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

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. Su...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2022-11
Main Authors: Picouet, Vincent, Valls-Gabaud, David, Milliard, Bruno, Schiminovich, David, Miles, Drew M, Hoadley, Keri, Hamden, Erika, Martin, D Christopher, Kyne, Gillian, Brendel, Trent, Aafaque Raza Khan, Evrard, Jean, Zeren Lin, Chung, Haeun, Agarwal, Simran, Ignacio Cevallos Aleman, Charles-Antoine Chevrier, Li, Jess, Melso, Nicole, Shouleh Nikzad, Vibert, Didier, Bray, Nicolas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Altitude
Balloons
Fireballs
Galaxies
Quasars
Red shift
Ultraviolet emission
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Summary: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).
ISSN:2331-8422