a high angular resolution (10 arcminutes) and a high sensitivity (60µK per pixel). Archeops will perform a measurement of the CMB anisotropies power spectrum from large angular scales (ℓ ≃ 30) to small angular scales (ℓ ≃ 800). Archeops flew for the first time for a test flight in July 1999 from Sicily to Spain and the first scientific flight took place from Sweden to Russia in January 2001. The data analysis is on its way and I present here preliminary results, realistic simulations showing the expected accuracy on the measurement of the power spectrum and perspectives for the incoming flights (Winter 2001(Winter /2003.