Measurements of the Zodiacal Light Absolute Intensity through Fraunhofer Absorption Line Spectroscopy with CIBER
Abstract
Scattered sunlight from the interplanetary dust (IPD) cloud in our Solar system presents a serious foreground challenge for spectro-photometric measurements of the Extragalactic Background Light (EBL). In this work, we report on measurements of the absolute intensity of the Zodiacal Light (ZL) using the novel technique of Fraunhofer line spectroscopy on the deepest 8542 Angstrom line of the near-infrared CaII absorption triplet. The measurements are performed with the Narrow Band Spectrometer (NBS) aboard the Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment (CIBER) sounding rocket instrument. We use the NBS data to test the accuracy of two ZL models widely cited in the literature; the Kelsall and Wright models, which have been used in foreground removal analyses that produce high and low EBL results respectively. We find a mean reduced χ² of 3.5 for the Kelsall model and a χ² of 2.0 for the Wright model. The best description of our data is provided by a simple modification to the Kelsall model which includes a free ZL offset parameter. This adjusted model describes the data with a reduced χ² of 1.5 and yields an inferred offset amplitude of 46 ± 19 nW m⁻² sr⁻¹ extrapolated to 12500 Å. These measurements elude to the potential existence of a dust cloud component in the inner Solar system whose intensity does not strongly modulate with the Earth's motion around the Sun.
Additional Information
The data presented here would not have been possible without the support of the NSROC staff at Wallops Flight Facility and White Sands Missile Range. Insight from Kalevi Mattila and Roland dePutter improved the quality of the manuscript. We thank Ned Wright for providing us with his model predictions and Leo Girardi for his star count code. P.K. and M.Z. acknowledge support from the NASA postdoctoral program. We'd also like to thank the late Keith Lykke, who's work along with Steven Brown and Allan Smith on the calibration program made this work possible. We acknowledge the contributions of collaboration members working early in the project that were important to acquiring the data in this paper including Ian Sullivan, Brian Keating and Tom Renbarger. This work was supported by NASA APRA research grants NNX07AI54G, NNG05WC18G, NNX07AG43G, NNX07AJ24G, NNX10AE12G, and NNX16AJ69G. Initial support was provided by an award to J.B. from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Director's Research and Development Fund. Japanese participation in CIBER was supported by KAKENHI (20·34, 18204018, 19540250, 21340047, and 21111004) from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Korean participation in CIBER was supported by the Pioneer Project from Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI).Attached Files
Submitted - 2104.07104.pdf
Files
2104.07104.pdf
Additional details
Identifiers
- Eprint ID
- 110179
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20210809-205942459
Related works
- Describes
- http://arxiv.org/abs/2104.07104 (URL)
Funding
- NASA Postdoctoral Program
- NASA
- NNX07AI54G
- NASA
- NNG05WC18G
- NASA
- NNX07AG43G
- NASA
- NNX07AJ24G
- NASA
- NNX10AE12G
- NASA
- NNX16AJ69G
- JPL Director's Research and Development Fund
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- 20·34
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- 18204018
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- 19540250
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- 21340047
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS)
- 21111004
- Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI)
Dates
- Created
-
2021-08-09Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
-
2023-06-02Created from EPrint's last_modified field
Caltech Custom Metadata
- Caltech groups
- Astronomy Department , Physics Department