THE BRIGHTNESS TEMPERATURE OF THE SOUTH CELESTIAL POLE AND THE TEMPERATURE OF THE COSMIC BACKGROUND-RADIATION MEASURED AT 36.6 AND 12 CENTIMETER WAVELENGTH

The absolute temperature of the sky around the south celestial pole has been measured at nu = 0.82 GHz (lambda = 36.6 cm) and nu = 2.5 GHz (lambda = 12 cm) during an observing campaign from the Amundsen Scott Base at the South Pole in 1989 December. The antennas had an angular resolution of 18-degrees x 23-degrees. The measured temperatures of the sky have been used to determine the temperature of the cosmic background radiation in a frequency region where large deviations from a pure Planckian spectrum are expected. The results at 2.5 GHz (T(sky) = 2.58 +/- 0.34 K, T(CBR)th = 2.50 +/- 0.34 K) are fully consistent with the results of previous observations at the same frequency. At 0.82 GHz an undesired level of the system attenuation gave large error bars (T(sky) = 5.7 +/- 1.6 K, T(CBR)th = 2.7 +/- 1.6 K). In spite of that limitation we report the 0.82 GHz results because no data at the same or nearby frequencies can be found in the literature.