The observational and operational efficiency of the TIFR 1 meter balloon borne far infrared telescope has been improved by incorporating a multielement solid state optical photometer ( SSOP ) at the Cassegrain focus of the telescope .
The SSOP is based on a 1-D linear photo diode array ( PDA ) .
The online and offline processing schemes of the PDA signals which have been developed , lead to improvement in the determination of absolute telescope aspect ( \sim 0 \farcm 8 ) , which is very crucial for carrying out the observations as well as offline analysis .
The SSOP and its performance during a recent balloon flight are presented here .