[FPSPACE] Applications for a Tunable Laser on a Satellite

[LARRY KLAES]

Astrophysics, abstract
astro-ph/0604339

From: Justin Albert [view email]

Date: Sun, 16 Apr 2006 04:36:56 GMT (950kb)

Telescope Spectrophotometric and Absolute Flux Calibration, and National 
Security Applications, Using a Tunable Laser on a Satellite

Authors: Justin Albert, William Burgett, Jason Rhodes

Comments: 11 pages, 4 figures

We propose a tunable laser-based satellite-mounted spectrophotometric and 
absolute flux calibration system, to be utilized by ground- and space-based 
telescopes. As uncertainties on the photometry, due to imperfect knowledge 
of both telescope optics and the atmosphere, will in the near future begin 
to dominate the uncertainties on fundamental cosmological parameters such as 
Omega_Lambda and w in measurements from SNIa, weak gravitational lensing, 
and baryon oscillations, a method for reducing such uncertainties is needed. 
We propose to improve spectrophotometric calibration, currently obtained 
using standard stars, by placing a tunable laser and a wide-angle light 
source on a satellite by early next decade (perhaps included in the upgrade 
to the GPS satellite network) to improve absolute flux calibration to 0.1% 
and relative spectrophotometric calibration to better than 0.001% across the 
visible and near-infrared spectrum. As well as fundamental astrophysical 
applications, the system proposed here potentially has broad utility for 
defense and national security applications such as ground target 
illumination and space communication.

http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0604339



http://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0604339