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We have developed a system for making measurements of spatial fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background radiation, on an angular scale of 5' to a few degrees. The system consists of an off- axis Gregorian telescope with a nearly Gaussian response with full width at half-maximum (FWHM) adjustable from 20' to 50', a superconductor-insulator-superconductor (SIS) coherent receiver operating at 3. 3 mm, and a pointing system capable of better than 1' RMS stabilization. We report on results from the system's first balloon flight in 1988 August, and ground-based measurements made from the South Pole in 1988 December. We use a portion of the South Pole data to place a 95% confidence level upper limit of DELTAT/T < 3. 5 x 10^-5^ for Gaussian sky fluctuations in the background radiation at 20' angular scale and a limit of DELTAT/T < 3. 3 x 10^-5^ on overall excess intrinsic sky noise. We also estimate dust contamination in our cosmic background radiation data using measurements of the Galaxy from this flight and a previous one, along with the IRAS 100 micron map. These anisotropy results give the most stringent limits on cold dark matter theories to date.
Meinhold et al. (Fri,) studied this question.