MAX searches for intermediate-scale anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background

Abstract The balloon-borne Millimeter-Wave Anisotropy Experiment (MAX) is designed to measure the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) on angular scales from 0.3 to several degrees. The long term goal is to measure many pixels on the sky at a level approaching ΔT / T ( CMB ) = 1 × 10 −6 . These angular scales fill an important gap between the angular scales ⩽10arcmin which are accessible from conventional radio telescopes and the angular scales ⩾ 7 deg which have been measured by the COBE satellite. They are of particular importance to scientific issues such as galaxy formation, dark matter, and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect.