Herschel SPIRE fourier transform spectrometer: calibration of its bright-source mode
Abstract
The Fourier Transform Spectrometer (FTS) of the Spectral and Photometric Imaging REceiver (SPIRE) on board the ESA Herschel Space Observatory has two detector setting modes: (a) a nominal mode, which is optimized for observing moderately bright to faint astronomical targets, and (b) a bright-source mode recommended for sources significantly brighter than 500 Jy, within the SPIRE FTS bandwidth of 446.7–1544 GHz (or 194–671 microns in wavelength), which employs a reduced detector responsivity and out-of-phase analog signal amplifier/demodulator. We address in detail the calibration issues unique to the bright-source mode, describe the integration of the bright-mode data processing into the existing pipeline for the nominal mode, and show that the flux calibration accuracy of the bright-source mode is generally within 2 % of that of the nominal mode, and that the bright-source mode is 3 to 4 times less sensitive than the nominal mode.
Additional Information
© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. Received: 29 June 2013; Accepted: 26 September 2013; Published online: 19 October 2013. Herschel is an ESA space observatory with science instruments provided by European-led Principal Investigator consortia and with important participation from NASA. We thank both an anonymous referee and Dr. Locke Spencer for their useful comments that helped improve the overall clarity of the paper. SPIRE has been developed by a consortium of institutes led by Cardiff University (UK) and including Univ. Lethbridge (Canada); NAOC (China); CEA, LAM (France); IFSI, Univ. Padua (Italy); IAC (Spain); Stockholm Observatory (Sweden); Imperial College London, RAL, UCL-MSSL, UKATC, Univ. Sussex (UK); and Caltech, JPL, NHSC, Univ. Colorado (USA). This development has been supported by national funding agencies: CSA (Canada); NAOC (China); CEA, CNES, CNRS (France); ASI (Italy); MCINN (Spain); SNSB (Sweden); STFC (UK); and NASA (USA). The Herschel spacecraft was designed, built, tested, and launched under a contract to ESA managed by the Herschel/Planck Project team by an industrial consortium under the overall responsibility of the prime contractor Thales Alenia Space (Cannes), and including Astrium (Friedrichshafen) responsible for the payload module and for system testing at spacecraft level, Thales Alenia Space (Turin) responsible for the service module, and Astrium (Toulouse) responsible for the telescope, with in excess of a hundred subcontractors. Support for this work was in part provided by NASA through an award issued by JPL/Caltech.Attached Files
Submitted - 1401.2045v1.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 49050
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20140829-084226679
- Canadian Space Agency (CSA)
- National Astronomical Observatories, Chinese Academy of Sciences (NAOC)
- Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA)
- Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES)
- Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)
- Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI)
- Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MCINN)
- Swedish National Space Board (SNSB)
- Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC)
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Created
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2014-08-29Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2021-11-10Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC)