Predicted 2.2 Ã‚Âµm CElestial Backgrounds For Infrared Telescopes

Jerry Krassner

doi:10.1117/12.957100

3 May 1979 Predicted 2.2 μm Celestial Backgrounds For Infrared Telescopes

Jerry Krassner

Proceedings Volume 0172, Instrumentation in Astronomy III; (1979) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.957100
Event: Instrumentation in Astronomy, 1979, Tucson, United States

Abstract

One of the questions that must be investigated in the planning of space-borne infrared telescope systems is that of the background flux due to discrete infrared sources, such as stars, external galaxies, and galactic nonstellar objects. For example, when performing an infrared sky survey, a knowledge of this background is necessary to optimize the choice of system parameters such as detector size, scan rate, and aperture size. For this reason we have combined the Cal Tech. Two Micron Sky Survey with a structural model of the galaxy in our computer code CELES to predict the number of stars/square degree brighter than a given limiting flux for particular lines of sight through the galaxy. Extragalactic sources are included by inference from visual galaxy counts, while main secuence stars are accounted for by using their optically determined properties and 2μm luminosity. Possible future work could include extension of the present technique to other near infrared wavelengths. Although this might be accomplished by using the AFGL 4-Color Sky Survey, our preliminary results at 4μm show that there is a problem with this approach which could be inherent in the 4μm catalog (e.g., due to lack of completeness to sufficient flux, or the heterogeneity of the catalog objects). To investigate this problem a comparison of the Cal Tech 2μm and AFGL μpm catalogs is presented. Longward of 2μm, the AFGL catalog is the only major infrared survey available for statistical studies, and the need for more sensitive surveys is discussed.

Citation Download Citation

Jerry Krassner "Predicted 2.2 μm Celestial Backgrounds For Infrared Telescopes", Proc. SPIE 0172, Instrumentation in Astronomy III, (3 May 1979); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.957100

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