Toward a Data-driven Model of the Sky from Low Earth Orbit as Observed by the Hubble Space Telescope

Caddy, Sarah; Spitler, Lee R.; Ellis, S. C.

doi:10.3847/1538-3881/ac76c2

Cited by 6 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 39 publications

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“…Many SKYSURF images contain light from the extended profiles of galaxies (Ashcraft et al 2018), the extended point-spread functions (PSFs) of stars (Borlaff et al 2019), thermal foregrounds (SKYSURF-2), sky gradients when observations are pushed too close to Earth's limb or taken at relatively small Moon or Sun angles (Caddy et al 2022), faint galaxies that are hidden in the noise, and Diffuse Light. We do not want these specific sources of flux to contaminate our sky-SB measurements,…”

Section: Percentile-clip Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Sun Angle (sometimes also referred to as Solar Elongation) is defined as the angle between an observation and the Sun. Caddy et al (2022) and Leinert et al (1998) show that Sun Angle can influence the brightness of Zodiacal emission, and thus the observed sky-SB. We find the shape of our sky-SB SED to depend on Sun Angle at wavelengths between 0.9-1.4 µm.…”

Section: Sky-sb Sedmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Kelsall et al (1998) was the first Zodiacal model to utilize NASA's Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) Diffuse Infrared Background Experiment (DIRBE), which spans 1.25 µm to 240 µm and characterizes the annual modulation of ZL emission to produce a three-dimensional model. COBE/DIRBE ZL emission maps have excellent relative accuracies of 1% to 2% (Leinert et al 1998), but are limited to Sun Angles of 94 deg ± 30 deg (Sun Angle refers to the the angle between the observation and the Sun, as shown in Figure 2 of Caddy et al 2022). This range of Sun Angles would allow the detection of any nearby isotropic/ spherically symmetric component of the IPD (Hauser et al 1998), but potentially miss a more distant component (e.g., Sano et al 2020).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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SKYSURF-4: Panchromatic Full Sky Surface Brightness Measurement Methods and Results

O'Brien¹,

Carleton²,

Windhorst³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The diffuse, unresolved sky provides most of the photons that the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) receives, yet remains poorly understood. HST Archival Legacy program SKYSURF aims to measure the 0.2-1.7 µm sky surface brightness (sky-SB) from over 200,000 HST images. We describe two sky-SB measurement algorithms designed for SKYSURF (the Percentile-clip and ProFound Median methods), that are able to recover the input sky-SB from simulated images to within 1% uncertainty, and present measurements estimated using each algorithm on the entire SKYSURF database. Comparing our sky-SB spectral energy distribution to measurements from the literature shows general agreements, but highlights that models of Zodiacal Light at HST wavelengths are likely incomplete. Our SKYSURF spectral energy distribution also reveals a dependence on Sun Angle, indicating non-isotropic scattering of Solar photons. Finally, we update Diffuse Light limits for F125W, F140W, and F160W based on the methods from Carleton et al. (2022). The Diffuse Light limits for both sky-SB measurements algorithms are in good agreement, ranging from 0.006 MJy sr −1 (14 nW m −2 sr −1 ) to 0.015 MJy sr −1 (32 nW m −2 sr −1 ). These estimates provide the most stringent all-sky constraints to date in this wavelength range. SKYSURF sky-SB measurements are made public on the official SKYSURF website and will be used to constrain Extragalactic Background Light in future papers.

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Section: Percentile-clip Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Sky-sb Sedmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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SKYSURF-4: Panchromatic Full Sky Surface Brightness Measurement Methods and Results

O'Brien¹,

Carleton²,

Windhorst³

et al. 2022

Preprint

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“…JWST's ability to work continuously in a dark-sky environment makes it especially suitable for measurements of sky-SB. This is in contrast with HST, which at best gets complete dark time for at most ∼30 minutes of its 96 minutes orbit (e.g., Caddy & Spitler 2021;Caddy et al 2022;Windhorst et al 2022). Figures 12-13 summarize the astrophysical foreground and background energy relevant to PEARLS compared to recent data (as summarized by, e.g., Driver et al 2016a;Koushan et al 2021;Carleton et al 2022) and IGL models (e.g., Andrews et al 2018).…”

Section: Jwst Sky-sb In the Context Of Previous Diffuse Light Limitsmentioning

confidence: 99%

JWST PEARLS. Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science: Project Overview and First Results

Windhorst

Cohen

Jansen

et al. 2022

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We give an overview and describe the rationale, methods, and first results from NIRCam images of the JWST “Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science” (PEARLS) project. PEARLS uses up to eight NIRCam filters to survey several prime extragalactic survey areas: two fields at the North Ecliptic Pole (NEP); seven gravitationally lensing clusters; two high redshift protoclusters; and the iconic backlit VV 191 galaxy system to map its dust attenuation. PEARLS also includes NIRISS spectra for one of the NEP fields and NIRSpec spectra of two high-redshift quasars. The main goal of PEARLS is to study the epoch of galaxy assembly, active galactic nucleus (AGN) growth, and First Light. Five fields—the JWST NEP Time-Domain Field (TDF), IRAC Dark Field, and three lensing clusters—will be observed in up to four epochs over a year. The cadence and sensitivity of the imaging data are ideally suited to find faint variable objects such as weak AGN, high-redshift supernovae, and cluster caustic transits. Both NEP fields have sightlines through our Galaxy, providing significant numbers of very faint brown dwarfs whose proper motions can be studied. Observations from the first spoke in the NEP TDF are public. This paper presents our first PEARLS observations, their NIRCam data reduction and analysis, our first object catalogs, the 0.9–4.5 μm galaxy counts and Integrated Galaxy Light. We assess the JWST sky brightness in 13 NIRCam filters, yielding our first constraints to diffuse light at 0.9–4.5 μm. PEARLS is designed to be of lasting benefit to the community.

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“…The night sky is dominated by emission from the atmosphere, the solar system (zodiacal light emitted by interplanetary dust mostly within the orbit of Jupiter; e.g., Wright 2001;Rowan-Robinson & May 2013;Korngut et al 2022), and the Milky Way (e.g., Seon et al 2011;Brandt & Draine 2012;Chellew et al 2022), all of which are brighter than the EBL. Telescopes above the atmosphere can measure the EBL without the contaminating atmospheric foreground (e.g., Hauser et al 1998;Bernstein et al 2002;Mattila 2003;Bernstein 2007), although these can still suffer from contamination from stray light from the Earth, Moon, or Sun outside the field of view of the instrument (Caddy et al 2022). Spacecraft beyond the orbit of Jupiter have made measurements of the EBL with minimal contamination from the zodiacal light (Toller 1983;Edelstein et al 2000;Matsuoka et al 2011;Zemcov et al 2017;Lauer et al 2021Lauer et al , 2022.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modeling the Extragalactic Background Light and the Cosmic Star Formation History

Finke

Ajello

Domínguez

et al. 2022

ApJ

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We present an updated model for the extragalactic background light (EBL) from stars and dust, over wavelengths ≈0.1–1000 μm. This model uses accurate theoretical stellar spectra, and tracks the evolution of star formation, stellar mass density, metallicity, and interstellar dust extinction and emission in the universe with redshift. Dust emission components are treated self-consistently, with stellar light absorbed by dust reradiated in the infrared as three blackbody components. We fit our model, with free parameters associated with star formation rate and dust extinction and emission, to a wide variety of data: luminosity density, stellar mass density, and dust extinction data from galaxy surveys; and γ-ray absorption optical depth data from γ-ray telescopes. Our results strongly constraint the star formation rate density and dust photon escape fraction of the universe out to redshift z = 10, about 90% of the history of the universe. We find our model result is, in some cases, below lower limits on the z = 0 EBL intensity, and below some low-z γ-ray absorption measurements.

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Toward a Data-driven Model of the Sky from Low Earth Orbit as Observed by the Hubble Space Telescope

Cited by 6 publications

References 39 publications

SKYSURF-4: Panchromatic Full Sky Surface Brightness Measurement Methods and Results

SKYSURF-4: Panchromatic Full Sky Surface Brightness Measurement Methods and Results

JWST PEARLS. Prime Extragalactic Areas for Reionization and Lensing Science: Project Overview and First Results

Modeling the Extragalactic Background Light and the Cosmic Star Formation History

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