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Published October 2025 | Version Published
Journal Article Open

The Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment-2: An Intensity-mapping Optimized Sounding-rocket Payload to Understand the Near-IR Extragalactic Background Light

Creators

  • 1. ROR icon Rochester Institute of Technology
  • 2. ROR icon Jet Propulsion Lab
  • 3. ROR icon California Institute of Technology
  • 4. ROR icon University of California, Irvine
  • 5. ROR icon Kwansei Gakuin University
  • 6. ROR icon Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute
  • 7. ROR icon Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
  • 8. ROR icon University of California, Berkeley
  • 9. ROR icon Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
  • 10. ROR icon Institute of Space and Astronautical Science
  • 11. ROR icon Kyushu Institute of Technology
  • 12. ROR icon Temple University
  • 13. ROR icon Carnegie Observatories
  • 14. ROR icon Tokyo City University
  • 15. ROR icon Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Academia Sinica

Abstract

The background light produced by emission from all sources over cosmic history is a powerful diagnostic of structure formation and evolution. At near-infrared wavelengths, this extragalactic background light (EBL) is comprised of emission from galaxies stretching all the way back to the first-light objects present during the Epoch of Reionization. The Cosmic Infrared Background Experiment 2 (CIBER-2) is a sounding-rocket experiment designed to measure both the absolute photometric brightness of the EBL over 0.5–2.0 μm and perform an intensity-mapping measurement of EBL spatial fluctuations in six broad bands over the same wavelength range. CIBER-2 comprises a 28.5 cm, 80 K telescope that images several square degrees to three separate cameras. Each camera is equipped with an HAWAII-2RG detector covered by an assembly that combines two broadband filters and a linear-variable filter, which perform the intensity mapping and absolute photometric measurements, respectively. CIBER-2 has flown three times: an engineering flight in 2021, a terminated launch in 2023, and a successful science flight in 2024. In this paper, we review the science case for the experiment; describe the factors motivating the instrument design; review the optical, mechanical, and electronic implementation of the instrument; present preflight laboratory characterization measurements; and finally assess the instrument’s performance in flight.

Copyright and License

© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

Acknowledgement

We are grateful for the support of the engineers, staff, and technicians at the NASA Wallops Flight Facility and the White Sands Missile Range.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration under APRA research grants NNX10AE12G, NNX16AJ69G, 80NSSC20K0595, 80NSSC22K0355, and 80NSSC22K1512. CSTARS was supported in part by USIP NASA grant NNX16AI82A. Japanese participation is supported by KAKENHI (15H05744, 18KK0089, 21KK0054, 21111004, 22H00156, and 24KK0071) from Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) and the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Korean participation is funded by the Pioneer Project from Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (KASI). C.H.N. acknowledges support from NASA Headquarters under NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship Program grant 80NSSCK0706.

Our thanks to J. Battle, K. Suzuki, T. Wada, Y. Onishi, K. Danbayashi, S. Hanai, T. Morford, and S. Sakai for help in designing, fabricating, and testing various parts of the instrument over its history. Thanks also to S. Davis, K. Gates, M. Klein, B. Stewart, and D. Schake for their contributions to the CSTARS star-tracking instrument.

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Additional details

Related works

Is new version of
Discussion Paper: arXiv:2510.05210 (arXiv)

Funding

National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NNX10AE12G
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NNX16AJ69G
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
80NSSC20K059
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
80NSSC22K0355
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
80NSSC22K1512
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NNX16AI82A
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
15H05744
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
18KK0089
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
21KK0054
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
21111004
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
22H00156
Japan Society for the Promotion of Science
24KK0071
Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology
Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
80NSSCK0706

Dates

Accepted
2025-08-14
Available
2025-10-03
Published online

Caltech Custom Metadata

Caltech groups
Astronomy Department, Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA)
Publication Status
Published