Astrophysics with New Horizons: Making the Most of a Generational Opportunity

Zemcov, Michael; Arcavi, I.; Arendt, Richard G.; Bachelet, E.; Chary, R.-R.; Cooray, Asantha; Dragomir, Diana; Henry, R. C.; Lisse, C. M.; Matsuura, Shuji; Murthy, Jayant; Nguyen, Chi H.; Poppe, A. R.; Street, R. A.; Werner, M. W.

doi:10.1088/1538-3873/aadb77

Cited by 13 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 161 publications

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“…We did not expect to detect any sunlight scattered by IPD within the Kuiper Belt, based on detailed models of the distribution of dust within the outer solar system (Zemcov et al 2018;Poppe et al 2019), normalized by in situ measurements by the New Horizons Student Dust Counter (Piquette et al 2019). In brief, the models integrate scattered light along any line of sight from the New Horizons spacecraft, using an appropriate phase function at any given solar elongation for an assumed dust particle size/density function.…”

Section: Sunlight Scattered By Dust Within the Kuiper Beltmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Horizons Observations of the Cosmic Optical Background

Lauer

Postman

Weaver

et al. 2021

ApJ

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We used existing data from the New Horizons Long-range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) to measure the optical-band (0.4λ0.9 μm) sky brightness within seven high-Galactic latitude fields. The average raw level measured while New Horizons was 42-45 au from the Sun is 33.2±0.5 nW m −2 sr −1 . This is ∼10×as dark as the darkest sky accessible to the Hubble Space Telescope, highlighting the utility of New Horizons for detecting the cosmic optical background (COB). Isolating the COB contribution to the raw total required subtracting scattered light from bright stars and galaxies, faint stars below the photometric detection limit within the fields, and diffuse Milky Way light scattered by infrared cirrus. We removed newly identified residual zodiacal light from the IRIS 100 μm all-sky maps to generate two different estimates for the diffuse Galactic light. Using these yielded a highly significant detection of the COB in the range 15.9±4.2 (1.8 stat., 3.7 sys.)nW m −2 sr −1 to 18.7±3.8 (1.8 stat., 3.3 sys.)nW m −2 sr −1 at the LORRI pivot wavelength of 0.608 μm. Subtraction of the integrated light of galaxies fainter than the photometric detection limit from the total COB level left a diffuse flux component of unknown origin in the range 8.8±4.9 (1.8 stat., 4.5 sys.)nW m −2 sr −1 to 11.9±4.6(1.8 stat., 4.2 sys.)nW m −2 sr −1 . Explaining it with undetected galaxies requires the assumption that the galaxy count faintend slope steepens markedly at V>24 or that existing surveys are missing half the galaxies with V<30.Unified Astronomy Thesaurus concepts: Cosmic background radiation (317); Diffuse radiation (383); Population III stars (1285); Galaxy formation (595)

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Section: Sunlight Scattered By Dust Within the Kuiper Beltmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Horizons Observations of the Cosmic Optical Background

Lauer

Postman

Weaver

et al. 2021

ApJ

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“…The data were taken during the cruising phase toward the outer solar system at R > 5 AU, where the ZL intensity is expected to be lower than that in the earth orbit by a few orders of magnitude (e.g., Fig. 4 of Zemcov et al 2018). Matsumoto et al (2018) present reanalysis of the data obtained with a visible camera onboard Pioneer 10/11 beyond R = 3 AU (Matsuoka et al 2011).…”

Section: Implication From the Presentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In addition to the precise observations from the earth orbit, it will be extremely beneficial to observe the sky from deep space (R 5 AU), where the ZL intensity is expected to be lower than that around the earth by more than one order of magnitude (Zemcov et al 2018). In the visible wavelengths, such an opportunity has been provided by instruments onboard spacecrafts, such as Pioneer 10/11 (Matsumoto et al 2018) and New Horizons (Zemcov et al 2017).…”

Section: Future Prospect Of the Ebl Observationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…14) may imply that the density structure of the isotropic IPD is different from the prediction of ∼ 1/R (Section 5.1). The deep-space observations with EXZIT will be useful to probe the structure of the isotropic IPD component thanks to the promising decrease of the main IPD component from JFCs (Zemcov et al 2018).…”

Section: Future Prospect Of the Ebl Observationmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The isotropic interplanetary dust cloud and near-infrared extragalactic background light observed with COBE/DIRBE

Sano,

Matsuura,

Yomo

et al. 2020

Preprint

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We report observation of isotropic interplanetary dust (IPD) by analyzing the infrared (IR) maps of Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE) onboard the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) spacecraft. To search for the isotropic IPD, we perform new analysis in terms of solar elongation angle (ǫ), because we expect zodiacal light (ZL) intensity from the isotropic IPD to decrease as a function of ǫ. We use the DIRBE weekly-averaged maps covering 64 • ǫ 124 • and inspect the ǫ-dependence of residual intensity after subtracting conventional ZL components. We find the ǫ-dependence of the residuals, indicating the presence of the isotropic IPD. However, the mid-IR ǫ-dependence is different from that of the isotropic IPD model at ǫ 90 • , where the residual intensity increases as a function of ǫ. To explain the observed ǫ-dependence, we assume a spheroidal IPD cloud showing higher density further away from the sun. We estimate intensity of the near-IR extragalactic background light (EBL) by subtracting the spheroidal component, assuming the spectral energy distribution from the residual brightness at 12 µm. The EBL intensity is derived as 45 +11 −8 , 21 +3 −4 , and 15 ± 3 nWm −2 sr −1 at 1.25, 2.2, and 3.5 µm, respectively. The EBL is still a few times larger than integrated light of normal galaxies, suggesting existence of unaccounted extragalactic sources.

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“…[5]). Nonetheless, contamination from zodiacal light is negligible in the outer solar system [6,7]. This makes NASA's New Horizons spacecraft an extraordinary platform to measure the COB, as demonstrated by analyses using archival images of the New Horizons' Long Range Reconnaisance Imager (LORRI) [8,9].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The cosmic optical background excess, dark matter, and line-intensity mapping

Bernal¹,

Sato-Polito²,

Kamionkowski³

2022

Preprint

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Recent studies using New Horizons LORRI images have returned the most precise measurement of the cosmic optical background to date, yielding a flux that exceeds that expected from deep galaxy counts by roughly a factor of two. We investigate whether this excess, detected at ∼ 4σ significance, is due to dark matter that decays to a monoenergetic photon with a rest-frame energy in the range 0.5 − 10 eV. We derive the spectral energy distribution from such decays and the contribution to the flux measured by LORRI. The parameter space that explains the measured excess with decays to photons with energies E 4 eV is unconstrained to date. If the excess arises from dark-matter decay to a photon line, there will be a significant signal in forthcoming line-intensity mapping measurements. Moreover, the ultraviolet instrument aboard New Horizons (which will have better sensitivity and probe a different range of the spectrum) and future studies of very high-energy γ-ray attenuation will also test this hypothesis and expand the search for dark matter to a wider range of frequencies.

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Astrophysics with New Horizons: Making the Most of a Generational Opportunity

Cited by 13 publications

References 161 publications

New Horizons Observations of the Cosmic Optical Background

New Horizons Observations of the Cosmic Optical Background

The isotropic interplanetary dust cloud and near-infrared extragalactic background light observed with COBE/DIRBE

The cosmic optical background excess, dark matter, and line-intensity mapping

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