INTERSTELLAR DUST SPECTRAL INDEX - A BALLOON-BORNE EXPERIMENT

A balloon-borne experiment has been conceived in order to map the sub- millimetric galactic emission at four different wavelength between 400 mu m and 2 mm at an angular scale of 1 degrees. Such measurements wil l make it possible both to investigate the nature of the interstellar dust and to disentangle the galactic contribution from extragalactic a nd cosmological signals. A binocular telescope system has been realize d by means of two 37 cm off-axis wobbling parabolic mirrors, each one coupled with a two-channel 3(H) photometer. The first trans-Mediterran ean flight is scheduled for summer 1995.