FIREBall-2: flight preparation of a proven balloon payload to image the\n intermediate redshift circumgalactic medium Article Swipe
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· 2022
· Open Access
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· DOI: https://doi.org/10.48550/arxiv.2211.15491
· OA: W4310374641
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
