Science Impacts of the SPHEREx All-Sky Optical to Near-Infrared Spectral Survey II: Report of a Community Workshop on the Scientific Synergies Between the SPHEREx Survey and Other Astronomy Observatories
Abstract
SPHEREx is a proposed NASA MIDEX mission selected for Phase A study. SPHEREx would carry out the first all-sky spectral survey in the near infrared. At the end of its two-year mission, SPHEREx would obtain 0.75-to-5μm spectra of every 6.2 arcsec pixel on the sky, with spectral resolution R>35 and a 5-σ sensitivity AB>19 per spectral/spatial resolution element. More details concerning SPHEREx are available at http://spherex.caltech.edu. The SPHEREx team has proposed three specific science investigations to be carried out with this unique data set: cosmic inflation, interstellar and circumstellar ices, and the extra-galactic background light. Though these three themes are undoubtedly compelling, they are far from exhausting the scientific output of SPHEREx. Indeed, SPHEREx would create a unique all-sky spectral database including spectra of very large numbers of astronomical and solar system targets, including both extended and diffuse sources. These spectra would enable a wide variety of investigations, and the SPHEREx team is dedicated to making the data available to the community to enable these investigations, which we refer to as Legacy Science. To that end, we have sponsored two workshops for the general scientific community to identify the most interesting Legacy Science themes and to ensure that the SPHEREx data products are responsive to their needs. In February of 2016, some 50 scientists from all fields met in Pasadena to develop these themes and to understand their implications for the SPHEREx mission. The 2016 workshop highlighted many synergies between SPHEREx and other contemporaneous astronomical missions, facilities, and databases. Consequently, in January 2018 we convened a second workshop at the Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge to focus specifically on these synergies. This white paper reports on the results of the 2018 SPHEREx workshop.
Additional Information
O.D and M.W. would like to warmly thank Gary Melnick, Matt Ashby and Volker Tolls for leading the logistical effort that made this workshop so successful. Part of the research described in this paper was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. The information presented about SPHEREx is pre-decisional and is provided for planning and discussion purposes only.Attached Files
Submitted - 1805.05489.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 89368
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20180904-154905435
- NASA/JPL/Caltech
- Created
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2018-09-04Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2023-06-02Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- COSMOS, Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), Astronomy Department