126 research outputs found
Large-scale retrospective relative spectro-photometric self-calibration in space
We consider the application of relative self-calibration using overlap
regions to spectroscopic galaxy surveys that use slit-less spectroscopy. This
method is based on that developed for the SDSS by Padmanabhan at al. (2008) in
that we consider jointly fitting and marginalising over calibrator brightness,
rather than treating these as free parameters. However, we separate the
calibration of the detector-to-detector from the full-focal-plane
exposure-to-exposure calibration. To demonstrate how the calibration procedure
will work, we simulate the procedure for a potential implementation of the
spectroscopic component of the wide Euclid survey. We study the change of
coverage and the determination of relative multiplicative errors in flux
measurements for different dithering configurations. We use the new method to
study the case where the flat-field across each exposure or detector is
measured precisely and only exposure-to-exposure or detector-to-detector
variation in the flux error remains. We consider several base dither patterns
and find that they strongly influence the ability to calibrate, using this
methodology. To enable self-calibration, it is important that the survey
strategy connects different observations with at least a minimum amount of
overlap, and we propose an "S"-pattern for dithering that fulfills this
requirement. The final survey strategy adopted by Euclid will have to optimise
for a number of different science goals and requirements. The large-scale
calibration of the spectroscopic galaxy survey is clearly cosmologically
crucial, but is not the only one.Comment: 23 pages, 19 figures, Accepted for publication in MNRAS, 201
Euclid: Superluminous supernovae in the Deep Survey
Context. In the last decade, astronomers have found a new type of supernova called superluminous supernovae (SLSNe) due to their high peak luminosity and long light-curves. These hydrogen-free explosions (SLSNe-I) can be seen to z ~ 4 and therefore, offer the possibility of probing the distant Universe.
Aims. We aim to investigate the possibility of detecting SLSNe-I using ESA’s Euclid satellite, scheduled for launch in 2020. In particular, we study the Euclid Deep Survey (EDS) which will provide a unique combination of area, depth and cadence over the mission.
Methods. We estimated the redshift distribution of Euclid SLSNe-I using the latest information on their rates and spectral energy distribution, as well as known Euclid instrument and survey parameters, including the cadence and depth of the EDS. To estimate the uncertainties, we calculated their distribution with two different set-ups, namely optimistic and pessimistic, adopting different star formation densities and rates. We also applied a standardization method to the peak magnitudes to create a simulated Hubble diagram to explore possible cosmological constraints.
Results. We show that Euclid should detect approximately 140 high-quality SLSNe-I to z ~ 3.5 over the first five years of the mission (with an additional 70 if we lower our photometric classification criteria). This sample could revolutionize the study of SLSNe-I at z > 1 and open up their use as probes of star-formation rates, galaxy populations, the interstellar and intergalactic medium. In addition, a sample of such SLSNe-I could improve constraints on a time-dependent dark energy equation-of-state, namely w(a), when combined with local SLSNe-I and the expected SN Ia sample from the Dark Energy Survey.
Conclusions. We show that Euclid will observe hundreds of SLSNe-I for free. These luminous transients will be in the Euclid data-stream and we should prepare now to identify them as they offer a new probe of the high-redshift Universe for both astrophysics and cosmology.Acknowledgements. We thank the internal EC referees (P. Nugent and J.
Brichmann) as well as the many comments from our EC colleagues and friends.
C.I. thanks Chris Frohmaier and Szymon Prajs for useful discussions about
supernova rates. C.I. and R.C.N. thank Mark Cropper for helpful information
about the V IS instrument. C.I. thanks the organisers and participants of the
Munich Institute for Astro- and Particle Physics (MIAPP) workshop “Superluminous supernovae in the next decade” for stimulating discussions and the
provided online material. The Euclid Consortium acknowledges the European
Space Agency and the support of a number of agencies and institutes that
have supported the development of Euclid. A detailed complete list is available on the Euclid web site (http://www.euclid-ec.org). In particular the
Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, the Centre National dEtudes Spatiales, the Deutsches
Zentrum für Luft- and Raumfahrt, the Danish Space Research Institute, the Fundação para a Ciênca e a Tecnologia, the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, The Netherlandse
Onderzoekschool Voor Astronomie, the Norvegian Space Center, the Romanian
Space Agency, the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation
(SERI) at the Swiss Space Office (SSO), the United Kingdom Space Agency,
and the University of Helsinki. R.C.N. acknowledges partial support from the
UK Space Agency. D.S. acknowledges the Faculty of Technology of the University of Portsmouth for support during his PhD studies. C.I. and S.J.S. acknowledge funding from the European Research Council under the European
Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013)/ERC Grant agreement No. [291222]. C.I. and M.S. acknowledge support from EU/FP7-ERC
grant No. [615929]. E.C. acknowledge financial contribution from the agreement ASI/INAF/I/023/12/0. The work by KJ and others at MPIA on NISP was
supported by the Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR) under
grant 50QE1202. M.B. and S.C. acknowledge financial contribution from the
agreement ASI/INAF I/023/12/1. R.T. acknowledges funding from the Spanish
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad under the grant ESP2015-69020-C2-
2-R. I.T. acknowledges support from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia
(FCT) through the research grant UID/FIS/04434/2013 and IF/01518/2014. J.R.
was supported by JPL, which is run under a contract for NASA by Caltech and
by NASA ROSES grant 12-EUCLID12-0004
Euclid Space Mission: building the sky survey
The Euclid space mission proposes to survey 15000 square degrees of the
extragalactic sky during 6 years, with a step-and-stare technique. The
scheduling of observation sequences is driven by the primary scientific
objectives, spacecraft constraints, calibration requirements and physical
properties of the sky. We present the current reference implementation of the
Euclid survey and on-going work on survey optimization.Comment: to appear in Proceedings IAU Symposium No. 306, "Statistical
Challenges in 21st Century Cosmology", A.F. Heavens, J.-L. Starck & A.
Krone-Martins, ed
Optical performance of the JWST MIRI flight model: characterization of the point spread function at high-resolution
The Mid Infra Red Instrument (MIRI) is one of the four instruments onboard
the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), providing imaging, coronagraphy and
spectroscopy over the 5-28 microns band. To verify the optical performance of
the instrument, extensive tests were performed at CEA on the flight model (FM)
of the Mid-InfraRed IMager (MIRIM) at cryogenic temperatures and in the
infrared. This paper reports on the point spread function (PSF) measurements at
5.6 microns, the shortest operating wavelength for imaging. At 5.6 microns the
PSF is not Nyquist-sampled, so we use am original technique that combines a
microscanning measurement strategy with a deconvolution algorithm to obtain an
over-resolved MIRIM PSF. The microscanning consists in a sub-pixel scan of a
point source on the focal plane. A data inversion method is used to reconstruct
PSF images that are over-resolved by a factor of 7 compared to the native
resolution of MIRI. We show that the FWHM of the high-resolution PSFs were
5-10% wider than that obtained with Zemax simulations. The main cause was
identified as an out-of-specification tilt of the M4 mirror. After correction,
two additional test campaigns were carried out, and we show that the shape of
the PSF is conform to expectations. The FWHM of the PSFs are 0.18-0.20 arcsec,
in agreement with simulations. 56.1-59.2% of the total encircled energy
(normalized to a 5 arcsec radius) is contained within the first dark Airy ring,
over the whole field of view. At longer wavelengths (7.7-25.5 microns), this
percentage is 57-68%. MIRIM is thus compliant with the optical quality
requirements. This characterization of the MIRIM PSF, as well as the
deconvolution method presented here, are of particular importance, not only for
the verification of the optical quality and the MIRI calibration, but also for
scientific applications.Comment: 13 pages, submitted to SPIE Proceedings vol. 7731, Space Telescopes
and Instrumentation 2010: Optical, Infrared, and Millimeter Wav
Euclid preparation : I. The Euclid Wide Survey
Euclid is a mission of the European Space Agency that is designed to constrain the properties of dark energy and gravity via weak gravitational lensing and galaxy clustering. It will carry out a wide area imaging and spectroscopy survey (the Euclid Wide Survey: EWS) in visible and near-infrared bands, covering approximately 15 000 deg(2) of extragalactic sky in six years. The wide-field telescope and instruments are optimised for pristine point spread function and reduced stray light, producing very crisp images. This paper presents the building of the Euclid reference survey: the sequence of pointings of EWS, deep fields, and calibration fields, as well as spacecraft movements followed by Euclid as it operates in a step-and-stare mode from its orbit around the Lagrange point L2. Each EWS pointing has four dithered frames; we simulated the dither pattern at the pixel level to analyse the effective coverage. We used up-to-date models for the sky background to define the Euclid region-of-interest (RoI). The building of the reference survey is highly constrained from calibration cadences, spacecraft constraints, and background levels; synergies with ground-based coverage were also considered. Via purposely built software, we first generated a schedule for the calibrations and deep fields observations. On a second stage, the RoI was tiled and scheduled with EWS observations, using an algorithm optimised to prioritise the best sky areas, produce a compact coverage, and ensure thermal stability. The result is the optimised reference survey RSD_2021A, which fulfils all constraints and is a good proxy for the final solution. The current EWS covers approximate to 14 & x2006;500 deg(2). The limiting AB magnitudes (5 sigma point-like source) achieved in its footprint are estimated to be 26.2 (visible band I-E) and 24.5 (for near infrared bands Y-E, J(E), H-E); for spectroscopy, the H alpha line flux limit is 2 x 10(-16) erg(-1) cm(-2) s(-1) at 1600 nm; and for diffuse emission, the surface brightness limits are 29.8 (visible band) and 28.4 (near infrared bands) mag arcsec(-2).Peer reviewe
VIS: the visible imager for Euclid
Euclid-VIS is a large format visible imager for the ESA Euclid space mission
in their Cosmic Vision program, scheduled for launch in 2019. Together with the
near infrared imaging within the NISP instrument it forms the basis of the weak
lensing measurements of Euclid. VIS will image in a single r+i+z band from
550-900 nm over a field of view of ~0.5 deg2. By combining 4 exposures with a
total of 2240 sec, VIS will reach to V=24.5 (10{\sigma}) for sources with
extent ~0.3 arcsec. The image sampling is 0.1 arcsec. VIS will provide deep
imaging with a tightly controlled and stable point spread function (PSF) over a
wide survey area of 15000 deg2 to measure the cosmic shear from nearly 1.5
billion galaxies to high levels of accuracy, from which the cosmological
parameters will be measured. In addition, VIS will also provide a legacy
imaging dataset with an unprecedented combination of spatial resolution, depth
and area covering most of the extra-Galactic sky. Here we will present the
results of the study carried out by the Euclid Consortium during the Euclid
Definition phase.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figure
The ARIEL Instrument Control Unit design for the M4 Mission Selection Review of the ESA's Cosmic Vision Program
The Atmospheric Remote-sensing Infrared Exoplanet Large-survey mission
(ARIEL) is one of the three present candidates for the ESA M4 (the fourth
medium mission) launch opportunity. The proposed Payload will perform a large
unbiased spectroscopic survey from space concerning the nature of exoplanets
atmospheres and their interiors to determine the key factors affecting the
formation and evolution of planetary systems. ARIEL will observe a large number
(>500) of warm and hot transiting gas giants, Neptunes and super-Earths around
a wide range of host star types, targeting planets hotter than 600 K to take
advantage of their well-mixed atmospheres. It will exploit primary and
secondary transits spectroscopy in the 1.2-8 um spectral range and broad-band
photometry in the optical and Near IR (NIR). The main instrument of the ARIEL
Payload is the IR Spectrometer (AIRS) providing low-resolution spectroscopy in
two IR channels: Channel 0 (CH0) for the 1.95-3.90 um band and Channel 1 (CH1)
for the 3.90-7.80 um range. It is located at the intermediate focal plane of
the telescope and common optical system and it hosts two IR sensors and two
cold front-end electronics (CFEE) for detectors readout, a well defined process
calibrated for the selected target brightness and driven by the Payload's
Instrument Control Unit (ICU).Comment: Experimental Astronomy, Special Issue on ARIEL, (2017
The Mid-Infrared Instrument for the James Webb Space Telescope, III: MIRIM, The MIRI Imager
In this article, we describe the MIRI Imager module (MIRIM), which provides
broad-band imaging in the 5 - 27 microns wavelength range for the James Webb
Space Telescope. The imager has a 0"11 pixel scale and a total unobstructed
view of 74"x113". The remainder of its nominal 113"x113" field is occupied by
the coronagraphs and the low resolution spectrometer. We present the instrument
optical and mechanical design. We show that the test data, as measured during
the test campaigns undertaken at CEA-Saclay, at the Rutherford Appleton
Laboratory, and at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, indicate that the
instrument complies with its design requirements and goals. We also discuss the
operational requirements (multiple dithers and exposures) needed for optimal
scientific utilization of the MIRIM.Comment: 29 pages, 9 figure
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