The Australian Space Eye: studying the history of galaxy formation with a CubeSat

The Australian Space Eye is a proposed astronomical telescope based on a 6U CubeSat platform. The Space Eye will exploit the low level of systematic errors achievable with a small space based telescope to enable high accuracy measurements of the optical extragalactic background light and low surface brightness emission around nearby galaxies. This project is also a demonstrator for several technologies with general applicability to astronomical observations from nanosatellites. Space Eye is based around a 90 mm aperture clear aperture all refractive telescope for broadband wide field imaging in the i' and z' bands.

[1]  Robert Twiggs,et al.  An Advanced Standard for CubeSats , 2011 .

[2]  Stuart Bowyer,et al.  The 1997 reference of diffuse night sky brightness , 1998 .

[3]  Sam Reisenfeld,et al.  The Australian Space Eye: Ultra-faint astronomy imaging from Space , 2015 .

[4]  Peter Turner,et al.  Design and characterisation of the new CIS115 sensor for JANUS, the high resolution camera on JUICE , 2013, Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation.

[5]  V. V. Hristov,et al.  OBSERVATIONS OF THE NEAR-INFRARED SPECTRUM OF THE ZODIACAL LIGHT WITH CIBER , 2010, 1004.5445.

[6]  Christer Sandin,et al.  The influence of diffuse scattered light II. Observations of galaxy haloes and thick discs and hosts of blue compact galaxies , 2015, 1502.07244.

[7]  Pieter van Dokkum,et al.  Ultra–Low Surface Brightness Imaging with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array , 2014, 1401.5473.

[8]  K. Gorski,et al.  HEALPix: A Framework for High-Resolution Discretization and Fast Analysis of Data Distributed on the Sphere , 2004, astro-ph/0409513.

[9]  G. Moreels,et al.  Near-infrared sky background fluctuations at mid- and low latitudes , 2008 .

[10]  Timothy A. Davis,et al.  The ATLAS3D project - XXIX. The new look of early-type galaxies and surrounding fields disclosed by extremely deep optical images , 2014, 1410.0981.

[11]  Brian E. Granger,et al.  IPython: A System for Interactive Scientific Computing , 2007, Computing in Science & Engineering.

[12]  Gaël Varoquaux,et al.  The NumPy Array: A Structure for Efficient Numerical Computation , 2011, Computing in Science & Engineering.

[13]  Pieter van Dokkum,et al.  FIRST RESULTS FROM THE DRAGONFLY TELEPHOTO ARRAY: THE APPARENT LACK OF A STELLAR HALO IN THE MASSIVE SPIRAL GALAXY M101 , 2014, 1401.5467.

[14]  John T. McGraw,et al.  Ground-based observatory operations optimized and enhanced by direct atmospheric measurements , 2010, Astronomical Telescopes + Instrumentation.

[15]  Christer Sandin,et al.  The influence of diffuse scattered light I. The PSF and its role in observations of the edge-on galaxy NGC 5907 , 2014, 1406.5508.

[16]  Prasanth H. Nair,et al.  Astropy: A community Python package for astronomy , 2013, 1307.6212.

[17]  Edward L. Fitzpatrick,et al.  Correcting for the Effects of Interstellar Extinction , 1998, astro-ph/9809387.

[18]  Ralph C. Bohlin,et al.  New Estimates of the Sky Background for the HST Exposure Time Calculator , 2002 .

[19]  Stephen M. Amato,et al.  Characteristic of e2v CMOS sensors for astronomical applications , 2013, Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation.

[20]  Paul Jerram,et al.  e2v new CCD and CMOS technology developments for astronomical sensors , 2014, Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation.

[21]  A. Cooray Extragalactic background light measurements and applications , 2016, Royal Society Open Science.

[22]  R. Bernstein,et al.  The Optical Extragalactic Background Light: Revisions and Further Comments , 2007 .

[23]  Ole Streicher,et al.  ccdproc: CCD data reduction software , 2015 .

[24]  Greg Aldering,et al.  SNAP sky background at the north ecliptic pole , 2002 .

[25]  A. R. Bazer-Bachi,et al.  A low level of extragalactic background light as revealed by gamma-rays from blazars. , 2006, Nature.

[26]  G. W. Pratt,et al.  Planck 2013 results. XI. All-sky model of thermal dust emission , 2013, 1312.1300.

[27]  P. Mason,et al.  The Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER): A Sounding Rocket Payload to Study the near Infrared Extragalactic Background Light , 2013 .

[28]  Juergen Fliri,et al.  BEYOND 31 mag arcsec−2: THE FRONTIER OF LOW SURFACE BRIGHTNESS IMAGING WITH THE LARGEST OPTICAL TELESCOPES , 2015, 1510.04696.

[29]  L. Colina,et al.  The 0.12-2.5 micron Absolute Flux Distribution of the Sun for Comparison With Solar Analog Stars , 1996 .

[30]  K. R. Lykke,et al.  THE COSMIC INFRARED BACKGROUND EXPERIMENT (CIBER): THE NARROW-BAND SPECTROMETER , 2013, 1307.0016.

[31]  Eric Jones,et al.  SciPy: Open Source Scientific Tools for Python , 2001 .

[32]  John D. Hunter,et al.  Matplotlib: A 2D Graphics Environment , 2007, Computing in Science & Engineering.

[33]  Pieter van Dokkum,et al.  FORTY-SEVEN MILKY WAY-SIZED, EXTREMELY DIFFUSE GALAXIES IN THE COMA CLUSTER , 2014, 1410.8141.