An optical test facility for the B-BOP bolometers of the SPICA mission

The B-BOP instrument for the SPICA mission will use a brand new generation of submillimeter bolometers. An ultra-low background testbed for these bolometers has been developed for phase A of ESA. Inside the test cryostat lies a submillimeter light source designed to emit different flux, each of them with the same spectrum, at high temperature. To make sure the light arriving on the bolometers is faint, we use an inversed telescope to dilute the light. This allowed us to perform the first measurements on bolometer arrays produced by CEA-Leti.