The Suborbital Imaging Spectrograph for Transition region Irradiance from Nearby Exoplanet host stars (SISTINE) is a rocket-borne ultraviolet (UV) imaging spectrograph designed to probe the radiation environment of nearby stars. SISTINE operates over a bandpass of 98 -- 127 and 130 -- 158 nm, capturing a broad suite of emission lines tracing the full 104 -- 105 K formation temperature range critical for reconstructing the full UV radiation field incident on planets orbiting solar-type stars. SISTINE serves as a platform for key technology developments for future ultraviolet observatories. SISTINE operates at moderate resolving power (R∼1500) while providing spectral imaging over an angular extent of ∼6', with ∼2" resolution at the slit center. The instrument is composed of an f/14 Cassegrain telescope that feeds a 2.1x magnifying spectrograph, utilizing a blazed holographically ruled diffraction grating and a powered fold mirror. Spectra are captured on a large format microchannel plate (MCP) detector consisting of two 113 x 42 mm segments each read out by a cross delay-line anode. Several novel technologies are employed in SISTINE to advance their technical maturity in support of future NASA UV/optical astronomy missions. These include enhanced aluminum lithium fluoride coatings (eLiF), atomic layer deposition (ALD) protective optical coatings, and ALD processed large format MCPs. SISTINE was launched a total of three times with two of the three launches successfully observing targets Procyon A and α Centauri A and B.
@article{arxiv.2410.02893,
title = {The assembly, characterization, and performance of SISTINE},
author = {Nicholas Nell and Kevin France and Nicholas Kruczek and Brian Fleming and Stefan Ulrich and Patrick Behr and Manuel A. Quijada and Javier Del Hoyo and John Hennessy},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2410.02893},
year = {2024}
}