Confrontation of Cosmological Theories with Observational Data

by Malcolm S. Longair (Editor)

be hoped. We have improved measurements by at best a factor of 3. So thIS paper, unfortunately, IS really a status report rather than a progress report. There are, however, a few new results to mention. I shall present the results wIthout glVlng any detaIls of the experImental apparatus. In general, sources of error and problems in these measurements are not determined by the apparatus itself. The most important new result IS that of Paul Henry (1971), who employed a radiometer mounted on a rotatmg platform suspended beneath a balloon. Because he employed a rotatmg platform he was able to look for amsotropy over a WIde area area of the sky (about one-half of the northern hemIsphere), not Just a CIrcle of con- stant dechnatIOn. In a smgle mght, he was able to obtam enough data to establIsh a value for the component of the 'dIpole' anisotropy parallel to the spm aXIS of the Earth It IS LI T = (3. 2 ± 0 8) x 10-3 K in the direction (X = I Oh-ll hand () = - 30°. HIS results are conSIstent WIth the earher results of Conkhn (1969), but provIde the Im- portant addItIonal datum that the motion of the Earth with respect to the co-movmg coordinate system (and parallel to the spm aXIS of the Earth) IS small. MeanwhIle, Conklin refined and repeated hIS earher measurement and reduced the statIstical error. The results of his work are reported m the IAU Symp. 44 (1972).

393 pages, Paperback

First published September 30, 1974