A measurement of the angular power spectrum of the CMB temperature anisotropy from the 2003 flight of BOOMERANG

We report on observations of the cosmic microwave background ( CMB) obtained during the 2003 January flight of BOOMERANG. These results are derived from 195 hr of observation with four 145 GHz polarization- sensitive bolometer ( PSB) pairs, identical in design to the four 143 GHz Planck High Frequency Instrument ( HFI) polarized pixels. The data include 75 hr of observations distributed over 1.84% of the sky with an additional 120 hr concentrated on the central portion of the field, which represents 0.22% of the full sky. From these data we derive an estimate of the angular power spectrum of temperature fluctuations of the CMB in 24 bands over the multipole range 50 <= l <= 1500. A series of features, consistent with those expected from acoustic oscillations in the primordial photon-baryon fluid, are clearly evident in the power spectrum, as is the exponential damping of power on scales smaller than the photon mean free path at the epoch of last scattering (l greater than or similar to 900). As a consistency check, the collaboration has performed two fully independent analyses of the time-ordered data, which are found to be in excellent agreement.