the cosmic infrared background experiment (ciber)
- Paper number
IAC-08.A3.4.9
- Author
Mr. Kohji TSUMURA, JAXA/ISAS, Japan
- Coauthor
Dr. Jamie Bock, JPL /Caltech, United States
- Coauthor
Prof. Toshio Matsumoto, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), Japan
- Year
2008
- Abstract
The Cosmic Infrared Background (CIB) is the surface brightness of the sky remaining after removal of foreground emissions. COBE and IRTS detected significant excess emission in the CIB. It could be integrated light of first stars which cannot be detected individually with current technology.
We have been preparing the Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment (CIBER), a rocket-borne mission designed for measuring the spectrum and fluctuation of the CIB around 1µm. This wavelength region has not been observed by previous space missions. CIBER consists of a low-resolution spectrometer (LRS), two-color wide-field imagers, and a narrow-band spectrometer (NBS). These instruments are cooled with liquid Nitrogen to reduce thermal background emission from the optics. The rocket with the CIBER instruments will be launched at the NASA White Sands Test Facility in June, 2008. CIBER will allow us to observe the Dark Age directly for the first time.
The LRS is a 5-cm refracting telescope with a prism (λ/Δλ∼20) and it will observe the absolute CIB spectrum in the 0.8-2.0µm spectral region. The LRS will confirm the spectral peak of the CIB around 1µm which might be a red-shifted Lyman-α emission from first stars.
The imagers are 11-cm refracting telescopes with I-band and H-band filters respectively. Employing these telescopes, we will search for spatial fluctuations in the CIB on angular scales from 7 arcsec to 2 deg, which have been poorly covered by previous observations. Fluctuation measurement is particularly important since it is independent from ambiguity of the model of the zodiacal light.
The NBS is a 7.5-cm imaging refractor with a Fabry-Perot filter (λ/Δλ∼1000) that will measure the zodiacal light intensity using a CaII Fraunhofer line (λ=854.2nm). With the NBS, we can estimate the contribution of the zodiacal light to the sky brightness which is the brightest foreground emission and causes significant uncertainty for the measurement of the CIB.
In this presentation, I will introduce the scientific goals of CIBER, specifications and actual performances of the CIBER instruments, and the very initial results of the CIBER first flight.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)