Abstract

The extragalactic background light (EBL) at infrared (IR) wavelengths contains information about the stars that lived during the epoch of reionization, which was the first era of star formation that occurred a few hundred of Myr after the Big Bang. Anisotropy measurements of the IR EBL by CIBER-1, Spitzer, and AKARI have shown that the amplitude of its surface brightness fluctuations exceeds what is expected from known galaxy populations. Potential sources of this excess include stars during the epoch of reionization, intra-halo light (IHL) from low-mass stars stripped from their parent galaxies, and the decay products of dark matter candidate particles. The Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment-2 (CIBER-2) was designed to better measure the EBL anisotropies through a combination of large optical throughput, large detectors, and broad spectral coverage. CIBER-2 comprises a 28.5 cm aluminum Cassegrain telescope to obtain wide-field images in 6 broad spectral bands covering 0.5 to 2.0 μm. The three focal planes also contain linear variable filters (LVFs) that have continuous spectral coverage with a spectral resolving power of R ∼ 20 for absolute photometry of the EBL. CIBER-2 has completed three flights between 2021 and 2024. This thesis details the instrument and data from CIBER-2’s third flight, which occurred on May 5th, 2024. I review the science case for the mission, the instrument design and implementation, flight planning and pre-flight instrument characterizations, data reduction pipeline, and the planned future science analysis.

Publication Date

8-30-2024

Document Type

Thesis

Student Type

Graduate

Degree Name

Astrophysical Sciences and Technology (MS)

Department, Program, or Center

Physics and Astronomy, School of

College

College of Science

Advisor

Michael Zemcov

Advisor/Committee Member

Donald Figer

Advisor/Committee Member

Michael Richmond

Campus

RIT – Main Campus

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