Search Publications
Cometary science with CUBES
Cremonese, Gabriele; Cambianica, Pamela; Lazzarin, Monica +6 more
The proposed CUBES spectrograph for ESO's Very Large Telescope will be an exceptionally powerful instrument for the study of comets. The gas coma of a comet contains a large number of emission features in the near-UV range covered by CUBES (305-400 nm), which are diagnostic of the composition of the ices in its nucleus and the chemistry in the com…
Performance of the polarization leakage correction in the PILOT data
Griffin, Matt; Savini, Giorgio; Hughes, Annie +34 more
The Polarized Instrument for Long-wavelength Observation of the Tenuous interstellar medium (PILOT) is a balloon-borne experiment that aims to measure the polarized emission of thermal dust at a wavelength of 240µm (1.2 THz). The PILOT experiment flew from Timmins, Ontario, Canada in 2015 and 2019 and from Alice Springs, Australia in April 2017. T…
An automated approach for photometer and dust mass calculation of the Crab nebula
Sauvage, Marc; Nehmé, Cyrine; Kassounian, Sarkis
Ample evidence exists regarding supernovae being a major contributor to interstellar dust. In this work, the deepest far-infrared observations of the Crab Nebula are used to revisit the estimation of the dust mass present in this supernova remnant. Images in filters between 70 and 500 µ m taken by the PACS and SPIRE instruments on-board of t…
The Footprint Database and Web Services of the Herschel Space Observatory
Valtchanov, Ivan; Budavári, Tamás; Verdugo, Eva +5 more
Data from the Herschel Space Observatory is freely available to the public but no uniformly processed catalogue of the observations has been published so far. To date, the Herschel Science Archive does not contain the exact sky coverage (footprint) of individual observations and supports search for measurements based on bounding circles only. Draw…
The Herschel-PACS photometer calibration. Point-source flux calibration for scan maps
Moór, Attila; Sauvage, Marc; Okumura, Koryo +9 more
This paper provides an overview of the PACS photometer flux calibration concept, in particular for the principal observation mode, the scan map. The absolute flux calibration is tied to the photospheric models of five fiducial stellar standards ( α Boo, α Cet, α Tau, β And, γ Dra). The data processing steps to arrive at a consistent and homogeneou…
Herschel celestial calibration sources. Four large main-belt asteroids as prime flux calibrators for the far-IR/sub-mm range
Pearson, Chris; Lim, Tanya; Linz, Hendrik +9 more
Celestial standards play a major role in observational astrophysics. They are needed to characterise the performance of instruments and are paramount for photometric calibration. During the Herschel Calibration Asteroid Preparatory Programme approximately 50 asteroids have been established as far-IR/sub-mm/mm calibrators for Herschel. The selected…
The pointing system of the Herschel space observatory. Description, Calibration, Performance and improvements
Marston, Anthony; Linz, Hendrik; Merín, Bruno +13 more
We present the activities carried out to calibrate and characterise the performance of the elements of attitude control and measurement on board the Herschel spacecraft. The main calibration parameters and the evolution of the indicators of the pointing performance are described, from the initial values derived from the observations carried out in…
SPIRE point source photometry: within the Herschel interactive processing environment (HIPE)
Griffin, Matt; Pearson, Chris; Lim, Tanya +11 more
The different algorithms appropriate for point source photometry on data from the SPIRE instrument on-board the Herschel Space Observatory, within the Herschel Interactive Processing Environment (HIPE) are compared. Point source photometry of a large ensemble of standard calibration stars and dark sky observations is carried out using the 4 major …
Optimized Herschel/PACS photometer observing and data reduction strategies for moving solar system targets
Hartogh, P.; Pál, A.; Lellouch, E. +10 more
The "TNOs are Cool!: A survey of the trans-Neptunian region" is a Herschel Open Time Key Program that aims to characterize planetary bodies at the outskirts of the Solar System using PACS and SPIRE data, mostly taken as scan-maps. In this paper we summarize our PACS data reduction scheme that uses a modified version of the standard pipeline for ba…
Herschel SPIRE FTS relative spectral response calibration
Valtchanov, Ivan; Hopwood, Rosalind; Lu, Nanyao +9 more
Herschel/SPIRE Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) observations contain emission from both the Herschel Telescope and the SPIRE Instrument itself, both of which are typically orders of magnitude greater than the emission from the astronomical source, and must be removed in order to recover the source spectrum. The effects of the Herschel Telescop…