THE COSMIC INFRARED BACKGROUND EXPERIMENT ( CIBER ): THE WIDE-FIELD IMAGERS

Abstract

We have developed and characterized an imaging instrument to measure the spatial properties of the diffuse near-infrared extragalactic background light (EBL) in a search for fluctuations from z > 6 galaxies during the epoch of reionization. The instrument is part of the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER), designed to observe the EBL above Earth's atmosphere during a suborbital sounding rocket flight. The imaging instrument incorporates a 2 • × 2 • field of view to measure fluctuations over the predicted peak of the spatial power spectrum at 10 arcmin, and 7 × 7 pixels, to remove lower redshift galaxies to a depth sufficient to reduce the low-redshift galaxy clustering foreground below instrumental sensitivity. The imaging instrument employs two cameras with Δλ/λ ∼ 0.5 bandpasses centered at 1.1 μm and 1.6 μm to spectrally discriminate reionization extragalactic background fluctuations from local foreground fluctuations. CIBER operates at wavelengths where the electromagnetic spectrum of the reionization extragalactic background is thought to peak, and complements fluctuation measurements by AKARI and Spitzer at longer wavelengths. We have characterized the instrument in the laboratory, including measurements of the sensitivity, flat-field response, stray light performance, and noise properties. Several modifications were made to the instrument following a first flight in 2009 February. The instrument performed to specifications in three subsequent flights, and the scientific data are now being analyzed.

New Spectral Evidence of an Unaccounted Component of the Near-infrared Extragalactic Background Light from the CIBER

“…-7 - (Bock et al 2013). In order to investigate the ZL foreground, we observed the skies at low ecliptic latitudes, Elat-10 and Elat-30, where the ZL dominates the sky brightness.…”

“…Background Experiment (CIBER) (Zemcov et al 2013;Bock et al 2013;Tsumura et al 2013a; Korngut et al 2013). …”

Spitzer Observations of the North Ecliptic Pole

“…Each generated science map is also accompanied by the corresponding uncertainty and exposure maps calculated by MOPEX. We refer the reader to the MOPEX Murakami et al 2007) in the deep (Matsuhara et al 2006;Murata et al 2013) and wide (Lee et al 2009) fields, CIBER (Bock et al 2013;Zemcov et al 2014), and Herschel (Pearson et al 2017). The Spitzer observations were chosen to maximize the sky coverage by all these surveys, providing a complete census of the infrared SEDs of galaxies.…”

“…Furthermore, it has extensive observations from the X-ray to the millimeter (Kollgaard et al 1994;Gioia et al 2003;Lee et al 2007;Jeon et al 2010Jeon et al , 2014Krumpe et al 2015), with additional observations by WISE (Jarrett et al 2011). The field was specifically chosen to match the observations by the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER; Bock et al 2013;Zemcov et al 2014 as per msp) to study the extragalactic background light fluctuation (Cooray et al 2004(Cooray et al , 2012aMatsumoto et al 2005;Zemcov et al 2014;Matsuura et al 2017). Figure 1 shows the sky coverage of the Spitzer NEP observations compared to the other infrared missions of the NEP (Murakami et al 2007;Matsuhara et al 2006;Lee et al 2009;Pilbratt et al 2010;Bock et al 2013;Murata et al 2013).…”

“…The field was specifically chosen to match the observations by the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER; Bock et al 2013;Zemcov et al 2014 as per msp) to study the extragalactic background light fluctuation (Cooray et al 2004(Cooray et al , 2012aMatsumoto et al 2005;Zemcov et al 2014;Matsuura et al 2017). Figure 1 shows the sky coverage of the Spitzer NEP observations compared to the other infrared missions of the NEP (Murakami et al 2007;Matsuhara et al 2006;Lee et al 2009;Pilbratt et al 2010;Bock et al 2013;Murata et al 2013). The Spitzer observations were designed to maximize overlap with those of AKARI (Murakami et al 2007) in the deep (Matsuhara et al 2006;Murata et al 2013) and wide (Lee et al 2009) fields and observations by Herschel (Pearson et al 2017).…”