2022/11/28 by Vincent Picouet, Picouet, Vincent, D. Valls‐Gabaud +41
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Astrophysics and Cosmic Phenomena #Astrophysics of Galaxies (astro-ph.GA) #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM) #Photocathodes and Microchannel Plates #Radio Astronomy Observations and Technology
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2211.15491
openalex publication_date 2022/11/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
FIREBall-2 is a stratospheric balloon-borne 1-m telescope coupled to a UV\nmulti-object slit spectrograph designed to map the faint UV emission\nsurrounding z~0.7 galaxies and quasars through their Lyman-alpha line emission.\nThis spectro-imager had its first launch on September 22nd 2018 out of Ft.\nSumner, NM, USA. Because the balloon was punctured, the flight was abruptly\ninterrupted. Instead of the nominal 8 hours above 32 km altitude, the\ninstrument could only perform science acquisition for 45 minutes at this\naltitude. In addition, the shape of the deflated balloon, combined with a full\nMoon, revealed a severe off-axis scattered light path, directly into the UV\nscience detector and about 100 times larger than expected. In preparation for\nthe next flight, and in addition to describing FIREBall-2's upgrade, this paper\ndiscusses the exposure time calculator (ETC) that has been designed to analyze\nthe instrument's optimal performance (explore the instrument's limitations and\nsubtle trade-offs).\n