Logo image
Back
FIREBall-2: flight preparation of a proven balloon payload to image the intermediate redshift circumgalactic medium
Preprint   Open access

FIREBall-2: flight preparation of a proven balloon payload to image the intermediate redshift circumgalactic medium

Vincent Picouet, David Valls-Gabaud, Bruno Milliard, David Schiminovich, Drew M Miles, Keri Hoadley, Erika Hamden, D. Christopher Martin, Gillian Kyne, Trent Brendel, …
ArXiv.org
11/28/2022
DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2211.15491
url
https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2211.15491View
Preprint (Author's original)This preprint has not been evaluated by subject experts through peer review. Preprints may undergo extensive changes and/or become peer-reviewed journal articles. Open Access

Abstract

FIREBall-2 is a stratospheric balloon-borne 1-m telescope coupled to a UV multi-object slit spectrograph designed to map the faint UV emission surrounding z~0.7 galaxies and quasars through their Lyman-alpha line emission. This spectro-imager had its first launch on September 22nd 2018 out of Ft. Sumner, NM, USA. Because the balloon was punctured, the flight was abruptly interrupted. Instead of the nominal 8 hours above 32 km altitude, the instrument could only perform science acquisition for 45 minutes at this altitude. In addition, the shape of the deflated balloon, combined with a full Moon, revealed a severe off-axis scattered light path, directly into the UV science detector and about 100 times larger than expected. In preparation for the next flight, and in addition to describing FIREBall-2's upgrade, this paper discusses the exposure time calculator (ETC) that has been designed to analyze the instrument's optimal performance (explore the instrument's limitations and subtle trade-offs).

Details

Metrics

6 Record Views
Logo image