NIMBUS: The Near-Infrared Multi-Band Ultraprecise Spectroimager for SOFIA
Abstract
We present a new and innovative near-infrared multi-band ultraprecise spectroimager (NIMBUS) for SOFIA. This design is capable of characterizing a large sample of extrasolar planet atmospheres by measuring elemental and molecular abundances during primary transit and occultation. This wide-field spectroimager would also provide new insights into Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNO), Solar System occultations, brown dwarf atmospheres, carbon chemistry in globular clusters, chemical gradients in nearby galaxies, and galaxy photometric redshifts. NIMBUS would be the premier ultraprecise spectroimager by taking advantage of the SOFIA observatory and state of the art infrared technologies. This optical design splits the beam into eight separate spectral bandpasses, centered around key molecular bands from 1 to 4 microns. Each spectral channel has a wide field of view for simultaneous observations of a reference star that can decorrelate time-variable atmospheric and optical assembly effects, allowing the instrument to achieve ultraprecise calibration for imaging and photometry for a wide variety of astrophysical sources. NIMBUS produces the same data products as a low-resolution integral field spectrograph over a large spectral bandpass, but this design obviates many of the problems that preclude high-precision measurements with traditional slit and integral field spectrographs. This instrument concept is currently not funded for development.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1208.0832,
title = {NIMBUS: The Near-Infrared Multi-Band Ultraprecise Spectroimager for SOFIA},
author = {Michael W. McElwain and Avi Mandell and Bruce Woodgate and David S. Spiegel and Nikku Madhusudhan and Edward Amatucci and Cullen Blake and Jason Budinoff and Adam Burgasser and Adam Burrows and Mark Clampin and Charlie Conroy and L. Drake Deming and Edward Dunham and Roger Foltz and Qian Gong and Heather Knutson and Theodore Muench and Ruth Murray-Clay and Hume Peabody and Bernard Rauscher and Stephen A. Rinehart and Geronimo Villanueva},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1208.0832},
year = {2015}
}
Comments
14 pages, 9 figures, SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation 2012