Speaker
Description
High sensitivity is routinely prioritized in observational cosmology, yet the output of precision experiments is ultimately bound by instrument calibration. Too often treated as a late-stage detail, un-optimized calibration strategies—specifically instrumental offsets and gain drifts—directly limit measurement accuracy. Drawing on my experiences with COBE/FIRAS and ARCADE 2, I show how calibration systematics, rather than raw noise, constrained our knowledge of the absolute CMB temperature and bounded the FIRAS spectral distortion limits ($y$). I will show what could have been done differently to address these limitations, tracing how these hard-learned lessons directly shaped the calibration-first design architecture of PIXIE—where absolute calibration is elevated from a secondary routine to the primary mission requirement.